WoW revenue down 54% in seven months

[desura]

Hit the nail on the head right here. Gearing up and catching up was interesting in vanillia and early TBC because you had a TON of RELEVANT raids to do it in. Now? Only the current raid is relevant. You run 3 different versions of that same raid over and over and over and i'm sure you can see how stupidly boring that gets. In vanilla, there was no massive gear difference. You could do just fine with BWL gear. You could do fine with AQ40 gear. Naxx40 gear of course. Now? If you're not in the latest tier you might as well delete your character. This was not the case in Vanilla/TBC - earlier tiers were still relevant and still ran A LOT because there was no massive item level inflation as there is now. In fact, the healer trinket from BWL was the most sought after drop 2 tiers later, as was the mishundare's helm. People STILL ran BWL constantly to get drops even after Naxx was released.

This simply does not happen now. Now? You do LFR of current tier. Then normal of current tier. Then heroic of current tier. Meanwhile, current tier becomes mind numbingly boring and stupid because you ran it so many freakin' times.

The item level inflation has made the game for the worse. SITTING IN QUEUE has made the game worse and removed all sense of exploration and socialization. I'm sorry, socialization and role playing are the PRINCIPLES of what MMOs are based on. NOT convenience. So if blizzard wants to eschew role playing fundamentals in favor of convenience for idiots that play 13 minutes a day, it is no longer a role playing experience. Logging into WoW and seeing 7 gabillion people running around Orgrimmar just in queue is sad and telling. That isn't role playing. MMOs aren't supposed to be about convenience for idiots that play 10 minutes a day.

Anyway, the bottom line is the MMO genre is dead. I say good riddance. MMOs have been going in the wrong direction for years, and until something new and revolutionary happens it's time for the entire genre to die and reset. Maybe EQ next can change that, there are some new and interesting ideas there.

So true.

Convenience makes the world smaller.

 

[railven]

I thought you said BWL, my error. It doesn't matter though. Whatever raid you are doing, you can bring your under-geared buddy, if you want. Even Naxx allows for enough slack to easily carry 1 undergeared player, out of a raid of 40, except possibly for sapphiron/kt. If you don't want to, he could go join a molten core guild or find a molten core pug, and work on from there.

Again, like others in this thread stated, this wasn't a practical option for a hardcore progressive guild. It wasn't our job to gear someone up, it was theirs. You weren't in a top 10 guild, chances are it was common practice for your guild to gear members up who would later jump ship to a guild like mine.

We didn't care people through. I wish we did, or at least offered options to gear up people as to act as a new well for our own raid roster. However, back then if you had people sitting on the benches - chances were high they'd leave even if you spent the time gearing them up.

How does this have anything to do with vanilla?

This is where we started discussing our opinions. If you can't even follow our conversation, why bother? Sound familiar:

Me: So you hate the new catch-up mechanics?
You: Damn right.

Related question: my new MoP guild only has 8 members, we can't do any raids, how are we supposed to do heroic mode raiding?

Answer: tough luck, you can't. Same answer to your question: if you don't raid BWL, you can't do BWL. It's not rocket science. If you want to gear up your late joining friend, bring him on whatever raid you are actually doing. If you don't want to do that, that is your fault.

Tough luck? Are you seriously trying to compare? Okay, I'll play ball:
You: Recruit 2, TWO, The NUMBER TWO people. It shouldn't take them more than 2 weeks to attain reasonable gear level.
Me: I need 38, Three-Eight, 1900% more people, and months of raiding to even catch up the gear difference.

You can't be this dense, I refuse to believe that.

You are progressing. Everything you did was meaningful in vanilla, because it wasn't made obsolete shortly after. You could take a few months raiding ZG/MC, and then quit for a year. When you came back, you might not be a geared as a BWL raider, but you could easily get back into raiding because there were guilds that wanted a character with intro raid epics, over newbies in blues.

If you quit in MC and tried to join a Naxx guild, GL. You may be ahead of the majority but that is only because they had no means to catch up.

Basically this translates "I don't want people to surpass me even though I will sit on my hands for MONTHS."

Selfish much, definitely.

I'm not sure what your point is. Yes, catching up involves progressing through the content.

"Hey, Chiro, I just got through the last 4-5 months and geared up for AQ40" "Oh dude, we're doing Naxx now, find a guild to farm AQ40 to catch up to us."

High end guilds, weren't day cares. I don't know why you think they were.

There is no contradiction. If you want to progress through vanilla, that is what you do- work through molten core (optionally ZG), then BWL, AQ40, and then Naxx. Everyone had to do this, you generally couldn't skip a raid tier because guilds didn't want to gear out unproven players. As a result, your past time was never wasted. You might spend months in Molten Core, but you had to do this. You might spend months in BWL, but again everyone had to do this.

If you wanted to be strategic about gear out for raids in the least amount of time, you still had to do pretty much every raid.

Your past time was never wasted. If you think other people's accomplishments invalidate your own accomplishments, you got some serious self-image issues. And I'm not trying to be rude about this, but seriously why are you comparing yourself to other's in the first place?

In new WoW, it's a bit different. You can choose to spend months in the first raid, but it all becomes instantly obsolete on the next raid release, and all that time was ultimately just wasted. Nobody else has to spend that time to progress, instead they just do the new LRF.

If you want to be strategic, and gear yourself out the quickest with the least effort, it makes the most sense to NEVER raid until the final tier of LFR, then just buy the bare min ilvl gear to get into LFR and run it. All the rest of the raids might as well not exist as far as you are concerned.

And? Why does this affect me, or my guild, or the countless guilds that progress through each tier? How are their own efforts invalidated or less? They won't care, they don't care, and they shouldn't care.

And as far as hard modes, I think they are terrible and ruin the incentive of raiding. In AQ40, C'thun was damn hard. It was amazing to kill him. In Ulduar, Yogg-saron normal made wasn't nearly as hard. Sure, then there were hard modes without watchers helping, which I did, but it just removed one of the basic aspects of the game. You had hard raid fights that were tough, but then after killing them you had the satisfaction of coming back and enjoying an easier fight next week for easy loot, and seeing the next encounter of the raid. With hard mode a lot of that is removed. Instead of next week being easier, you come back and do the same boss except now he is harder, there is something new to learn, and you don't get to see a new boss because you are still working on killing the same boss in some more difficult way.

Dafuq? HAHA. "I hated that they added the option to make the game progressively hard. I don't like to work, haven't you noticed this yet." Oh, I am.

I like hard bosses, but multiple difficulty levels is stupid. I don't want to learn a fight 3 different times.

Then...ummm...stick to one difficulty? Do you replay each game you own because it has multiple difficulty levels? I'll assume no.

What difference does it make? It's completely irrelevant.

Answer the question and you'll see the relevance. Or you already know the relevance and it's why you'd rather not answer. Give it a try.

That is interesting maybe if you are a hardcore raider raiding each raid as they come out. As a casual who didn't raid at all so far, if I came back today and wanted to do any except for the latest raids, I would be out of luck. They are obsolete, nobody spends time in them, they might as well not exist. In vanilla, this wasn't the case. I could raid at my own pace, molten core didn't just effectively vanish when BWL was released.

Are they? I can give you a list of guilds on Medivh that are still doing ToT. I can find you pugs that are still doing MV/HOF/TOES. The question is would you stand by your words and do the content properly or show your true nature and jump into LFR.

So in MoP, I can LFR the latest, *maybe* the raid prior to latest, and then move on to doing the latest raid in normal/hard mode. The same raid 3 times, and maybe the previous raid on impossible to fail easy mode. That doesn't sound appealing to me. Doing the same raid on 3 different difficulty levels sounds boring as hell, and since it's the only content with relevant item drops it's really the only option if I wanted to be a serious endgame raider.

You can do both, but it seems you prefer easy, not hard. So LFR was designed for you. Yet you still complain because you can't sit on your hands for months and expect to return as top dog.

It's never been about the total time spent. It's been about what you get for that time. You spend a month in Molten Core, you will probably win a couple epics. You spend 3 months in Molten Core & ZG on the side, you are pretty well geared compared to the average. This holds true for the entirety of vanilla WoW. Even at the end of vanilla, just before BC, your molten core epics are still something of a badge of honor, new players can't get them- not without going through molten core just like you did.

On the other hand, you spend a month in MV, maybe you get a little more gear compared to a month in Molten Core. You spend 3 months in MV, you are geared to the teeth for the moment. 6 months later, brand new players are picking up better items than what you have from brainless difficulty LFR, and you have NOTHING to show for the three months you spent farming MV.

Translation: I'm lazy. Blizzard stop invalidating my gear so soon, I don't want to keep up. And there it is, the real reason you hate the catch up mechanism.

That isn't a game mechanics problem, that is a guild problem. Or a non-problem, depending on point of view.

I repeat myself, but your friend couldn't raid at level 1, or 10, or 50. He had to level up to 60 by himself. Why couldn't he join a molten core guild and progress by himself? Why did he need you to hold his hand? Why couldn't he gear up the same way everyone else does? I mean, what if he *did* get geared up, but your guild leaders still didn't want him because he didn't know all the Naxx fights?

Repeat yourself, I've had to do so plenty of times during this conversation. And I'll repeat my initial stance that started this whole train wreck:

Thank god for catch up mechanics.

You want to do it like Vanilla, it's still there for you to do. Blizzard didn't take it away, but I know based on your responses - you wouldn't do it. Not at all.

 

[AViking]

There has to be a compromise. Remember "walks of shame". Those terribly long walks back to your body? How about the "forever" it took to go from say one side of a zone to another? Nobody likes to come home from school or work and spend 30 min to an hour walking somewhere. They fixed this some with more flight paths. There's also summoning stones.

 

[railven]

The other issue is then how companies want to gratify each player as "incentives" to play a game..by handing out mounts, making things easier etc...which removes challenges. Removing challenges is ULTIMATELY bad. This also includes simple things like "having" to walk to a place as opposed to quick travel or flying mounts. While at the first glance "convenient"..it's not "convenience" what makes a game good or people playing. It's the CHALLENGE and adventure. The conveniences are in fact reasons many people leaving the game now.

This is an interesting question because playing FFXIV I'd kill for a goddamn airship. KILL!

After having to traverse the land of Eorzea by foot a few times I've come to appreciate their portals. And who ever said "it's taking away exploration, man!" You are insane if you think running the same path (because the shortest distance between two points is a straight line) is exploration...I got a bridge to sell you.

I explore the map, every nook and cranny once, you think I'm going to do it again? Shoot I don't even waste that time on alts. Give me a flying something, walking through the same zones over and over and over is a waste of time.

There has to be a compromise. Remember "walks of shame". Those terribly long walks back to your body? How about the "forever" it took to go from say one side of a zone to another? Nobody likes to come home from school or work and spend 30 min to an hour walking somewhere. They fixed this some with more flight paths. There's also summoning stones.

This is an interesting topic because MoP has their own version of 'walk of shame' that frankly I hate. ONLY because we raid for 2.5 hours and any time lost to "getting back to your corpse" is time lost (yes yes, don't die, I know haha.)

In MV/TOES/HOF dying put you at designated places that the walk of shame was hilariously unneeded. But, it offered that time to discuss the usually "what happened" questions.

 

[waggy]

This is an interesting question because playing FFXIV I'd kill for a goddamn airship. KILL!

After having to traverse the land of Eorzea by foot a few times I've come to appreciate their portals. And who ever said "it's taking away exploration, man!" You are insane if you think running the same path (because the shortest distance between two points is a straight line) is exploration...I got a bridge to sell you.

I explore the map, every nook and cranny once, you think I'm going to do it again? Shoot I don't even waste that time on alts. Give me a flying something, walking through the same zones over and over and over is a waste of time.

On my main i explore EVERYTHING. i don't care if i die doing it. i will look at everything i can.

so i don't mind the "no flying" until you do something.

on alts? fuck that. i want to fly i don't want to explore again.

 

[Chiropteran]

This is where we started discussing our opinions. If you can't even follow our conversation, why bother? Sound familiar:

Me: So you hate the new catch-up mechanics?
You: Damn right.

Yet it has nothing to do with the catch up options. Do you take a fresh max level character into hard mode raids, while he is still wearing greens? I didn't think so. This is how the game works, you do content, you get rewards, you use those rewards to move on. Even with the stupidly easy LFR raids, you still have to go through the motions and do them. New buddy starts playing, you still have to wait months for him to level and grind basic gear (or buy him some from the AH), and then wait for him to run LFR and collect freebie raid epics.

Tough luck? Are you seriously trying to compare? Okay, I'll play ball:
You: Recruit 2, TWO, The NUMBER TWO people. It shouldn't take them more than 2 weeks to attain reasonable gear level.
Me: I need 38, Three-Eight, 1900% more people, and months of raiding to even catch up the gear difference.

Huh? You said you had a guild of 40, but they abandoned BWL after they started working on Naxx. They *could* do BWL, there is no game mechanic blocking them, it's just a matter of choice that they choose to not do it. In the same way, a group of 8 friends hypothetically could recruit 2 more people to start doing real raids, but if they choose to not do so they can't raid.

I don't see the difference. Your whole "but I need 38 people!" cry rant doesn't even make sense, you already have a full guild, they just don't want to do BWL. It's not more people you need, you just need to be in a guild with people that have the same goals as you. Obviously your guild was very progression oriented, while you wanted to slum it in the older raids with your incredibly slow-leveling buddy. You should have left the guild at that point.

If you quit in MC and tried to join a Naxx guild, GL. You may be ahead of the majority but that is only because they had no means to catch up.

Why on earth would I want to skip over BWL and AQ40? That is tons of fun and interesting content to raid through. There is no reason to skip to Naxx! It's only in modern WoW where skipping to the last raid has become a thing, and I can't stress enough: it's a terrible thing, not a good thing.

Suggesting that I would be upset about not being able to skip to naxx straight out of molten core is absurd.

Basically this translates "I don't want people to surpass me even though I will sit on my hands for MONTHS."

I'm glad you pointed out that you had to "translate" what I said into that, because I obviously didn't say that directly. Next time, skip the translation, I'll speak for myself, I don't need your straw man arguments.

"Hey, Chiro, I just got through the last 4-5 months and geared up for AQ40" "Oh dude, we're doing Naxx now, find a guild to farm AQ40 to catch up to us."

What a tragedy, the poor player actually has to do AQ40 after finishing BWL, instead of skipping directly to Naxx. Allow me to play the world's tiniest violin.

In any case, going from BWL to AQ40 to Naxx certainly is more fun and interesting than going from level 90 dungeons to LFR to LFR to Normal mode to hard mode of the same damn raid.

Your past time was never wasted. If you think other people's accomplishments invalidate your own accomplishments, you got some serious self-image issues. And I'm not trying to be rude about this, but seriously why are you comparing yourself to other's in the first place?

Nice try with the loaded question.

I don't care about others, but I like to see results for my work. If I work for 4 months raiding, and it turns out all the stuff I got is already obsolete, I feel cheated.

And? Why does this affect me, or my guild, or the countless guilds that progress through each tier? How are their own efforts invalidated or less? They won't care, they don't care, and they shouldn't care.

The 54% who quit playing don't care either, ha!

Dafuq? HAHA. "I hated that they added the option to make the game progressively hard. I don't like to work, haven't you noticed this yet." Oh, I am.

I like the progressive difficulty in going from boss to boss and the reward of beating a boss for the first time.

That doesn't exist anymore. Killing the bosses the first time is an absolute utter joke in LFR, so there is zero feeling of accomplishment. Killing them in normal mode, while slightly harder, doesn't offer a real payoff because it feels like you already did it (which you did, in LFR).

In AQ40, killing huhuran and seeing twin emperors for the first time was an amazing feeling. I try to imagine what it would be like if, instead, we killed huhuran and saw twin emperors, after having already killed twin emperors 20 times in LFR, it wouldn't even be close to the same payoff.

Then...ummm...stick to one difficulty? Do you replay each game you own because it has multiple difficulty levels? I'll assume no.

You can't, nice try.

Raid Leader: why is your gear so under level, why don't you have normal mode gear?
Me: Well, I'm just going to do the raid on hard mode, not multiple difficulties, because I find it more fun this way.
Raid Leader has kicked you from the raid.

Answer the question and you'll see the relevance. Or you already know the relevance and it's why you'd rather not answer. Give it a try.

I honestly have no idea. I was having fun playing, but I certainly wasn't recording the weeks spent in each raid. I spent months and months in ZG because I wanted to get the exalted rewards. We started Molten Core late but because we ran through it so fast we continued doing it well into our BWL raiding days. We finished BWL before the release of AQ40, I remember that much. Did AQ40 and killed huhuran, then guild exploded. Joined another guild and did Naxx through to KT.

Are they? I can give you a list of guilds on Medivh that are still doing ToT. I can find you pugs that are still doing MV/HOF/TOES. The question is would you stand by your words and do the content properly or show your true nature and jump into LFR.

A fake personal handicap isn't a substitute for challenging single difficulty raids. If it was, there would only be LFR mode, and if you wanted to make it harder you could raid with less gear on.

Translation: I'm lazy. Blizzard stop invalidating my gear so soon, I don't want to keep up. And there it is, the real reason you hate the catch up mechanism.

Yep, that is it. I don't even care about the "lazy", yes I am lazy compared to hardcore raiders who love to raid 30 hours a week. It's a damn game, it's supposed to be played for fun, not like a job.

I'll repeat my initial stance that started this whole train wreck:

Thank god for catch up mechanics.

Are you even reading? I said "I mean, what if he *did* get geared up, but your guild leaders still didn't want him because he didn't know all the Naxx fights?" And you respond with *that*? Catch-up mechanisms don't teach you the hard mode boss mechanics, sorry. You fail.

You want to do it like Vanilla, it's still there for you to do. Blizzard didn't take it away, but I know based on your responses - you wouldn't do it. Not at all.

First of all you really can't, doing it "like vanilla" requires a player base "like vanilla'. Even if you personally choose to go through raids in order in normal mode or heroic mode only, doesn't mean you will find a raid following the same guidelines. In fact, it is impossible.

So you would be fine with the removal of heroic mode? I mean, you could still make it harder if you wanted, just tell your raid to remove pants before zoning. Don't use enchants. Run the 10 man raid with 8.

Fake difficulty and fake limitations doesn't make up for the flaws of modern WoW, sorry.

 

[railven]

Yet it has nothing to do with the catch up options. Do you take a fresh max level character into hard mode raids, while he is still wearing greens? I didn't think so. This is how the game works, you do content, you get rewards, you use those rewards to move on. Even with the stupidly easy LFR raids, you still have to go through the motions and do them. New buddy starts playing, you still have to wait months for him to level and grind basic gear (or buy him some from the AH), and then wait for him to run LFR and collect freebie raid epics.

Wait...this is my argument, you're the one saying "LFR invalidates old content, no one runs it anymore!" I've already stated this exact argument as a pro for catch-up, the content is still there, you still have to do it, instead it doesn't take you months to go from mint max lvl with greens to previous tier epics.

And new buddy starts, wait months? Dafuq? RAF - levels 1-70 are two days work, 80-90 two days work, 90-95 with 33% exp nerf, 3-4 days work. New level 90 <1 week, caught up ilvl to previous tier another 2-3 days.

This is the exact same route I went with my friend in medical school. Two weeks after he bought the game he was in our Alt raid group. Since the guy is wicked smart, and knows how to stay out of fire, two weeks later he was in the main raid group doing Hard Modes.

Huh? You said you had a guild of 40, but they abandoned BWL after they started working on Naxx. They *could* do BWL, there is no game mechanic blocking them, it's just a matter of choice that they choose to not do it. In the same way, a group of 8 friends hypothetically could recruit 2 more people to start doing real raids, but if they choose to not do so they can't raid.

I belonged to a guild with 100+ members, that doesn't mean I controlled them. If I were a GM (like I am now) you damn right I'd schedule or organize events to help people catch up (shoot, that was one of my main focus in WOTLK and why we went from a 10man to 2x10mans to 25man during our guild's growth.)

Again top tier guilds don't gear people up, it is their expectation for you to gear yourself up (I carry this mentality still, you want to join my raid roster - you earn it, I will help you but not carry you through current content.)

I don't see the difference. Your whole "but I need 38 people!" cry rant doesn't even make sense, you already have a full guild, they just don't want to do BWL. It's not more people you need, you just need to be in a guild with people that have the same goals as you. Obviously your guild was very progression oriented, while you wanted to slum it in the older raids with your incredibly slow-leveling buddy. You should have left the guild at that point.

Because you refuse to see it. Because it turns your whole point upside down. If you think running a 40man is the equivalent of a 10man you are out of your mind.

And slow leveling buddy? And you know this, how?

Why on earth would I want to skip over BWL and AQ40? That is tons of fun and interesting content to raid through. There is no reason to skip to Naxx! It's only in modern WoW where skipping to the last raid has become a thing, and I can't stress enough: it's a terrible thing, not a good thing.

Skip it? I never said skip it. You can't even follow my argument. Nerf MC, make it a 20man, Nerf BWL make it a 20man, all it involved was retweaking some mechanics, then you'd see a bunch of people progressing through MC/BWL and getting into AQ20 and then a skip stone away from AQ40.

These are viable catch-up mechanisms that wouldn't require you to skip content. This was the system they put in place with WOTLK and that expansion saw the biggest surge in raiding. Gee, I wonder why.

Suggesting that I would be upset about not being able to skip to naxx straight out of molten core is absurd.

Yet, if given the option - you'd take it.

I'm glad you pointed out that you had to "translate" what I said into that, because I obviously didn't say that directly. Next time, skip the translation, I'll speak for myself, I don't need your straw man arguments.

You make enough of your own

What a tragedy, the poor player actually has to do AQ40 after finishing BWL, instead of skipping directly to Naxx. Allow me to play the world's tiniest violin.

And yet you still continue to miss my point. I never said skip, not once, you keep inferring it because that is what you wish I was saying so you'd make valid points. Try again.

In any case, going from BWL to AQ40 to Naxx certainly is more fun and interesting than going from level 90 dungeons to LFR to LFR to Normal mode to hard mode of the same damn raid.

It most definitely is more fun, and that is how I continue to test raiders who want to join my roster. You want a spot - earn it.

But I can only do this because it is so much easier to get 8 people from my roster of 50+ to take alts through MV/HOF/TOES/TOT. I'm not very confident I'd have the same success trying to get 38 people.

Nice try with the loaded question.

I don't care about others, but I like to see results for my work. If I work for 4 months raiding, and it turns out all the stuff I got is already obsolete, I feel cheated.

So that time spent with your raiding buddies, pointless. Having the higher ilvl for months, pointless.

Face it, you just want to feel special, even if for a month.

The 54% who quit playing don't care either, ha!

54% quit? You have reading comprehension issues. What's new.

I like the progressive difficulty in going from boss to boss and the reward of beating a boss for the first time.

That doesn't exist anymore. Killing the bosses the first time is an absolute utter joke in LFR, so there is zero feeling of accomplishment. Killing them in normal mode, while slightly harder, doesn't offer a real payoff because it feels like you already did it (which you did, in LFR).

Don't run LFR? problem solved. Any more complaints?

In AQ40, killing huhuran and seeing twin emperors for the first time was an amazing feeling. I try to imagine what it would be like if, instead, we killed huhuran and saw twin emperors, after having already killed twin emperors 20 times in LFR, it wouldn't even be close to the same payoff.

Que? Amigo, LFR is optional - you make it mandatory. You rob yourself of that "my first time" experience. Don't like it, don't do it. Find a guild that is still hardcore (they do exist, want a referral?) Stop acting like you can't do something, you just aren't trying and instead take the easiest route then whine you took it. EDIT: Now that I think about it, the LFR wing for each dungeon opened up a week after. So unless your guild was terrible, you had a solid whole week to experience that "my first kill." Since WoW is so easy now, by your own admission, you must have killed all the bosses outside of LFR first

You can't, nice try.

Raid Leader: why is your gear so under level, why don't you have normal mode gear?
Me: Well, I'm just going to do the raid on hard mode, not multiple difficulties, because I find it more fun this way.
Raid Leader has kicked you from the raid.

Haha, this is as stupid as your 10vs40 analogy.

I honestly have no idea. I was having fun playing, but I certainly wasn't recording the weeks spent in each raid. I spent months and months in ZG because I wanted to get the exalted rewards. We started Molten Core late but because we ran through it so fast we continued doing it well into our BWL raiding days. We finished BWL before the release of AQ40, I remember that much. Did AQ40 and killed huhuran, then guild exploded. Joined another guild and did Naxx through to KT.

Months and months in one raid dungeon? Really?

So yes. Doing a different raid every month and progressing gradually is more satisfying to me than doing one raid over and over and over again at varying difficulty levels.

Now you know why I asked you that question. Seems it was fine in Vanilla but in MoP, where there is a faster release schedule and thus more raids, you have an issue.

A fake personal handicap isn't a substitute for challenging single difficulty raids. If it was, there would only be LFR mode, and if you wanted to make it harder you could raid with less gear on.

/facepalm It's like you aren't even reading your own words.

Yep, that is it. I don't even care about the "lazy", yes I am lazy compared to hardcore raiders who love to raid 30 hours a week. It's a damn game, it's supposed to be played for fun, not like a job.

And this is probably I find this most amusing. You're basically a casual complaining about people being more casual than you. It's like "dude, really?"

And yes, you're 100% right it is a damn game, it is suppose to be fun, yet you want to rain on other people's fun because it invalidates your minute efforts.

Are you even reading? I said "I mean, what if he *did* get geared up, but your guild leaders still didn't want him because he didn't know all the Naxx fights?" And you respond with *that*? Catch-up mechanisms don't teach you the hard mode boss mechanics, sorry. You fail.

Oh come on, how do you come up with these analogies? Don't know the fights?
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Learning a fight ~minutes, attaining the gear for the fight ~months. In your head the two are equal. Roger.

First of all you really can't, doing it "like vanilla" requires a player base "like vanilla'. Even if you personally choose to go through raids in order in normal mode or heroic mode only, doesn't mean you will find a raid following the same guidelines. In fact, it is impossible.

Yep, it's impossible to find 9 other link minded people who'd rather earn the rewards. So very impossible.

So you would be fine with the removal of heroic mode? I mean, you could still make it harder if you wanted, just tell your raid to remove pants before zoning. Don't use enchants. Run the 10 man raid with 8.

I've ran 10mans with 8 people for fun. It is fun, and challenging. We've also ran old content with that content gear. It was fun, and challenging. You know when raids are only 2 days a week you have to create events for your guild to have fun.

Fake difficulty and fake limitations doesn't make up for the flaws of modern WoW, sorry.

The flaws of modern WoW from everything you've said (which you've restated in this post) is you aren't a snow-flake. Nope, them flaws won't go away. Wanna be a snow-flake again, join Paragon and be a world first. The rest is just playing "catch-up"

 

[Aikouka]

You know... I'm pretty sure that you two are never going to agree on this. So, you might as well spare yourself all the time it takes to write up those responses.

 

[railven]

You know... I'm pretty sure that you two are never going to agree on this. So, you might as well spare yourself all the time it takes to write up those responses.

Bored, and I already knew that. When he started questioning my recollection and being wrong himself, I already knew this was going nowhere.

Just call me stubborn

But with me saying this, I'll bow out. He can have the last word.

 

[blackened23]

One thing I agree with chip on is the feeling of accomplishment with killing bosses has basically been gone for some time now. I remember killing super hard bosses such as Gothik, Saph, KT (Naxx 40), Pre-nerf M'uru, KJ, Heroic lich king, hell even Sinestra. Killing KT in Naxx 40 was quite an accomplishment (as were all the others) and the yells on vent after that happened were epic. That feeling is gone basically - because the you see the bosses so many times in the three variants of raids (LFR, normal, heroic) and the LFR version will of course kill any sense of surprise or accomplishment from killing a tough boss IMO. The game just isn't the same in this respect. Because you've seen the watered down idiot version of the boss the suspense is gone, when you kill it on any version you're just like .. "Meh.". The accomplishments and incentives are so far different now than they were in the past.

I really think MMOs need to examine their incentive based rewards; WoW has gone too far in the direction of status quo purples for doing nothing IMHO. I can appreciate those who like convenience but WoW has gone too far in that direction and has basically ditched a ton of MMO/RPG fundamentals along the way.

 

[railven]

One thing I agree with chip on is the feeling of accomplishment with killing bosses has basically been gone for some time now. I remember killing super hard bosses such as Gothik, Saph, KT (Naxx 40), Pre-nerf M'uru, KJ, Heroic lich king, hell even Sinestra. Killing KT in Naxx 40 was quite an accomplishment (as were all the others) and the yells on vent after that happened were epic. That feeling is gone basically - because the you see the bosses so many times in the three variants of raids (LFR, normal, heroic) and the LFR version will of course kill any sense of surprise or accomplishment from killing a tough boss IMO. The game just isn't the same in this respect. Because you've seen the watered down idiot version of the boss the suspense is gone, when you kill it on any version you're just like .. "Meh.". The accomplishments and incentives are so far different now than they were in the past.

I really think MMOs need to examine their incentive based rewards; WoW has gone too far in the direction of status quo purples for doing nothing IMHO. I can appreciate those who like convenience but WoW has gone too far in that direction and has basically ditched a ton of MMO/RPG fundamentals along the way.

Mental note: stop leaving ToT_LFR4 after Lei Shen, seems I've been missing Raden this whole time. D'oh!

EDIT: nah, I can't leave it like this:

LFR - mechanics play no purpose.
Normal - mechanics play a big difference.
Heroic - new mechanics are included that change the whole fight.

WTF are you talking about LFR makes normal/heroic kills less rewarding? This doesn't even make sense - at all. I thought you stopped playing during WOTLK?

 

[Chiropteran]

Aikouka makes a good point, so this will probably be it, barring some amazing new insight from railven,

And new buddy starts, wait months? Dafuq? RAF - levels 1-70 are two days work, 80-90 two days work, 90-95 with 33% exp nerf, 3-4 days work. New level 90 <1 week, caught up ilvl to previous tier another 2-3 days.

This is the exact same route I went with my friend in medical school. Two weeks after he bought the game he was in our Alt raid group. Since the guy is wicked smart, and knows how to stay out of fire, two weeks later he was in the main raid group doing Hard Modes.

Again top tier guilds don't gear people up, it is their expectation for you to gear yourself up (I carry this mentality still, you want to join my raid roster - you earn it, I will help you but not carry you through current content.)

LOL. Read your two statements side by side, please. On the one hand you talk about how you basically power-leveled your buddy to max level and immediately started raiding with him and handing him free loot, and then on the other hand you say that you gotta gear yourself up, and you won't just carry people through content. Which is it? Did you carry your buddy to max level and give him a free raid spot, or did you make him gear himself up and earn a spot?

You are trying to argue both sides of the argument and I find it hilarious how you can write two completely contradictory statements side by side without even noticing.

Because you refuse to see it. Because it turns your whole point upside down. If you think running a 40man is the equivalent of a 10man you are out of your mind.

10 man raid is only easy to put together in comparison to a 40 man raid. If 10 man was the norm, you would have people talking about 6 man raids being easier to do and why doesn't blizzard support this smaller raid size it makes the game so much easier blah blah blah. The number is basically irrelevant. Fewer is easier to manage, but the "problems" you are talking about have nothing to do with the size of the raid and the issues I have with LFR and modern wow raiding in general has nothing to do with the size of the raids.

And slow leveling buddy? And you know this, how?

You have said over and over that he didn't start raiding until you were in Naxx. That is _incredibly_ slow leveling. I know this, because I am looking at what you write rationally, instead of spouting off personal attacks when I don't like the point being made.

Skip it? I never said skip it. You can't even follow my argument. Nerf MC, make it a 20man, Nerf BWL make it a 20man, all it involved was retweaking some mechanics, then you'd see a bunch of people progressing through MC/BWL and getting into AQ20 and then a skip stone away from AQ40.

It's really irrelevant. I am not stuck on 40 man raid size, I like smaller groups, but it's really no different joining a BWL 40 man raiding guild and joining a BWL 10 man raiding guild. There is no inherent difference.

This was the system they put in place with WOTLK and that expansion saw the biggest surge in raiding. Gee, I wonder why.

It's because when raiding is made super easy, it's the easiest and best way to get gear. Players will follow the path of least resistance. It doesn't mean they suddenly started to love raiding, it just means raiding got to be so easy that you might as well hop in a raid and collect some epics, why not?

And yet you still continue to miss my point

I don't think you have a point. You can't seem to spell it out yourself, how am I supposed to guess what it is?

But I can only do this because it is so much easier to get 8 people from my roster of 50+ to take alts through MV/HOF/TOES/TOT. I'm not very confident I'd have the same success trying to get 38 people.

Yes, it's easier to get a group of 10 than 40, this is true. I've never really cared about the numbers, that isn't the problem I have with modern WoW. BC was fine, and karazhan was a 10 man raid. It didn't start going downhill until multiple difficulty modes were added in wrath.

54% quit? You have reading comprehension issues. What's new.

Probably more than 54%, since the remaining players are probably buying items from the cash shop and otherwise proping up the revenue numbers.

Don't run LFR? problem solved. Any more complaints?

Que? Amigo, LFR is optional - you make it mandatory.

The entire game is about small incremental boosts to complete a challenge. Over on elitist jerks forums, they used to argue for pages about whether one talent equates to an extra half percent of damage in one situational fight. Given that, anything that gives your character a net upgrade, gear or otherwise, is not truly optional. Even if you personally don't care, your raid will. They will use mods like gearscore, ask you why you aren't doing LFR, it's just a few hours a week why are you making this harder than it needs to be.

The players make it mandatory, in the same way that your classic example naxx raid didn't want to give your slow leveling buddy a free ride.

Haha, this is as stupid as your 10vs40 analogy.

When you don't have a rational argument, switch to personal attacks! I see how you think.

Months and months in one raid dungeon? Really?

Absolutely. It made good gold, I got rep working towards exalted, and a chance at the rare stuff like the raptor or tiger mount. It was also a fun and relaxing way to play, doing a raid we had done many times and never really had any trouble with, and it was fun to see how new recruits did in it.

Now you know why I asked you that question. Seems it was fine in Vanilla but in MoP, where there is a faster release schedule and thus more raids, you have an issue.

Gee, I wonder why? I was okay with running Molten Core for a couple hours a week for 3 months, but I don't want to run 3 different raids at 3 different difficulty levels for 2-3 times as many hours per week while also grinding rep up in the same time frame.

Why would I be willing to play X hours a week, but not 3X? I wonder...

 

[smackababy]

It's really irrelevant. I am not stuck on 40 man raid size, I like smaller groups, but it's really no different joining a BWL 40 man raiding guild and joining a BWL 10 man raiding guild. There is no inherent difference.

This is where I stopped reading. Did you do 40 man raids? Hell, have you done 25 man raids? It is incredibly hard to find 24 other people who aren't morons 90% of the time to raid with. It was damn near impossible to find 39 others.

It is incredibly easy, compared to 24 and 39, to find 9 other people who can raid effectively. I am seriously doubting you ever raided past 10 man. Hell, pugging Kara when you had 3 people in BT gear was a challenge because most of the people you picked up were awful.

 

[Soccerman06]

that really depended on your luck with token drops and how your DKP system worked. for us there was no real priority besides main specs first. Tanks and healers and DPS all bid against each other, highest bid won, we used silent bid, 1 and done, worked fine

Thats the difference between our guilds, our tanks and healers got gear first, no question asked. We used dkp but that only was after the important parts were taken care of.

 

[smackababy]

Thats the difference between our guilds, our tanks and healers got gear first, no question asked. We used dkp but that only was after the important parts were taken care of.

My guild had a loot council that handled DKP bids. So, if a tank did need that item more than a dps, they got it. And it wasn't like you knew what they bid anyway.

 

[Chiropteran]

. Hell, pugging Kara when you had 3 people in BT gear was a challenge because most of the people you picked up were awful.

Huh, Karazhan was 10 man raid. I thought it was incredibly easy to find 9 good pugs? You are proving yourself wrong.

This is where I stopped reading. Did you do 40 man raids? Hell, have you done 25 man raids? It is incredibly hard to find 24 other people who aren't morons 90% of the time to raid with. It was damn near impossible to find 39 others.

It is incredibly easy, compared to 24 and 39, to find 9 other people who can raid effectively. I am seriously doubting you ever raided past 10 man

Going down in size seems easy, briefly, because you have a big pool for the larger raid once.

You start out, you have like 50 raiding members to do the 40 man raids reliably.

You go into BC, do a 25 man raid, not only is it super easy to fill your raid, but you are taking the 25 best players out of 50 total, so it's a really strong raid too.

You go from 25 down to 10, same story- super easy to fill the raid because you have more than twice as many raiders as you need, and if you take the best players available it's going to be the A-team.

But, that is only because you are going from one raid size to another. You try to start raiding from scratch, such as your karazhan pug example, you find a 10 man raid isn't really inherently easier than a 40 man. It's fewer people to gather, but it 2 baddies in a 10 man raid can spoil it just like 8 baddies in a 40 man raid.

And obviously the advantage doesn't last forever. Going from 40 man raids to 25 man raids means 15 players are sitting out. They eventually quit or find a new guild, and then you only have 25 players for 25 slots, and you are back to the usual issues when raiders don't all show up on time.

All in all, I felt like once our core knew molten core and even BWL, we could take a few idiot applicants and we would do fine despite them. In karazhan, it was a different story. More than 2-3 baddies and certain fights became very hard. I had nightmares about idiots moving during flame wreaths in the shade of aran fight, for example.

Personally I prefer smaller raids. I prefer 5 man content really. I'd like to see challenging solo play. But as far as LFR being too easy and/or vanilla WoW being too hard, it wasn't a symptom of raid size. Easy raids come in all sizes, and challenging raids do as well.

 

[smackababy]

Huh, Karazhan was 10 man raid. I thought it was incredibly easy to find 9 good pugs? You are proving yourself wrong.

I never said it was easy to find 9 good pugs, it said it was much much easier than finding 39 good pugs. And you didn't even need good pugs for Kara when I'd pug it with a friend (who didn't raid! yay for no catch up mechanics!) Finding 8 people who weren't impossibly retarded on one of the largest Horde servers in WoW was difficult.

Going down in size seems easy, briefly, because you have a big pool for the larger raid once.

You start out, you have like 50 raiding members to do the 40 man raids reliably.

You go into BC, do a 25 man raid, not only is it super easy to fill your raid, but you are taking the 25 best players out of 50 total, so it's a really strong raid too.

You go from 25 down to 10, same story- super easy to fill the raid because you have more than twice as many raiders as you need, and if you take the best players available it's going to be the A-team.

But, that is only because you are going from one raid size to another. You try to start raiding from scratch, such as your karazhan pug example, you find a 10 man raid isn't really inherently easier than a 40 man. It's fewer people to gather, but it 2 baddies in a 10 man raid can spoil it just like 8 baddies in a 40 man raid.

Starting from scratch, is is far easier to find 10 mediocre players than it is to find 25 mediocre players and more so than to find 40.

 

[desura]

Does anyone else miss the LFG? It was kind of fun just broadcasting out to everyone that you all needed to get together to go tackle a dungeon together. Then all of you gathered up, hopped from town to town until the last guy got there, and went in.

Now, most dungeons just have this autojoin thing going on where you can be randomly grinding and then just go there automatically. You don't even have to advertise, but just click you're available.

It's pretty awful, IMO.

I mean, if you really really want to streamline it, don't have the monsters do any damage. Just give everyone an "i win" button at the start of the dungeon, then shower them with random loot, like a slot machine.

 

[smackababy]

Does anyone else miss the LFG? It was kind of fun just broadcasting out to everyone that you all needed to get together to go tackle a dungeon together. Then all of you gathered up, hopped from town to town until the last guy got there, and went in.

Now, most dungeons just have this autojoin thing going on where you can be randomly grinding and then just go there automatically. You don't even have to advertise, but just click you're available.

It's pretty awful, IMO.

I mean, if you really really want to streamline it, don't have the monsters do any damage. Just give everyone an "i win" button at the start of the dungeon, then shower them with random loot, like a slot machine.

Yeah, I miss those groups spamming "3 LFG - Need tank and heals" for hours on end... :eyeroll:

 

[Veliko]

Does anyone else miss the LFG? It was kind of fun just broadcasting out to everyone that you all needed to get together to go tackle a dungeon together. Then all of you gathered up, hopped from town to town until the last guy got there, and went in.

Now, most dungeons just have this autojoin thing going on where you can be randomly grinding and then just go there automatically. You don't even have to advertise, but just click you're available.

It's pretty awful, IMO.

I mean, if you really really want to streamline it, don't have the monsters do any damage. Just give everyone an "i win" button at the start of the dungeon, then shower them with random loot, like a slot machine.

Does anyone miss the days when you had grow all your own food? It was kind of fun digging in the frozen earth with your bare hands, waiting six months for the food to grow and then cutting out all the mouldy bits so you can put it in a stodgy stew.

Now, most towns just have this autoproduction thing going where you can be randomly walking along and some shop appears automatically.

It's pretty awful, IMO.

 

[Markbnj]

Does anyone miss the days when you had grow all your own food? It was kind of fun digging in the frozen earth with your bare hands, waiting six months for the food to grow and then cutting out all the mouldy bits so you can put it in a stodgy stew.

Now, most towns just have this autoproduction thing going where you can be randomly walking along and some shop appears automatically.

It's pretty awful, IMO.

No, but I miss congregating at the EC tunnel in EQ to sell stuff and find groups.

 

[smackababy]

No, but I miss congregating at the EC tunnel in EQ to sell stuff and find groups.

But, don't you miss punch cards and waiting days for your program to compile?


I actually do miss congregating at Brit Bank making fun of all the trammies. =(

 

[Phanuel]

No, but I miss congregating at the EC tunnel in EQ to sell stuff and find groups.

Everquest was also a relatively niche game compared to WoW and only had the sub numbers it did, barely over 500k because it was the only thing in town for awhile.

I have no desire to ever go back to that, nor do any of my friends who were active hardcore raiders in EQ.

Most of us have grown up, have responsibilities, lives, etc, and we can't be keeping weird hours, getting phoned at 3:27am that a boss has spawned and we need to get online now to kill it.

Nor do most of us want to spend 35 minutes looking for a dungeon group just to cap out some currency because we've long since past the point at which the loot contained in the dungeon is at all relevant to our characters.

TLDR ITT: Rose colored glasses everywhere.

 

[AViking]

Yeah, I miss those groups spamming "3 LFG - Need tank and heals" for hours on end... :eyeroll:

Although I saw this happen it was really only an issue for dps who were unknown or bad. I had almost no problem finding a group once I had established myself on the server. Some days were slower than others but the communities back then at least allowed some level of recognition.

 

[smackababy]

Although I saw this happen it was really only an issue for dps who were unknown or bad. I had almost no problem finding a group once I had established myself on the server. Some days were slower than others but the communities back then at least allowed some level of recognition.

You must have been on a backwater server with 15 people. I couldn't name anyone outside of my guildmates (except Skilljones) on Illidan. And if I could remember any names, it sure wasn't people I met in random groups.