World of Whorecraft: Battle for Asseroth

[Metro]

Well you guys play this game for 10 years, of course it's worn out by now. I'm still not sure if I'll go for it, especially because I'd hop in with two other friends if they really decide to, but I guarantee you that no matter how shit things are in Azeroth these days, it's still infinitely better than the shit I was playing before - Guild Wars 2, which backstabbed every single buyer to complete annihilation with zero expansion-like new content and only a bunch of completely retarded minigames and "collect 99 dolls around the world map" stuff. WoW probably has its good portion of crappy stuff too, but it's not exclusively that like in GW2.

I actually activated a 10 day trial a few days ago for shits and giggles. Three days in I'm already bored. The leveling queues are mostly full of morons. The game is shadow of its former self. Unless you know a group of people playing there is zero point in wasting your time. If you're on the US/North American servers send me a PM... but I think you're a dirty Euro like most Codexians.

 

[Xenich]

It isn't that it is "worn out", rather that the game has been dumbed down to extremes. While it was not an overly complex game in the first place, anything it did have was stripped away. The carrots you chase now are designed for paraplegics that are blind, deaf, and retarded (ie lowest common denominator play). As someone pointed out before, the game is a social media meeting spot where the bored and inept meet to waste time, nothing more.

It depends on what you actually want to do in the game. There is nothing dumbed down about current raids on normal or heroic difficulty.

I myself started playing WoW very late, that is in September 2013, but the game still provided a lot of entertainment for me. Actually, for me personally it was probably a good thing to start playing in Mists of Pandaria only, because I was only ever interested in WoW due to Warcraft lore and now I can solo most of the good past endgame content, which I wouldn't have been able to see back in the days because I'm not much of a cooperative MMO player. So now I can do all the old content observing all the plot details that tend to get skipped during regular MMO play, participate in challenging current raids and even waste my time in casual shit like pet battles if I choose so. The game is very good for lone wolf players in its current state.

So you are saying it has greatly changed since the release of Cata? I left shortly after that and the result is that the raids weren't even remotely challenging (regardless of level). I was watching terrible pickups being able to defeat content blindly. If the game is anything now like it was when I left, then your ideal of gaming principals and mine are at complete odds.

 

[Revenant]

I don't really know the difficulty of past raids, but the current most difficult raid in the game (Siege of Orgrimmar) isn't that easy to beat for a pick-up even on the lowest - Looking for Raid - difficulty level. Unless the group has some clue about the boss mechanics, the group wipes quite assuredly. Hell, if the pick-up happens to be extraordinarily n00bish, the group wipes on trash mobs. And this isn't even normal difficulty. I don't know how that compares to past raids, but SoO isn't as trivial as you make current raids sound to be.

 

[Zeriel]

It's super easy. What you're speaking of is the reason "accessibility" at the cost of other virtues is always a bad fundamental pillar on which to base your game. No matter how trivial you make content, most people will lower themselves to the occasion, and be even more terrible than before.

 

[Xor]

What I miss most about classic WoW was the sense of community. Sure, it's great not having to wait 2 hours for a battleground, but all the cross-realm bullshit completely destroyed the unique identity each server had. I played on Lightning's Blade back in vanilla, and I knew several players outside my guild just from doing 5 man runs, people I would recognize just sitting around in Ironforge. We'd have conversations, get together for world PVP or a quick dungeon, or just wave to each other as we passed. I had a reputation as a good healer and had no problem finding groups, even getting invited to raids as a substitute by people I didn't know. And I knew the names of all the prominent alliance and horde guilds, and like everyone else I watched with interest as they progressed through AQ40 and Naxx, competing with other guilds on other servers. When a horde guild (I think Hatred? It's been a long time...) killed Kel'Thuzad, it brought prestige to the entire server, even though they were only the 19th or so American guild to do so. It was a pretty big deal at the time.

Between the LFG tool, WotLK's badge loot, and the heroic raid difficulty, that sense of community started to die. The LFR tool killed it forever. The super-hard raid content that only a fraction of guilds could even attempt reasonably gave players something to strive for, made them want to work harder just so they could have a chance to see that elusive content. That's all gone now. Heroic difficulty might be just as hard as the classic hard bosses, but since the content is so easy to see, the only reason to even do the higher difficulty raids is for higher ilvl gear. And that's never what raiding was about, not really.

I suspect many of the old guard - players like myself - have left the game at this point. All of my old friends quit long ago. In dumbing down the game, Blizzard removed what I loved about WoW. They seem to have attracted a new audience, though. Time will tell if the next expansion will bring people back, or just continue to drive them away.

 

[Xenich]

I don't really know the difficulty of past raids, but the current most difficult raid in the game (Siege of Orgrimmar) isn't that easy to beat for a pick-up even on the lowest - Looking for Raid - difficulty level. Unless the group has some clue about the boss mechanics, the group wipes quite assuredly. Hell, if the pick-up happens to be extraordinarily n00bish, the group wipes on trash mobs. And this isn't even normal difficulty. I don't know how that compares to past raids, but SoO isn't as trivial as you make current raids sound to be.

Pickups didn't succeed in old WoW (outside of the old 10 man runs of vanilla). They existed, but usually a pickup raid resulted in players meeting each week and attempting the same boss over and over until they eventually beat it weeks later. This usually resulted in them forming a guild or an alliance of smaller guilds, but the point is the attendance wasn't random pickups each time. Even knowing the boss mechanics and having people who have fought the fight before wasn't a guarantee to beat it (ask people about how many times they attempted BWL bosses when it was released). Hell, it took many months for the average guild to beat MC/BWL (that isn't even getting into the later content that was even more difficult).

The point is, the game is just an entertainment zone for people to congregate in. There is no challenge in the game, as if there was... those people wouldn't be playing, they would be on the forums bitching about how it is too hard and "elitist".

 

[Angthoron]

Yep, it's pretty much as Xor says. Community is dead, there's absolutely no need to create ties and socialize unless you want to do normal/hard raids and team PvP, and it's just going further and further down the drain as more and more quick grouping tools are introduced.

At the same time, the overall quality of the player base plummets as well, because little effort is actually needed. It's quite shockingly apparent in LFR runs, when, this late into the expansion/update content people still have no idea what to do, how to play, how to gear, how to behave in a group with 24 other people, and other really goddamned basic things a player in Vanilla knew by the time they completed the last part of Scarlet Monastery. How they fail so hard with all the overabundance of guides, tools, addons and in-game info that we never dreamt of in vanilla, I will never know.

Sure, there were lots of tards back then too, but back then you'd actually feel rewarded by creating a nice bubble of cool people to hang out/do stuff with, now, you more or less end up doing most of the stuff with tards because it's the quickest way of doing things.

 

[J1M]

That's the reason most of the excitement for the next expansion is centered around the Mythic raiding mode.

 

[Sceptic]

As an outside viewer I've always suspected that the whole "WOW is declining" thing was pure nostalgia, as much as I dislike the use of "oh it's just nostalgia" as an argument. A lot of the posts here really does seem to be this though. I have a couple of friends who do heroic raids; they showed me the difference between LFR and heroic. It's like finishing MI2 on easy mode and then claiming that there's no point in playing Mega Monkey. When you talk about the good old days the only important thing that ever mattered was how the guild would progress and how them bringing down a certain boss would bring prestive to the entire server even if they did it late, but when talking about current raids this is not what raiding is about and all that matters is "seeing the content", not the actual difficulty of the encounters. It doesn't make any sense. Why would so many people being able to defeat easymode make any difference when it comes to the actual achievement of completing heroic mode, when so few people can do the latter? Because "the gear looks the same"? (this argument has come up a few pages ago, and it sounds utterly retarded. But then maybe that's why I don't play MMOs). Those same friends I mentioned were there all the way back when Molten Core was released btw, and one of them was raiding that when it was current content. It's pretty interesting to hear him talk about how much he misses those days, the people he raided with, the community, etc, but the second the conversation actually shifts to mechanics he goes "oh god do NOT remind me" and launches into long rants explanations about, let's face it, what sounds like a completely broken game. Which makes the accusations of it being just a "social meeting spot" hilarious, when it's pretty clear from you guys' own posts that you only played the game for the social aspect anyway and happily ignored all the broken mechanics.

Incidentally, I always see an age correlation with what people say they liked about the game. I have a whole bunch of friends who played WOW back then, and just like in this thread keep bitching about the dumbing down and how now it's just a social spot and bladibla... all the while praising Barrens chat and how it was the most awesome thing and so on and so forth. Not incidentally, the 2 old-guard raider friends hated Barrens chat and are so glad that's gone. Not incidentally, the 2 old-guards are the only ones in that group who were older than 12-15 when WOW came out. Unsurprisingly, when one friend from each side gets into an argument about WOW then vs WOW now, the youngsters end up losing the argument as soon as one of the 2 old-guards goes "bullshit" about superiority of old-mechanics and starts ticking off long lists of everything that was wrong with the game. It's fascinating to watch.

I suspect ultimately this is what it boils down to. You were young. WoW was new. There really was nothing quite like it. It was a complete clusterfuck of a game, but because you were young and it was new and unique you ignored just how badly designed it was and enjoyed it. Then the game gets refined, becomes better, but you're also getting older, you're getting more jaded, and most importantly, you are bored from playing the same game over and over, every day, for fucking ten years. You also develop "back in my days" syndrome and start bitching about aspects of the game that are the very thing that made you want to play it back then in the first place. You remember the good groups you were in and forget all the horrible, horrible groups. You bitch at the retards in trade chat and glorify Barrens chat. You used to run with another 39 people, half of which were complete utter retards, but since you didn't know that you think the content was harder and more challenging. And so on and so forth.

 

[Angthoron]

Sceptic

As a self-professed outsider, you're missing out a lot of nuances here, like the community aspect, which indeed comes up in every second post - as opposed to mechanics, which are actually not discussed very much at all, or at least in any worthwhile detail.

Yes, WoW's vanilla mode lacked a shitton of stuff that it has now, in terms of encounter design, skills and various submechanics; however, lack of LFG, LFR and various other search tools meant that the players had to interact with each others. You had to get yourself attractive to others in order to come to L60 runs that wouldn't suck massive cock unless you wanted to be that last-moment filler; failing that, you had to actually have friends that'd take you along. Point is, you do not have this aspect now. It's not an MMO, really. It's a hub for a set of minigames based on the same mechanics without really having the "massive multiplayer" bit. The last time I made random friends with people was basically in WotLK - since then, the only new acquaintances I had came through my raid group.

And yes, the quality of the player base has plummeted, the only spike is at raid group level. The "casual" level is becoming more and more incompetent. I see this in LFR, and I see this in applications to our raid group. People need to put in less effort into everything. Tell me, is it rose-tinted glasses to compare a completion of an L60 dungeon in ~1h in level-appropriate gear, to a 15-minute romp in similar conditions now, in an all-random group LFG? I really don't think it is. When Pandaria came out, there were like 2-3 challenging moments in the whole "endgame" 5-man dungeons worth mentioning, most of them usually having to do with trash mobs. With all the tools and polish of combat mechanics at this point, this is basically like dropping bombs on an ant hill. Naturally, people get used to that, and when/if they get to Normal raiding, they get hit quite hard with the realization that indeed their massive 40K DPS wasn't all THAT much, after all.

Mechanically, though, it's quite obvious that the game has evolved. It was by no means "broken" though, just more, hm, inconvenient in many ways. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way to "convenient", the game got horribly castrated on the community/non-committed difficulty, though.

Edity-edit: Also, if your friends are in HC raiding guilds, they don't really even have to see any of that deterioration, since HCs get the most skilled players absorbed into them. The only place to see the amazing skillzzzz of the general population are in the LFR, if they still might be doing those for whatever reason.

 

[Ninjerk]

Sceptic Mechanically, I'd say the later iterations of WoW are superior, but the focus really did shift. In vanilla WoW, there were more creative ways to use mechanics than in any of the later expansions (e.g. Drakkisath kiting) because Blizzard actively hunted down and nerfed mechanics that required a large gap in skill. The "superiority of old mechanics" idea is really just ignorance of functional statistics and probability.

 

[Metro]

I'm actually from Brazil, and our servers are not located here but are FOR brazilian players... and that's because Blizz is obviously aware that brazilians are the ultimate internet cancer and tried to separate them in their own special world.

Spellcaster

Yeah they're on the same servers. There are a couple of dedicated 'Brazilian' servers but it's just to get those who speak the same language on to a couple of the same realms. Not that it matters because people barely speak to one another. Let me know what realm you pick.

 

[TedNugent]

Those of you complaining about how the game is too simplistic now have all the heroic world first kills of all the major raid tiers, right?

Right?

In fact, do any of you have full heroic clears of a single tier of content when it was current? Let me repeat that, do any of you have post-Wrath heroic clears of any tier of raid content when it was current?

What about Gold medals on challenge mode clears in MoP dungeons? Anybody? Anybody got any achieves that they can link?

How about a heroic Sinestra kill?

 

[Wilian]

Those of you complaining about how the game is too simplistic now have all the heroic world first kills of all the major raid tiers, right?

Indeed I used to raid at top 100 level for beginning of Cataclysm and then for a moment of Pandaria. The issues with the game are not related to high end raiding nor difficulty in those parts but pretty much everything else in the game around it.

 

[Metro]

Heroic raiding is the ONLY thing that has stayed challenging. I did raiding for a couple of years back in Vanilla and TBC... after awhile it got tedious and the older I got the more I realized I didn't have time for it. What I enjoyed more about the game were the five man instances and those have been nerfed into oblivion. So much so they focus on 'scenarios' now. Overall, though, the game was at its zenith during TBC. The only major mistake they made then was piggybacking the raid tiers on top of each other leaving little time for people to enjoy Tier 4 and 5. Most guilds barely farmed Kael and Vashj because they pushed out BT and Hyjal so soon. Then there was a massive year+ gap in between Tier 6 and Sunwell.

 

[TedNugent]

The 5 mans haven't been nerfed, did you play the challenge mode dungeons? They were introduced in MoP, they were 5 man dungeons where your item level gets scaled down, they were timed, and they required crowd control, spacing, and you had about an inch to maneuver in order to not fuck up.

And nobody did them because they didn't give you raid-tier loot. I did them with a few pick up groups during MoP, struggled to grab a bronze medal on a couple of them. They were legitimately difficult.

You don't any problems with the raid content, and that says damn near everything. The scenarios aren't the focus of the game, they're shit that you do on the side. Obvious you didn't play MoP or even keep up with the news.

Read MMO-Champ. http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/

 

[Wilian]

The 5 mans haven't been nerfed, did you play the challenge mode dungeons? They were introduced in MoP, they were 5 man dungeons where your item level gets scaled down, they were timed, and they required crowd control, spacing, and you had about an inch to maneuver in order to not fuck up.

I knew you would bring this up. To me, challenge modes are non-content. They are glorified speed-run that provide no meaningful character progression or connection to the game and the difficulty of that content is based on how efficiently you can rush on rather than any particular strategizing, which is why highly gimpy group setups are preferred.

Just like scenarios, good idea was botched on design table into something absolutely irrelevant unless you happen to enjoy glorified time-trials.

 

[Metro]

The 5 mans haven't been nerfed, did you play the challenge mode dungeons? They were introduced in MoP, they were 5 man dungeons where your item level gets scaled down, they were timed, and they required crowd control, spacing, and you had about an inch to maneuver in order to not fuck up.

And nobody did them because they didn't give you raid-tier loot. I did them with a few pick up groups during MoP, struggled to grab a bronze medal on a couple of them. They were legitimately difficult.

You don't any problems with the raid content, and that says damn near everything. The scenarios aren't the focus of the game, they're shit that you do on the side. Obvious you didn't play MoP or even keep up with the news.

Jesus, just shut the fuck up with your hamfisted condescension. You have to be braindead not to realize the direction WoW has been moving in the last five or six years. Yes they added that timed challenge... after two expansions, as mentioned, it's arguably 'non-content.' And if you happen to have fingers you won't need many to count on the declining number of five man dungeons they've put out with each expansion.

 

[Xor]

Those of you complaining about how the game is too simplistic now have all the heroic world first kills of all the major raid tiers, right?

Right?

In fact, do any of you have full heroic clears of a single tier of content when it was current? Let me repeat that, do any of you have post-Wrath heroic clears of any tier of raid content when it was current?

What about Gold medals on challenge mode clears in MoP dungeons? Anybody? Anybody got any achieves that they can link?

How about a heroic Sinestra kill?

What the fuck does this even have to do with anything? Yes, obviously Blizzard has gotten better at tuning a raid to be hard than they were back in vanilla and TBC. Your point still doesn't address the issue being discussed, namely that the entire game has become incredibly casual and so there is no need to even interact with other players unless you're planning on doing heroic raiding or team PVP. And even then you only need to play with a handful of people.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

Hey guys. As an old ass GW1 (and now disappointed GW2) guy instead of a WoW guy, I have now finally decided to give The Massive One a go. I know I'm kinda TEN YEARS late to the party but I think I'll actually start playing WoW for the first time now. I'd like to hear some opinions on the game presently and the amount of stuff to do and so on, just please don't even try to impress me with your mighty old school knowledge on how the game was awesome on its second week of existence because that won't be the content I'll play anyway.

Also, can you access all the content from the old expansions? Can I still fight Illidan, Arthas and the rest of the old bosses? Are all the dungeons still there?

I'd suggest finding for yourself a decent private server.

I've sworn I'd never touch that boring turd again, but after I played Hearthstone with Gul'dan, I felt the need for that awesome Warlock fix. Right now I'm playing Wrath of the Lich King on a 5x exp/gold server and it's spot on. 5x is this sweet number when the game is worth this time, even if as a guilty pleasure. No fucking way a retardo no-life fest such as vanilla leveling experience is going to cut it for any sane human being.

 

[TedNugent]

I knew you would bring this up. To me, challenge modes are non-content. They are glorified speed-run that provide no meaningful character progression or connection to the game and the difficulty of that content is based on how efficiently you can rush on rather than any particular strategizing, which is why highly gimpy group setups are preferred.

Just like scenarios, good idea was botched on design table into something absolutely irrelevant unless you happen to enjoy glorified time-trials.

A) they provide no meaningful character progression (e.g. they provide me no ++ item level lewtz and purplz). If I can't get gear then I won't do it.

B) it's a time trial mode which means you have to rush The fact that it adds in additional fight mechanics and tweaks the numbers to turn gear checks into real fight mechanics (coupled with the gear scaling) is of no consequence to me. By the way, you do have challenge mode clears for each MoP dungeon to support your assessment that they are "glorified speed runs" and "non-content," right?

C) did you play Brawler's Guild? Solo content that scales in difficulty and it has mechanics that require strategizing along with very good execution





Also, what about world bosses and rares? You didn't mention any of that, new introduction in MoP, or should I say re-introduction

What the fuck does this even have to do with anything? Yes, obviously Blizzard has gotten better at tuning a raid to be hard than they were back in vanilla and TBC. Your point still doesn't address the issue being discussed, namely that the entire game has become incredibly casual and so there is no need to even interact with other players unless you're planning on doing heroic raiding or team PVP. And even then you only need to play with a handful of people.

Yeah unless you're doing challenge modes or ranked BGs or world bosses herp derp
Or heroic raiding or For the Horde/For the Alliance runs
The mere existence of a raid finder button precludes all possibility of player interaction, I'm sorry, did you even play MoP/Cata or are you just reading from the internet hate script?

Because I fucking hate WoW but for completely different reasons based on my actual experience playing Cata and MoP, which were shit xpacs by the way but not for what you're saying at all.

 

[Metro]

Think we found another Blizz-plant.

 

[TedNugent]

Fucktard.

Think we found another Blizz-plant.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/whats-next-for-wow.87237/page-16#post-3084165

Progression raiding really doesn't exist because it's borderline impossible to get these imbeciles to do anything. It really isn't even remotely worth the time investment in dealing with all the dillweeds. I got the farming done relatively quickly, e.g. within a few months to weeks halfway thru the content patch, and everyone kept dragging us back from seeing any real raid content, so I got sick of it and quit. Raiding is full of dramz and half the people that signed up don't even show up for the continuation.

I have no idea why people think the raiding content needs to be more difficult, people can already barely handle what's on their plate at the moment so most people never get to even see what endgame looks like. What really needs to change is they just need to cut out all of the farming/weekly lockouts so you can actually be done with the game and pocket the 3-5 months of subscription money you would have blown trying to herd a bunch of lazy idiots through normal mode progression.

Worst part about playing WoW was dealing with the fucktards on my realm who just wanted to pet battle and wait until dungeon reset. Took me months on end to get any serious progression done while the rest of these idiots are still leveling alts. How many fucking alts do you need? It's the exact same experience every single time, the only thing that changes is your action bar, and I've watched people piss away months with no serious raid progression, no serious questzone achievements/loremaster, but they will spend half a fucking year grinding just to get the 10,000 critter kills achievements.

It's maddening. The worst thing about WoW is dealing with the people, without a doubt.

If the game scaled all the way down to 1 player, it would be infinitely improved.

By the way, when is Warcraft IV coming out?

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/whats-next-for-wow.87237/page-22#post-3198603

Yeah, a lot of people subsist solely on doing daily quests (literally doing the same quest every single day upon reset for a token [roughly 1/100th of a gear piece] and a pittance of gold) and pet battles. Actually, when I last left most of the people in my guild were obsessing about their farms. You can farm crafting materials.

The other thing people do is they level up alts. Leveling an alt is about the saddest waste of time that I can imagine, and people make as many as 10 or 15 alts.

The other thing that was big in MOP was Timeless Isle. Everyone loves Timeless Isle. You go there and run around the map chasing after "rarespawns" (which have set spawn timers and locations that are then farmed for hours/weeks on end) and farming.

That's basically what the game is popularly now, farming. Farming little trinkets and mats for stupid shit.

I have no idea, absolutely no idea what keeps people going. I put up with it for short bursts (5-8 months) in order to try to blitzkrieg through to progression raiding normal modes, and every time, every single time, I got stonewalled by people that all they wanted to do was pet farm and level alts.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...3-reaper-of-idiots.89985/page-10#post-3198608

Not buying this shit in spite of the myriad of legitimate improvements to the loot/level progression system/itemization.

Reason being, no point. The game is devoid of a soul or a purpose.

 

[Metro]

Fucktard.

Yeah, you are. But admitting it is the first step. All the shit you named as 'positives' for current WoW have been in the game since vanilla. OMG city raids?!??!! PEOPLE NEVER DID THAT BEFORE!

 

[Wilian]

A) they provide no meaningful character progression (e.g. they provide me no ++ item level lewtz and purplz). If I can't get gear then I won't do it.

Yes, I expect some sort of progression for the effort I put in MMORPG. TBC dealt it perfectly. First you had normal dungeons (which ironically were harder than Pandaria/WotLK heroics from getgo, fuck saw people wiping in TBC normals more through WotLK than in all WotLK dungeons on heroic mode put together when leveling alts) and reputation rewards, along with quest blues. Once aquiring enough gear you set into heroic modes which required sensible group composition or very good players to compensate lack of certain things, namely CC, if you played unconventional class like Ret Paladin as I did. Playing through them succesfully required the usage of pretty much entirety of your character's toolkit and it was fun. Obviously this changed when you got into raiding and eventually overgeared them but it was just one sensible gog in whole progression route.

Challenge modes in comparison are a sidestep without purpose other than pointless bragging rights for leading the leaderboards.

B) it's a time trial mode which means you have to rush The fact that it adds in additional fight mechanics and tweaks the numbers to turn gear checks into real fight mechanics (coupled with the gear scaling) is of no consequence to me. By the way, you do have challenge mode clears for each MoP dungeon to support your assessment that they are "glorified speed runs" and "non-content," right?

We had those things before too, they were called gauntlets and were genuinely meant to differentiate parts of dungeon from each others, creating a sense of urgency and making you adjust pace. It also felt very organic in most cases. Challenge mode time trials in comparison are extremely artificial and do not provide the challenge at all once you figure out the perfect group composition to just push through. And why would you go with anything else but perfect since there's no any other point than trying to be fastest?

C) did you play Brawler's Guild? Solo content that scales in difficulty and it has mechanics that require strategizing along with very good execution

Indeed I did and Brawler's Guild was very good addition to the game. I was even surprised it was slightly expanded in following patches and I hope they continue adding content like this. However, one feature doesn't make up for sweeping flaws in entire design of the game when it's shaking from ground-up.

Also, what about world bosses and rares? You didn't mention any of that, new introduction in MoP, or should I say re-introduction

Rares were nice addition even though they were still typically 1 gimmick fights and predictable. Goes to same category as Brawler's Guild. As for outdoor bosses, I've not seen any that wouldn't simply be zerged down.