First, I'd like to say I quit before Ulduar, I was a casual in vanilla and a raider in TBC.
From what I can see, Ulduar does has hard aspects. But that is not what WoW was ever about. Beating a boss without certain elements, only having one hour a week against one boss, this never was never what WoW was about. WoW was about the journey, each patch with new content required hard work, not only as a single person but as a whole guild. Masses of people had to come together not only from one guild but from the whole server. Think of all those epic quests one had to do, whether it was to get into the instance, to get the gear from the instance or gear for the instance (think resist gear).
Was it grindy? Not really, when you did have to grind, you had to do it for the guild or with the guild. What is worse, going through long questlines that take you all over the great content
@ Templarga, the "in TBC things were random" comment, you only reference one fight... One fight in which everyone knew was random and impossible if you got bad 'luck' (and was famous for being random). Even though skilled players with good gear still helped. Not saying Blizzard didn't use random elements more or less in TBC, just noting that much of the time it wasn't a defining factor. The Illidan fight has many random elements in it as well, but at the same time those same random elements are in vanilla and are in WOTLK, Blizzard hasn't completely removed them.
I don't doubt that there are parts of Ulduar that are hard, but does that mean Blizzard has done a complete turn around? Of course not, anyone can still instantly get into Ulduar, many of the bosses are still just there to drop loot upgrades, Yoggy himself(or itself) was still easily down within the first or second day.
For me, the journey to the top is what made the top most satisfying. The whole "everyone sees the content" is an oxymoron, because the content isn't the rewards. Rewards are the cinematics (sounds/graphics), the epic loots, and in general the feel of the encounters that Blizzard's artists can create... Those are the things you can hand to "teh bads". The content is the journey, the team play and the difficulty, which you cannot obtain through easy and easy to get content.
Personally, I like my MMORPGs to be just that. And WoW is currently only a shell of what it was originally, Blizzard wanted to make a MMORPG that was more accessible then Everquest, but they went too far down that path (of 'accessible'), and myself and others have stopped following. Hopefully there comes another MMORPG with the same type of depth that WoW used to have.
I raid. We are in Ulduar and we are rather far from top raiding guild, but still doing fine with 3x3.5h raids per week. We just reached General Vezax and hopefuly will kill Yogg-Saron soon.
Ulduar isn't hard really. It's challenging, requires much better coordination then Naxx (WotLK) and people who know how to play this game. Serpent Shrine Cavern was hard - we were on top of our server raiding with 1 kill per 2 weeks with 4 raids per week. Now we kill 3+ new bosses each week, that certainly is not what I would call "hard". On the other hand if we want to go hard - we have "hard modes". And after testing some of them I can easly say -> this will be HARD. They require perfect understanding of strategy and environment form everyone in raid and top performance from people. There will be but few guilds who will raid their proto-drakes given as a reward for hard modes. And in my opinion that is how raiding should look like. Everyone can go there and with good strategy and discipline just clear this place, but only few will be able to go the hardest encounters.
And Ensidia clearing the place? Come on, who cares. It's like you your friends trying to match perfectly composed and communicating Couter Strike team. Or trying to play Soccer against top teams. You really want to compete with that? As it was written above - this is as close as you get to professional raiders.
WoW is going the right path. Everyone can more or less enter the harder instances and have a shot. The better teams can clean Naxx every week, the younger guild can at least finish spider easily. Accdessibility to all is fair and have widest appeal.
For the guilds who really want a challenge, there are hard modes. Drake 1 to 3 of OS is my favourite. You can have it as hard as you want. Or if you fail, just kill all 3 stupid drakes and finish it.
WoW gives options, so every one can have his own version of the game inside the WoW framework. Everyone should be happy, except the few who is always jealous of someone else beating the boss earlier. For the jealous few, there is no cure, unless everyone beats the boss at the same time.
If ANY WoW raid instance can be cleared in 2 nights after it's released its name cannot be uttered in the same sentence that uses the word "hard." I remember back to my days of learning Razorgor and Vael in BWL. There's no f'ing way Ulduar can be hard if it was cleared in 2 nights after launch, by ANY guild.
"Ensidia, the European super-guild that resulted from the merger of SK-Gaming and Nihilum last year, has just made the world first kill of the 10-man version of Algalon, Ulduar's true final boss.
That was on ... May 18th, more than a MONTH after Ulduar was published.
One 10 men guild run on .... 5.000.000 possible players.
Oh btw.... they were in 25 person raid gear .....
Oh God, too easy . Right . Next troll please.
Apparently Blizzard found the solution to the misplaced bragging of players: only give a certain boss when you FIRST succeed in the hard modes of an instance. A clear winner this.
NOW we will see how many "super" players there are.
... Btw a clearing 25 men run is not even DONE yet.
2 things to add to that. First Ensidia players are not just experienced raiders, they are proffesionals and they get an actual salary from world of warcraft raiding.
Secondly, Ensidia was on test server the full 5 weeks before the patch was released, so you could argue that it took them 2,5 months to kill the final boss.
No guild in the world has defeated Alganon on 25 man yet.
On my server which is a PVE server with queues and many good PVE guilds, only 1 guild has defeated Yogg Saron the normal mode boss yet. No guild has even reached Alganon or got even close.
I would say that Ulduar on normal mode is very challenging. Ulduar on hard mode, particularly getting to Alganon, is very hard, if not extremely hard. Anyone who claims Ulduar is easy, show me your picture of your Alganon kill or shut up.
Originally posted by Zorndorf WotLK raiding BEFORE Ulduar was perfectly tuned according to what I saw around me. MEANING: casual players also began to raid, making for a nice new addition to their playing style (instead of leveling alts and playing BG's). Here is the fact: EVERYONE on the forums and even in RL said the Raid content was too easy, BUT most of the armory showed almost everyone (as always) LIED about it. Only 1%(!) of the raiding guilds had the famous dragons you get from doing the hardest achievements (like the Raider and Immortal). That proved to me that people were searching for things to BRAG instead of searching for ... the challenge.
No one cares about the achievements. Please stop listing them as if they are some sort of proof of your derived theories. They aren't. Most people care about killing the bosses and nothing more.
If naxx was perfectly tuned as you think it was, then blizzard wouldn't have been tripping over themselves to promise something harder in ulduar. Everything that happened and was said directly conflicts with your opinions. No matter how many armories you link and whatever conclusions you decide to infer from them. Even blizzard thought naxx was to easy.
You seem to think it was the perfect formula, but naxx is the only dungeon that was widely considered too easy. The very next dungeon offered by blizzard reverted back to their original formula and offered a standard level of challenge.
You want to say more people than ever were raiding, but I feel that more people than ever where not logging on. Naxx was so easy that so many people had it on farm status that it was boring. It could be cleared in a few hours and after that there was little left for people to do so they stopped logging in. I've never seen apathy set in so fasts from an expansion as I have with lich king. Its a great expansion, but it was overall to easy. I think ulduar is blizzards response to that.
Ulduar isn't the imovable object that some people are making it out to be. It just isn't easily cleared like naxx was and is going to require a longer learning curve.
Well the real problem is that Blizzard spends a large part of their time creating content that only about 14-16% of the population will ever see. This is what happened with the Black Temple, this is what happened with The Sunwell Plateau. Last time I checked the bulk of the player base, that payed the game were "casual" in nature. So if people are finding the 25 man stuff "Hard" or "Too Challenging" Blizzard is going to have to evaluate how much time and effort they put into making these big raid dungeons. For the effort they put into making one big 25 man they could probably have added three or four new 5 mans or maybe two or three 10 mans or a combination of each. They may just drop back to doing 10 man raids and more 5 man content because 85% of the population actually uses and sees that stuff. Another problem with the big content is the time it takes to clear it vs the time the casual players have to play and there are so many varities and configurations of whats considered to be ready for 25 man raids that some of them just don't work well together so that leads to a lot of wipes and wasted time. Now please don't take this the wrong way, i'm just stating from a business standpoint what would make more sense for Blizzard to do and how they may look at it.
That’s why 90% of MMO's in development isn't even bothering with raiding as a viable end game.
let me see.. eq was game based on raiding.. eq2 was/is based on raiding wow was/still somewhat is based on raiding
lotro is based on raiding , and there is l2... l2got raids.. but i doubt its based on raiding
yes.. new games drops focus on raiding.. and fails misebraly , aoc failed cuz they were making pve game.. with lots of raid content.. then they went pvp side due community or some shit..and in the end.. you got half assed product with bit of each.. and lacking in both sides
war failed, everything else failed
so tell me, why noone should focus on raiding..
you clealry below 84iq with your statements.. clueless.. go play some cs
Well Mr. Hawking; you are speaking of past now pretty much dead MMo's, and you throw out two examples of games that have been out for almost year to back up your straw man. Oh and to even further make you look like a fool, you might want to consider that if tacking on Raids was all AoC and WAR needed they would have done that a long time ago, not having Raiding as a end game wasn’t why these games didn’t attract larger audiences being shoved out the door too fast was.
And calling LOTRO based on raiding is laughable considering 99% of the content is quest based content. and the community is ready to burn Turbine at the stake over what little gated content that has been offered . So basically you have nothing but really bad grammar to back up your petty insults...oh and lame touch using an alt to tell me how pwn I was.
Well the real problem is that Blizzard spends a large part of their time creating content that only about 14-16% of the population will ever see. This is what happened with the Black Temple, this is what happened with The Sunwell Plateau. Last time I checked the bulk of the player base, that payed the game were "casual" in nature. So if people are finding the 25 man stuff "Hard" or "Too Challenging" Blizzard is going to have to evaluate how much time and effort they put into making these big raid dungeons. For the effort they put into making one big 25 man they could probably have added three or four new 5 mans or maybe two or three 10 mans or a combination of each. They may just drop back to doing 10 man raids and more 5 man content because 85% of the population actually uses and sees that stuff. Another problem with the big content is the time it takes to clear it vs the time the casual players have to play and there are so many varities and configurations of whats considered to be ready for 25 man raids that some of them just don't work well together so that leads to a lot of wipes and wasted time. Now please don't take this the wrong way, i'm just stating from a business standpoint what would make more sense for Blizzard to do and how they may look at it.
Actually for every 25 man dungeon that blizzard creates, they also create the 10 man version of it. There is no reason to assume that blizzard could triple their efforts if they only made 10 man versions of every dungeon.
As for 14-16% of the game enjoying the content, ok maybe that is true, but it doesn't matter. 10 mans should increase that number by a large fold, but not everyone is going to see everything. Players have different play schedules. Given enough time everyone could do everything, but at some point new content needs to be added. Progress cannot be halted because some people are on the downside of the progression curve or just chose not to enjoy raid zones.
I think the point that is being missed here is that it is far more important to have goals in a game than it is to achieve them. Maybe blizzard could make more 5 man dungeons in the same time that it takes to make a raid zone. More people would certainly access those dungeons, but not everyone. How long do you think it would take most to conquer a few more 5 man dungeons in comparison to a raid zone? We could continue with the line of logic that anything that will not be used by everyone could be better spent on making something else until we boil it down to a game of nothing but solo quests. I know that is an extreme example, but even with 5 man dungeons the content would last maybe a few days before a majority of people completed them. Games need variety as well as goals to work towards. Once a game runs out of goals people tend to leave.
In the end not everyone pvps, but it is there as an option. Not everyone does dailies, but another option. The same can be said for just about everything from crafting to epic flying mounts. They all serve a purpose even though not everyone partakes in them.
Desiging raid zones is high profile, but in the grand scheme of things they are very small amounts of content. Just look at how much is available in the rest of the game in comparison to 2 raid zones. I don't think companies spend as much time on these as people make them out to be.
You guys are funny. What is the point of making something hard simply for the sake of being hard? Life is hard enough, this is a video game for crying out loud.
The word hard is being used interchangibly with the word challenging, which it should not be in this case. A game without challenge isn't very interesting is it? There are "hard" modes of most of the encounters for people looking for extra levels of challenge.
It has been a major complaint that most of the expansion was lacking challenge.
Challenge in WoW is subjective. If you want a challenge, it's not that hard to make one. Simply try to do the things you do without all your best gear, or without all the best players on the server, or how about without any addons. The way WoW designers make dungeons challenging is superfluous in this context. Many players who play WoW do not want a challenge even if they swear up and down that they do.
What is most challenging about WoW's dungeons, in my opinion, is getting the same group of players together night after night and getting them up to date in whatever current tier gear grind is popular or necessary for the next tier. Its challenging not to fall asleep waiting for everyone to get online and ready to go. It's challenging to not realize that you are doing the same thing over and over and over again only to have your accomplishments become obsolete in the next patch/expansion. The only thing the expansion was lacking was creative and imaginative players.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Oh my, something I can't do half-asleep, stoned, while watching 'Attack of the Show', Oh how dare Bliizard make something that actually takes effort! Isn't WoW the MMO for casual-only players, after all?
Well, no, it isn't, though it's come far that way. WoW is recongnized as the most 'user-friendly' MMO out there, which means the most casual-friendly, but that doesn't mean it all has to be soda pop level. Some of us want to actually have to be somewhat skilled to complete some of the content.
So, PLEASE Blizzard, keep the more-challenging content coming! Don't be swayed by the whiners, reward those of us who actually put forth some effort besides just logging in to spam 'Chuck Norris' jokes (among others)!
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
You guys are funny. What is the point of making something hard simply for the sake of being hard? Life is hard enough, this is a video game for crying out loud.
The word hard is being used interchangibly with the word challenging, which it should not be in this case. A game without challenge isn't very interesting is it? There are "hard" modes of most of the encounters for people looking for extra levels of challenge.
It has been a major complaint that most of the expansion was lacking challenge.
Challenge in WoW is subjective. If you want a challenge, it's not that hard to make one. Simply try to do the things you do without all your best gear, or without all the best players on the server. The way WoW designers make dungeons challenging is superfluous in this context. Many players who play WoW do not want a challenge even if they swear up and down that they do. What is most challenging about WoW's dungeons, in my opinion, is getting the same group of players together night after night and getting them up to date in whatever current tier gear grind is popular or necessary for the next tier. Its challenging not to fall asleep waiting for everyone to get online and ready to go. It's challenging to not realize that you are doing the same thing over and over and over again only to have your accomplishments become obsolete in the next patch/expansion. The only thing the expansion was lacking was creative and imaginative players.
I don't think it is appropriate to expect players to go outside of the intended design of a game just to create challenge. No design is going to be perfect for everyone, but it should at best attempt to challenge most.
Players should not be required to remove gear or exclude friends from coming to play just to increase difficulty and the burden of making something a challenge is not the responsibility of the players. Not that it cannot be done that way, but in no way should that be the expectation. The hard modes are a great step in that direction of offering multiple difficulties to different groups.
Dungeons have a member limit for a reason and items are the rewards for conquering those areas. Think about it.
It seems pretty clear that you don't enjoy what warcraft has to offer, but that doesn't mean others do not enjoy it and the only challenge is staying awake or finding people to play with.
Firstly, I don't believe that people who say that "hard mode is for the hardcore" actually do believe what they are saying. Achievements ruin MMORPGs, achievements and the like doesn't make up for the fact that they are easy and generally badly designed encounters. Sorry, but an hour time limit doesn't make shit "hardcore!!11", adding an extra spell to Yoggy's list of abilities just for one extra 'better' epic (since killing the other bosses will still give you gear) doesn't make up for the fact that it is much easier on normal yet you still end up with pretty much the same loots and rewards in general.
Secondly, why hasn't anyone replied to my original post? *cough* WoW has ceased to be a MMORPG.
Either way, I expected something like Ulduar to be packed into the release of WOTLK, waiting 4+ months for new content is pathetic considering there was nothing boxed into the WOTLK release (and no, two big dragons that use pre-WOTLK models is NOT new content). Fanboys can keep fooling themselves that Blizzard is going casual because its audience, but no new raiding content with the release of WOTLK is just plan lazy and pathetic, has nothing to do with audience.
I think it is actually a fantastic design that the more difficult encounters only reward slightly better than the normal version of the same encounter. That way people do not feel they are "forced" to do something a certain way to get the best widget.
It is similar to how guild wars did the extremely rare items at release. Players priced them extremely high, but the benefit was only 1/30th or 2/30ths better than the fairly easy to obtain "rare" items. For people who want the absolute best items the price is fairly steep, but at the same time it doesn't completely throw balance out the window.
As for achievements, I enjoy some of them and I know plenty of people who are really into working on completing them. I despise any that encourage people to try to be "world/server first" at something, because I think that promotes racings through a game instead of playing. Most of them I am fine with and don't think it ruins gameplay, but I think I understand where you are coming from and see your point of view.
I think this thread derailed into arguments about half way through. . And it never recovered.
What Happened With SWG Went Down YEARS AGO! Please Try To Stop Whining About It In Every Thread I Read. Mourn It, And Finally MOVE ON With Your Lives! Thanks A Heap.
SuperthrustWorld of Warcraft CorrespondentMemberPosts: 45
Thank you for reading folks.
I am working on an article that will combine how people feel and perform in raids, and what drives them to progress!
For this article, i would like to have the input and feelings of ACTUAL PLAYERS. Please, send me a message on here or on my personal blog (located on my MMORPG.com user profile. its the Blogspot one).
What i need to know:
What drives you to progress?
What do you like about current content
server preferred? (pvp, rp, pve)
what makes the game FUN FOR YOU (compared to now & then, I.E. vanilla WoW.)
Whether you want your name, server, etc. mentioned.
So basically, if you want to let me know "Well, i love playing my <insert class here> but leveling is tedious, repetitive and an overall time sink and i wish <insert thing here> would be added or <insert thing here> would be changed!" then thats what i wanna hear!
Remember! Drop me a message and have a voice for the community!
WoW is interesting in that it is completely unlike all of the other MMORPGs available (other than newer games that have been designed as an alternative to WoW). As you can tell from statistical data collected (which may or may not be refutable) on www.mmogchart.com, World of Warcraft's population cannot possibly consist of just those that played MMORPGs in the past. The majority population of WoW are not used to the MMORPG style of gameplay, and consequently the 'elitest' mentality that can develop (and essentially, make the games fun, at least for me). Because the majority population are not regular MMORPG players (a conclusion I gather from the stastical data here), the Blizzard staff must cater to all sorts of needs. Unfortunately for me, a true MMORPG lover at heart, the WOTLK raiding style has left me with a thirst unquenched by the raid dungeons. I feel the need to have gear that the majority of players on my server have a hard time getting--to sit in Ironforge/Shattrath/Dalaran, admired by others for my achievements and obvious skill as a player. I have gotten the Immortal title (which was pretty easy when we actually put forth the minimal amount of effort and concentration to achieve it), and have also gotten my Black Proto-Drake (which also didn't take much time or effort to achieve), among other achievements. Yeah, the Black Drake and title were pretty sweet, but you can't show it off in Dalarn due to the restriction on flight. I guess WoW is pushing away some of their player base that do want to put in the time necessary to get the best gear.
Another thing to note is that, while guilds did in fact utilize the Public Test Realm (available to everyone by the way, so it's not like they had some special advantage, you should have easily had Naxx 2.0 on farm by that point), the bosses on PTR were incredibly easy as well. On the US servers, guilds were only given a small window of time (4 hours or so) to test the bosses before they were taken down. Even in this small amount of time, most of the bosses were so easy you could kill them and have time to spare. This is why I quit the game before Ulduar went live (yes I was on the PTR until about a week before Ulduar went live), and this is why I'll be waiting for a new MMORPG to be released that will allow me to realize my full elitest potential. For everyone else out there, WoW is probably the perfect, casual MMO experience--not for me.
And I don't know if this is necessary but here's my armory.
Yeah, only the other "elites" enviously eyeball other people's achievements and pine about being in the "best" guild. Other people don't care. And as you said, the majority of WoW players are the "other people". So... you will not be missed in the World of Warcraft. Good day.
What Happened With SWG Went Down YEARS AGO! Please Try To Stop Whining About It In Every Thread I Read. Mourn It, And Finally MOVE ON With Your Lives! Thanks A Heap.
Yeah, only the other "elites" enviously eyeball other people's achievements and pine about being in the "best" guild. Other people don't care. And as you said, the majority of WoW players are the "other people". So... you will not be missed in the World of Warcraft. Good day.
Obviously you missed the entire point of the post I made, and added in a bit of troll-anger to boot. It's not WoW's fault they made such a darn good game that everyone wants to play. And if it was only the other elite's enviously eyeballing other people's achievements, there wouldn't be any elite then would there be (not to mention loads of applications to top guilds)? I really don't know why you take offence to such a post, maybe you should be gagging on your own obsession with the game and willingness to defend it when it doesn't need defending.
Yeah, only the other "elites" enviously eyeball other people's achievements and pine about being in the "best" guild. Other people don't care. And as you said, the majority of WoW players are the "other people". So... you will not be missed in the World of Warcraft. Good day.
Obviously you missed the entire point of the post I made, and added in a bit of troll-anger to boot. It's not WoW's fault they made such a darn good game that everyone wants to play. And if it was only the other elite's enviously eyeballing other people's achievements, there wouldn't be any elite then would there be (not to mention loads of applications to top guilds)? I really don't know why you take offence to such a post, maybe you should be gagging on your own obsession with the game and willingness to defend it when it doesn't need defending.
Hurray for troll-anger. My post had absolutely nothing to do with defending WoW. I was expressing my disgust with the elitest mindset expressed in your post. If you added it for jest, or to make a point is meaningless to me. And it's one of the mentalities that I hope dies out from mmos entirely. It's an easy tactic to be dismissive by implying that I'm some kind of "fanboi" by telling me I'm "obsessed", even though I don't play very often. Really, I'd react the same way even if you were talking about SWG or Aion. It's just a mentality I don't like, and I feel gaming communities would be better served if it ceased to exist.
What Happened With SWG Went Down YEARS AGO! Please Try To Stop Whining About It In Every Thread I Read. Mourn It, And Finally MOVE ON With Your Lives! Thanks A Heap.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with deriving enjoyment from personal achievement. And yeah, one must be dismissive of pointless insults. Instead of saying that I won't be missed in WoW or that my post was 'snipped due to gagging' perhaps you could add something constructive--for example, why you percieve the elitest mentality to be a problem in the game. Your perception of the elitest crowds on MMOs is, I'm guessing, very negative. This is unfortunate, because there are a lot of mediocre players that have excellent gear because their guild members carry them, and they tend to be the most vocal in the guilds (ie harrassing other players, creating flame posts about other guilds on the public forums, etc). While from my experience, the best players would rather not waste their time with such things, and are in fact willing to help out others and their guilds if asked. OR hmm, posting on an MMORPG thread as to why there is such a difference in difficulty perception of the new Ulduar instance.
I think in light of the fact that Naxx was a face roll, people cried out for an instance that would be hard. Blizzard has taken the position of saying they dont want another Sunwell or Naxx 40. Why? Only a tiny percentage of the player base saw the content which is a waste or resources (unless you that percentage) and if you saw those raids Gratz to you They are more interested in making it more CHALLENGING so that people with appropiate skill get rewarded.
Im sure everyone has heard the spin, but I tend to agree, surely there is a middle ground between Naxx (LK) and the craziness that is sunwell (in BC) . is Ulduar that medium? i dont know It is a lot harder than naxx but still accessable to raiders who arent top eschelon.
Some of the responsability has gone back to the raider and thier guilds to preform stop qqing about stuff being easy and start moving out of voidzones, to analyse whats going wrong with thier raids (be it people, gear levels etc etc) and fix it.
Icecrown will be much much harder again than ulduar as will anything beyond that, while i agree with most posters that the first tier of raiding was kinda easy mode which was wierd considering past instances. Im liking what Blizz has done, Raiding is not a case of having to sit for 40 hours a week smashing your head on the keyboard on content.
Is it easier? probably. But one thing is for certain they are much better designed than Vanilla wow
I like Ulduar because its challenging as well as unique. The boss fights are all fun and require a fair amount of effort into dowing. The first wing is realatively easy, after the nerf, but gave a good impression on how big the instance is. My hats off to blizzard for putting together an amazing raid experiance that can be enjoyed by many but mastered by few.
Comments
First, I'd like to say I quit before Ulduar, I was a casual in vanilla and a raider in TBC.
From what I can see, Ulduar does has hard aspects. But that is not what WoW was ever about. Beating a boss without certain elements, only having one hour a week against one boss, this never was never what WoW was about. WoW was about the journey, each patch with new content required hard work, not only as a single person but as a whole guild. Masses of people had to come together not only from one guild but from the whole server. Think of all those epic quests one had to do, whether it was to get into the instance, to get the gear from the instance or gear for the instance (think resist gear).
Was it grindy? Not really, when you did have to grind, you had to do it for the guild or with the guild. What is worse, going through long questlines that take you all over the great content
@ Templarga, the "in TBC things were random" comment, you only reference one fight... One fight in which everyone knew was random and impossible if you got bad 'luck' (and was famous for being random). Even though skilled players with good gear still helped. Not saying Blizzard didn't use random elements more or less in TBC, just noting that much of the time it wasn't a defining factor. The Illidan fight has many random elements in it as well, but at the same time those same random elements are in vanilla and are in WOTLK, Blizzard hasn't completely removed them.
I don't doubt that there are parts of Ulduar that are hard, but does that mean Blizzard has done a complete turn around? Of course not, anyone can still instantly get into Ulduar, many of the bosses are still just there to drop loot upgrades, Yoggy himself(or itself) was still easily down within the first or second day.
For me, the journey to the top is what made the top most satisfying. The whole "everyone sees the content" is an oxymoron, because the content isn't the rewards. Rewards are the cinematics (sounds/graphics), the epic loots, and in general the feel of the encounters that Blizzard's artists can create... Those are the things you can hand to "teh bads". The content is the journey, the team play and the difficulty, which you cannot obtain through easy and easy to get content.
Personally, I like my MMORPGs to be just that. And WoW is currently only a shell of what it was originally, Blizzard wanted to make a MMORPG that was more accessible then Everquest, but they went too far down that path (of 'accessible'), and myself and others have stopped following. Hopefully there comes another MMORPG with the same type of depth that WoW used to have.
I raid. We are in Ulduar and we are rather far from top raiding guild, but still doing fine with 3x3.5h raids per week. We just reached General Vezax and hopefuly will kill Yogg-Saron soon.
Ulduar isn't hard really. It's challenging, requires much better coordination then Naxx (WotLK) and people who know how to play this game. Serpent Shrine Cavern was hard - we were on top of our server raiding with 1 kill per 2 weeks with 4 raids per week. Now we kill 3+ new bosses each week, that certainly is not what I would call "hard". On the other hand if we want to go hard - we have "hard modes". And after testing some of them I can easly say -> this will be HARD. They require perfect understanding of strategy and environment form everyone in raid and top performance from people. There will be but few guilds who will raid their proto-drakes given as a reward for hard modes. And in my opinion that is how raiding should look like. Everyone can go there and with good strategy and discipline just clear this place, but only few will be able to go the hardest encounters.
And Ensidia clearing the place? Come on, who cares. It's like you your friends trying to match perfectly composed and communicating Couter Strike team. Or trying to play Soccer against top teams. You really want to compete with that? As it was written above - this is as close as you get to professional raiders.
Generally agree with dzikus.
WoW is going the right path. Everyone can more or less enter the harder instances and have a shot. The better teams can clean Naxx every week, the younger guild can at least finish spider easily. Accdessibility to all is fair and have widest appeal.
For the guilds who really want a challenge, there are hard modes. Drake 1 to 3 of OS is my favourite. You can have it as hard as you want. Or if you fail, just kill all 3 stupid drakes and finish it.
WoW gives options, so every one can have his own version of the game inside the WoW framework. Everyone should be happy, except the few who is always jealous of someone else beating the boss earlier. For the jealous few, there is no cure, unless everyone beats the boss at the same time.
LOL. I cite: http://www.wow.com/2009/05/18/ensidia-gets-10-man-algalon-world-first/
"Ensidia, the European super-guild that resulted from the merger of SK-Gaming and Nihilum last year, has just made the world first kill of the 10-man version of Algalon, Ulduar's true final boss.
That was on ... May 18th, more than a MONTH after Ulduar was published.
One 10 men guild run on .... 5.000.000 possible players.
Oh btw.... they were in 25 person raid gear .....
Oh God, too easy . Right . Next troll please.
Apparently Blizzard found the solution to the misplaced bragging of players: only give a certain boss when you FIRST succeed in the hard modes of an instance. A clear winner this.
NOW we will see how many "super" players there are.
... Btw a clearing 25 men run is not even DONE yet.
2 things to add to that. First Ensidia players are not just experienced raiders, they are proffesionals and they get an actual salary from world of warcraft raiding.
Secondly, Ensidia was on test server the full 5 weeks before the patch was released, so you could argue that it took them 2,5 months to kill the final boss.
No guild in the world has defeated Alganon on 25 man yet.
On my server which is a PVE server with queues and many good PVE guilds, only 1 guild has defeated Yogg Saron the normal mode boss yet. No guild has even reached Alganon or got even close.
I would say that Ulduar on normal mode is very challenging. Ulduar on hard mode, particularly getting to Alganon, is very hard, if not extremely hard. Anyone who claims Ulduar is easy, show me your picture of your Alganon kill or shut up.
No one cares about the achievements. Please stop listing them as if they are some sort of proof of your derived theories. They aren't. Most people care about killing the bosses and nothing more.
If naxx was perfectly tuned as you think it was, then blizzard wouldn't have been tripping over themselves to promise something harder in ulduar. Everything that happened and was said directly conflicts with your opinions. No matter how many armories you link and whatever conclusions you decide to infer from them. Even blizzard thought naxx was to easy.
You seem to think it was the perfect formula, but naxx is the only dungeon that was widely considered too easy. The very next dungeon offered by blizzard reverted back to their original formula and offered a standard level of challenge.
You want to say more people than ever were raiding, but I feel that more people than ever where not logging on. Naxx was so easy that so many people had it on farm status that it was boring. It could be cleared in a few hours and after that there was little left for people to do so they stopped logging in. I've never seen apathy set in so fasts from an expansion as I have with lich king. Its a great expansion, but it was overall to easy. I think ulduar is blizzards response to that.
Ulduar isn't the imovable object that some people are making it out to be. It just isn't easily cleared like naxx was and is going to require a longer learning curve.
Well the real problem is that Blizzard spends a large part of their time creating content that only about 14-16% of the population will ever see. This is what happened with the Black Temple, this is what happened with The Sunwell Plateau. Last time I checked the bulk of the player base, that payed the game were "casual" in nature. So if people are finding the 25 man stuff "Hard" or "Too Challenging" Blizzard is going to have to evaluate how much time and effort they put into making these big raid dungeons. For the effort they put into making one big 25 man they could probably have added three or four new 5 mans or maybe two or three 10 mans or a combination of each. They may just drop back to doing 10 man raids and more 5 man content because 85% of the population actually uses and sees that stuff. Another problem with the big content is the time it takes to clear it vs the time the casual players have to play and there are so many varities and configurations of whats considered to be ready for 25 man raids that some of them just don't work well together so that leads to a lot of wipes and wasted time. Now please don't take this the wrong way, i'm just stating from a business standpoint what would make more sense for Blizzard to do and how they may look at it.
let me see.. eq was game based on raiding.. eq2 was/is based on raiding wow was/still somewhat is based on raiding
lotro is based on raiding , and there is l2... l2got raids.. but i doubt its based on raiding
yes.. new games drops focus on raiding.. and fails misebraly , aoc failed cuz they were making pve game.. with lots of raid content.. then they went pvp side due community or some shit..and in the end.. you got half assed product with bit of each.. and lacking in both sides
war failed, everything else failed
so tell me, why noone should focus on raiding..
you clealry below 84iq with your statements.. clueless.. go play some cs
Well Mr. Hawking; you are speaking of past now pretty much dead MMo's, and you throw out two examples of games that have been out for almost year to back up your straw man. Oh and to even further make you look like a fool, you might want to consider that if tacking on Raids was all AoC and WAR needed they would have done that a long time ago, not having Raiding as a end game wasn’t why these games didn’t attract larger audiences being shoved out the door too fast was.
And calling LOTRO based on raiding is laughable considering 99% of the content is quest based content. and the community is ready to burn Turbine at the stake over what little gated content that has been offered . So basically you have nothing but really bad grammar to back up your petty insults...oh and lame touch using an alt to tell me how pwn I was.
Fail Tard is Fail
Actually for every 25 man dungeon that blizzard creates, they also create the 10 man version of it. There is no reason to assume that blizzard could triple their efforts if they only made 10 man versions of every dungeon.
As for 14-16% of the game enjoying the content, ok maybe that is true, but it doesn't matter. 10 mans should increase that number by a large fold, but not everyone is going to see everything. Players have different play schedules. Given enough time everyone could do everything, but at some point new content needs to be added. Progress cannot be halted because some people are on the downside of the progression curve or just chose not to enjoy raid zones.
I think the point that is being missed here is that it is far more important to have goals in a game than it is to achieve them. Maybe blizzard could make more 5 man dungeons in the same time that it takes to make a raid zone. More people would certainly access those dungeons, but not everyone. How long do you think it would take most to conquer a few more 5 man dungeons in comparison to a raid zone? We could continue with the line of logic that anything that will not be used by everyone could be better spent on making something else until we boil it down to a game of nothing but solo quests. I know that is an extreme example, but even with 5 man dungeons the content would last maybe a few days before a majority of people completed them. Games need variety as well as goals to work towards. Once a game runs out of goals people tend to leave.
In the end not everyone pvps, but it is there as an option. Not everyone does dailies, but another option. The same can be said for just about everything from crafting to epic flying mounts. They all serve a purpose even though not everyone partakes in them.
Desiging raid zones is high profile, but in the grand scheme of things they are very small amounts of content. Just look at how much is available in the rest of the game in comparison to 2 raid zones. I don't think companies spend as much time on these as people make them out to be.
The word hard is being used interchangibly with the word challenging, which it should not be in this case. A game without challenge isn't very interesting is it? There are "hard" modes of most of the encounters for people looking for extra levels of challenge.
It has been a major complaint that most of the expansion was lacking challenge.
Challenge in WoW is subjective. If you want a challenge, it's not that hard to make one. Simply try to do the things you do without all your best gear, or without all the best players on the server, or how about without any addons. The way WoW designers make dungeons challenging is superfluous in this context. Many players who play WoW do not want a challenge even if they swear up and down that they do.
What is most challenging about WoW's dungeons, in my opinion, is getting the same group of players together night after night and getting them up to date in whatever current tier gear grind is popular or necessary for the next tier. Its challenging not to fall asleep waiting for everyone to get online and ready to go. It's challenging to not realize that you are doing the same thing over and over and over again only to have your accomplishments become obsolete in the next patch/expansion. The only thing the expansion was lacking was creative and imaginative players.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Oh my, something I can't do half-asleep, stoned, while watching 'Attack of the Show', Oh how dare Bliizard make something that actually takes effort! Isn't WoW the MMO for casual-only players, after all?
Well, no, it isn't, though it's come far that way. WoW is recongnized as the most 'user-friendly' MMO out there, which means the most casual-friendly, but that doesn't mean it all has to be soda pop level. Some of us want to actually have to be somewhat skilled to complete some of the content.
So, PLEASE Blizzard, keep the more-challenging content coming! Don't be swayed by the whiners, reward those of us who actually put forth some effort besides just logging in to spam 'Chuck Norris' jokes (among others)!
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
The word hard is being used interchangibly with the word challenging, which it should not be in this case. A game without challenge isn't very interesting is it? There are "hard" modes of most of the encounters for people looking for extra levels of challenge.
It has been a major complaint that most of the expansion was lacking challenge.
Challenge in WoW is subjective. If you want a challenge, it's not that hard to make one. Simply try to do the things you do without all your best gear, or without all the best players on the server. The way WoW designers make dungeons challenging is superfluous in this context. Many players who play WoW do not want a challenge even if they swear up and down that they do. What is most challenging about WoW's dungeons, in my opinion, is getting the same group of players together night after night and getting them up to date in whatever current tier gear grind is popular or necessary for the next tier. Its challenging not to fall asleep waiting for everyone to get online and ready to go. It's challenging to not realize that you are doing the same thing over and over and over again only to have your accomplishments become obsolete in the next patch/expansion. The only thing the expansion was lacking was creative and imaginative players.
I don't think it is appropriate to expect players to go outside of the intended design of a game just to create challenge. No design is going to be perfect for everyone, but it should at best attempt to challenge most.
Players should not be required to remove gear or exclude friends from coming to play just to increase difficulty and the burden of making something a challenge is not the responsibility of the players. Not that it cannot be done that way, but in no way should that be the expectation. The hard modes are a great step in that direction of offering multiple difficulties to different groups.
Dungeons have a member limit for a reason and items are the rewards for conquering those areas. Think about it.
It seems pretty clear that you don't enjoy what warcraft has to offer, but that doesn't mean others do not enjoy it and the only challenge is staying awake or finding people to play with.
Firstly, I don't believe that people who say that "hard mode is for the hardcore" actually do believe what they are saying. Achievements ruin MMORPGs, achievements and the like doesn't make up for the fact that they are easy and generally badly designed encounters. Sorry, but an hour time limit doesn't make shit "hardcore!!11", adding an extra spell to Yoggy's list of abilities just for one extra 'better' epic (since killing the other bosses will still give you gear) doesn't make up for the fact that it is much easier on normal yet you still end up with pretty much the same loots and rewards in general.
Secondly, why hasn't anyone replied to my original post? *cough* WoW has ceased to be a MMORPG.
Either way, I expected something like Ulduar to be packed into the release of WOTLK, waiting 4+ months for new content is pathetic considering there was nothing boxed into the WOTLK release (and no, two big dragons that use pre-WOTLK models is NOT new content). Fanboys can keep fooling themselves that Blizzard is going casual because its audience, but no new raiding content with the release of WOTLK is just plan lazy and pathetic, has nothing to do with audience.
I think it is actually a fantastic design that the more difficult encounters only reward slightly better than the normal version of the same encounter. That way people do not feel they are "forced" to do something a certain way to get the best widget.
It is similar to how guild wars did the extremely rare items at release. Players priced them extremely high, but the benefit was only 1/30th or 2/30ths better than the fairly easy to obtain "rare" items. For people who want the absolute best items the price is fairly steep, but at the same time it doesn't completely throw balance out the window.
As for achievements, I enjoy some of them and I know plenty of people who are really into working on completing them. I despise any that encourage people to try to be "world/server first" at something, because I think that promotes racings through a game instead of playing. Most of them I am fine with and don't think it ruins gameplay, but I think I understand where you are coming from and see your point of view.
Ok article, terrible grammar. You don't need to place commas every 6 words to make it seem like you know how to write.
I think this thread derailed into arguments about half way through. . And it never recovered.
What Happened With SWG Went Down YEARS AGO! Please Try To Stop Whining About It In Every Thread I Read. Mourn It, And Finally MOVE ON With Your Lives! Thanks A Heap.
Thank you for reading folks.
I am working on an article that will combine how people feel and perform in raids, and what drives them to progress!
For this article, i would like to have the input and feelings of ACTUAL PLAYERS. Please, send me a message on here or on my personal blog (located on my MMORPG.com user profile. its the Blogspot one).
What i need to know:
So basically, if you want to let me know "Well, i love playing my <insert class here> but leveling is tedious, repetitive and an overall time sink and i wish <insert thing here> would be added or <insert thing here> would be changed!" then thats what i wanna hear!
Remember! Drop me a message and have a voice for the community!
WoW is interesting in that it is completely unlike all of the other MMORPGs available (other than newer games that have been designed as an alternative to WoW). As you can tell from statistical data collected (which may or may not be refutable) on www.mmogchart.com, World of Warcraft's population cannot possibly consist of just those that played MMORPGs in the past. The majority population of WoW are not used to the MMORPG style of gameplay, and consequently the 'elitest' mentality that can develop (and essentially, make the games fun, at least for me). Because the majority population are not regular MMORPG players (a conclusion I gather from the stastical data here), the Blizzard staff must cater to all sorts of needs. Unfortunately for me, a true MMORPG lover at heart, the WOTLK raiding style has left me with a thirst unquenched by the raid dungeons. I feel the need to have gear that the majority of players on my server have a hard time getting--to sit in Ironforge/Shattrath/Dalaran, admired by others for my achievements and obvious skill as a player. I have gotten the Immortal title (which was pretty easy when we actually put forth the minimal amount of effort and concentration to achieve it), and have also gotten my Black Proto-Drake (which also didn't take much time or effort to achieve), among other achievements. Yeah, the Black Drake and title were pretty sweet, but you can't show it off in Dalarn due to the restriction on flight. I guess WoW is pushing away some of their player base that do want to put in the time necessary to get the best gear.
Another thing to note is that, while guilds did in fact utilize the Public Test Realm (available to everyone by the way, so it's not like they had some special advantage, you should have easily had Naxx 2.0 on farm by that point), the bosses on PTR were incredibly easy as well. On the US servers, guilds were only given a small window of time (4 hours or so) to test the bosses before they were taken down. Even in this small amount of time, most of the bosses were so easy you could kill them and have time to spare. This is why I quit the game before Ulduar went live (yes I was on the PTR until about a week before Ulduar went live), and this is why I'll be waiting for a new MMORPG to be released that will allow me to realize my full elitest potential. For everyone else out there, WoW is probably the perfect, casual MMO experience--not for me.
And I don't know if this is necessary but here's my armory.
Yeah, only the other "elites" enviously eyeball other people's achievements and pine about being in the "best" guild. Other people don't care. And as you said, the majority of WoW players are the "other people". So... you will not be missed in the World of Warcraft. Good day.
What Happened With SWG Went Down YEARS AGO! Please Try To Stop Whining About It In Every Thread I Read. Mourn It, And Finally MOVE ON With Your Lives! Thanks A Heap.
Yeah, only the other "elites" enviously eyeball other people's achievements and pine about being in the "best" guild. Other people don't care. And as you said, the majority of WoW players are the "other people". So... you will not be missed in the World of Warcraft. Good day.
Obviously you missed the entire point of the post I made, and added in a bit of troll-anger to boot. It's not WoW's fault they made such a darn good game that everyone wants to play. And if it was only the other elite's enviously eyeballing other people's achievements, there wouldn't be any elite then would there be (not to mention loads of applications to top guilds)? I really don't know why you take offence to such a post, maybe you should be gagging on your own obsession with the game and willingness to defend it when it doesn't need defending.
I want the instances to be harder
Bring it on!
Yeah, only the other "elites" enviously eyeball other people's achievements and pine about being in the "best" guild. Other people don't care. And as you said, the majority of WoW players are the "other people". So... you will not be missed in the World of Warcraft. Good day.
Obviously you missed the entire point of the post I made, and added in a bit of troll-anger to boot. It's not WoW's fault they made such a darn good game that everyone wants to play. And if it was only the other elite's enviously eyeballing other people's achievements, there wouldn't be any elite then would there be (not to mention loads of applications to top guilds)? I really don't know why you take offence to such a post, maybe you should be gagging on your own obsession with the game and willingness to defend it when it doesn't need defending.
Hurray for troll-anger. My post had absolutely nothing to do with defending WoW. I was expressing my disgust with the elitest mindset expressed in your post. If you added it for jest, or to make a point is meaningless to me. And it's one of the mentalities that I hope dies out from mmos entirely. It's an easy tactic to be dismissive by implying that I'm some kind of "fanboi" by telling me I'm "obsessed", even though I don't play very often. Really, I'd react the same way even if you were talking about SWG or Aion. It's just a mentality I don't like, and I feel gaming communities would be better served if it ceased to exist.
What Happened With SWG Went Down YEARS AGO! Please Try To Stop Whining About It In Every Thread I Read. Mourn It, And Finally MOVE ON With Your Lives! Thanks A Heap.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with deriving enjoyment from personal achievement. And yeah, one must be dismissive of pointless insults. Instead of saying that I won't be missed in WoW or that my post was 'snipped due to gagging' perhaps you could add something constructive--for example, why you percieve the elitest mentality to be a problem in the game. Your perception of the elitest crowds on MMOs is, I'm guessing, very negative. This is unfortunate, because there are a lot of mediocre players that have excellent gear because their guild members carry them, and they tend to be the most vocal in the guilds (ie harrassing other players, creating flame posts about other guilds on the public forums, etc). While from my experience, the best players would rather not waste their time with such things, and are in fact willing to help out others and their guilds if asked. OR hmm, posting on an MMORPG thread as to why there is such a difference in difficulty perception of the new Ulduar instance.
dont think so
I think in light of the fact that Naxx was a face roll, people cried out for an instance that would be hard. Blizzard has taken the position of saying they dont want another Sunwell or Naxx 40. Why? Only a tiny percentage of the player base saw the content which is a waste or resources (unless you that percentage) and if you saw those raids Gratz to you
They are more interested in making it more CHALLENGING so that people with appropiate skill get rewarded.
Im sure everyone has heard the spin, but I tend to agree, surely there is a middle ground between Naxx (LK) and the craziness that is sunwell (in BC) . is Ulduar that medium? i dont know It is a lot harder than naxx but still accessable to raiders who arent top eschelon.
Some of the responsability has gone back to the raider and thier guilds to preform stop qqing about stuff being easy and start moving out of voidzones, to analyse whats going wrong with thier raids (be it people, gear levels etc etc) and fix it.
Icecrown will be much much harder again than ulduar as will anything beyond that, while i agree with most posters that the first tier of raiding was kinda easy mode which was wierd considering past instances. Im liking what Blizz has done, Raiding is not a case of having to sit for 40 hours a week smashing your head on the keyboard on content.
Is it easier? probably. But one thing is for certain they are much better designed than Vanilla wow
I like Ulduar because its challenging as well as unique. The boss fights are all fun and require a fair amount of effort into dowing. The first wing is realatively easy, after the nerf, but gave a good impression on how big the instance is. My hats off to blizzard for putting together an amazing raid experiance that can be enjoyed by many but mastered by few.