I must admit, it's pretty cool looking/sounding.

So is everyone going to be a deathknight then? Other than of course healers.

I gotta say I'm pretty happy with this news, although I'd agree there are enough tanks as it is in the game already. Level 80, awesome news really. This will greater seperate the casual players from the hardcore. Those who spend more time doing something should get more out of it, and have higher standing. This lessens the artificial barrier preventing people from becoming more powerful with time investment. I hope the Death Knight is a really long hugeass grind so that only 0.01 percent of all players will have a shot at it, it will remain unique that way and a real accomplish for those who attain it.

As for a lot of people not finishing up current content, I think it's 100 percent awesomeness that we're not back in the Molten Core era waiting for a year for a new raid zone while 90 percent of all guilds have mopped it up. There's nothing preventing people from going back and clearing it for fun, there will simply be less reward for it as times change. That gives more incentive for guilds to man up and finish these zones before they become obsolete: which they should, imo in order to release fresh new content and more power to the players via gear/levels/talents. We shouldn't have to keep players at their same power level just so we can wait for more guilds to catch up on completing content. No one is forcing people to level, or do new instances, or make a Death Knight. You have a choice if you don't like it. For those of us who like to continually progress our characters at a pace faster than a turtle(not raid-wise, but forms of progression like leveling and gearing up), there's also an option there too. It's a lot like EQ with POTime not being cleared by a lot of guilds until after a few expansions. I think it's awesome to go back and clear old zones, even if the gear is obsolete. To be honest though I think the gear should be comparable to a point where you have to spend several months in the new areas at level 80 before you can out-do the best gear from the previous expansion's top raid zones.

It's already been noted the difficulty to obtain Death Knight class will be on par to epic warlock mount pre-TBC. So there goes your hopes.

I also averaged 2 levels per day 60-70, on a PvP server. I think they'll pace 70-80 to match. Speed levelers like Joanna probably averaged 3 levels per day, maybe even 4 given how quickly exp rolls in once you hit Netherstorm.

Well, considering virtually every Warlock had the epic mount, it really wasn't THAT hard to get it...

OMFG new hairstyles !

If it doesn't have a new race, it's not a real expansion. This is just a content bump with a hero class that even they don't seem to have figured out yet. Also this will likely be moving target with them chanting "It'll be done when it's ready!"

So in EQ'speak would this be a Velious expansion with upper raid content?

Kunark: new race (lizard), lvl 50 to 60, epic's added, 26 zones added, Veeshan's peak, Karnors, Sebilis
Velious: Temple of Veeshan, Giants and Dragon's o'my!, 19 zones added, PoG (broken), progression raiding
Luclin: new race (cat), to the moon !, 28 zones added, Ssraeshza Temple, Sanctus Seru, Ahkeva
PoP: lvl 60 to 65, kill the gods!, 23 zones added, flags and keys and tiers of trudging
Ykesha: new race froglok, 5 zones added, digital download cheap add on
LDoN: another stupid digital download, who cares
+ 8 more expansions and we all stopped playing...

I liked Velious. Northrend is no Velious. If TBC was Kunark, they are apparently following the EQ roadmap.

Maybe they will add more over the next 1.5 yrs leading to release.

Bah you forgot the big change in Luclin, Beastlords!~



I'm a little confused by this if you're not being sarcastic =p
New races have always been mostly aesthetic, while actual classes introduce a shitload of content into the game by themselves(not just the class abilities themselves, but the dynamic they have with a group and pvp - what they bring to the table).

Level was never an indication of who was who in this game. It will continue to hold true here also.

The only defining factor that seperates a hardcore raiding guild from pro casuals in this game is time. Not how much time you invest, but what you do with said time.

So why shouldn't we just cancel now and restart when the expansion comes out? I raid SSC/TK but once TBC hit all my Naxx gear really didn't mean too much except it helped give me a small edge when leveling. I think im just going to cancel and not renew, 70-80 Already? No thanks.

Come back to EQ - We're hitting 80 soon too.

I think it always seperates them a little bit because efficient and skilled players will almost always be the first at the top. People who spend 48 hours to grind out a single level will still make it there. I just think it's possible that fewer casual players may opt to go to 80. Most people will eventually reach it. There are already countless people crying about it on the forums(BUT I JUST GOT 70 WTF LOL), I think that's an indication that we're headed in the right direction. If they released another expansion a year down the road after that for level 90, I think we'd really start to see a gap growing.

I'm a believer that anyone who spends a good deal of time on something is going to get better at it, on average. There are always going to be a select few retards that spend countless hours and still suck, but I think your average person is still going to get better. When I see during the first few weeks of release Joe of level 80, I probably won't be too hesitant to group with him. A couple months down the road, I'll be a bit more weary about his noobness.

I think you are lost. The official boards are thataway ------------------------>>>>>

I guess I should expect that out of someone who is stuck farming Karazhan.

Posts like these make me laugh. If you're playing for the gear you've already lost, because it is a race you could never win in the first place regardless of game. This is not a new concept. Gear becomes obsolete with new hotness.

Not to mention the panic people are in for some reason thinking this expansion will be out before the year ends.



I'd be real careful about dropping the progression bombs. It is a lot harder in this game to find 25 people of quality to value progression than it is to advertise how you have X zone on farm and attract the gnats with your neon glowing bug zapper recruitment who only value the free ride gravy train loot machine. Your rant about gear already clues me in to which you value most and is the leading factor as to why a lot of quality players have to settle nowadays.

MedijinKazama has insulted me with "my guild is better than your guild lolz" (paraphrased, of course) in the same thread where he cried about loot and felt the need to inform us that he was going to quit playing the very video game where his "better" guild resides. I don't know whether to laugh.. or laugh.

Send me your address and I'll mail you some tampons for your aching pussy.

Nah, he doesn't need tampons

He needs douche to get the sand out of his vagina.

_________________

World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Sorry I am not part of this lanys leet crew but anyways, my main gripe is I am a warrior and there will be more resistance fights and I am just tired of having to farm lots of mats for fights like Solarian/Hydross/Huhu/Vael etc. I am sure Solan understands, he's a warrior who had to go farm some of the same shit and if he is doing Hydross(Sorry Solan, haven't been keeping checks on where you're at) he knows it sucks having to farm all that Fire/Water or Shadow/Life and it'll be more of the same come 70-80. I just don't think I can give that much time to farming mats as raiding takes up a lot of my free time now. When they added Marks of Illidari that was a huge blessing, I could stop logging onto my druid and farming herbs and just loot those for Flasks of Fort.

Edit- Actually if they did the next resistance fight like they did in Naxx(Bosses dropped Frost Resistance and the Smith mats are cake to farm) it wouldn't be bad at all.

So now you are complaining about farming motes of Life? THAT is the problem! It's so hard to do 10 daily quests to make 120g+ a day to pay for flasks, I suppose. Blizzard obviously hates the elite SSC raiders such as yourself and is only out to screw them over with the release of this expansion... next year.... Quit now, I say! Make a stand against the establishment! Post on internet message boards and rally the troops! Motes of Life! They take up too much free time!

If you'd rather be doing something else other than play the game, then do something else. Surely, your life has something else in it to take up the time you normally spend playing this video game, right? Down with Motes! Down with Motes! Down with Motes! Chant with me!!!

Nice 180. Clown.

Yeah, the post was about motes of life.

The original post was you crying about all of your gear being worthless... next year... when the expansion hits. The second post was you trying to show that you were somehow better than me because you raid *gasp* SSC (is it hard? it must be hard and take an awesomely uber person such as yourself to do so!)! The third post was an attempt to save face and appeal to Solanthious by claiming that you simply didn't want to farm anymore. Each post was pretty weak and may as well have been about Motes of Life.

Nobody forces you to play this video game. If you don't like it, don't play. Again, I am sure you have something else in your life that you could do besides play a video game that is so unfair and time-consuming, right? Right? Oops...

<officialboardtalk>
amirite?
</officialboardtalk>

Better?

I'll accept that as an admission of defeat and/or general clownery.

I'll teach you the handshake later pretty.

Oh, and Oryx is just kinda on cruise control because my server is so full of fucking fail. Really just waiting till Conan.

_________________
"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

That sucks, last I saw you guys rolled Alliance on Llane but I didn't see my dentist(Solkan) when I checked on that server.

Neesha smells like hotdog water.

I GOT YO BACK MEDIJIN!

Hehe, funny isn't it?

You rolled a warrior. It goes with the territory.

Your guild should be helping you with resistance gear. If they're not, get a new guild. But you're probably not the MT, are you?

So a retuned Naxxramas as the entry level 25 man raid instance in Northrend? Yes please.

_________________
Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Have everyone in the guild kick down one of each primal needed for the resist gear, goes pretty fast that way. That’s what we did anyway.

I'm looking forward to this expansion, and it looks like getting to 80 will take one or two weeks tops depending on play time. I was really thinking about leveling a warrior but I'll probably go the Death Knight route now. Hmm, maybe I'll go with getting a shaman or druid to 70 prior to release, they both seem like well balanced classes and fun.

Givin and I talked about this the other night, and while there is alot of great stuff planned, it's been promised too early. We're looking at a First Quarter release of WOTLK, Feb at the earliest. That's at least 6 months off. We knew an expansion was coming for next year, but giving out this much information, knowing that they are going to follow the same format as TBC, people start to make plans not to be around, and have the mentality of the "well fuck, why play now, better shit for me in 6 months?"

On top of that, I go back to the numbers, 1% of the total population is finishing this content. With the utter shit that every server is in, they need to make this game appeal to the lowest common denominator, as much as I hate to admit it. Lady Vashj is a fight that requires an unreal amount of communication, Kael'Thas even more so, Archimonde and Illidian and so on are fights that even "good" guilds will not clear.

When you have 9.5 million subscribers, and 1% (us population based) are finishing content, people are going to be discontent. The information coming from Tigole out of the R&D panel stating they want Naxx to be retuned to MC level, 25 man instance in Northrend is a step in the right direction, but what about SSC, The Eye, Hyjal and BT and this as yet un named zone? Due to the utter amount of suck people on every server, they need to retune every zone for the Casual.

Like it or not, Casual is the new Hardcore.

_________________
"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

Like Givin already said, if you or your guild is playing for the loot than you've already lost. If anything, this sort of news encourages myself and my guild to push harder to ensure that we've 'beaten' the expansion prior to the release of the new one.


Let's take a quick trip back in time:

So which is it? Too hard or too easy?

P.S. - Contrary to the predictions of the crystal ball, the price of mana thistle was halved, not doubled.

_________________
Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

You're right, this game revolves around casuals but I don't have any heartache about it. You can get top notch gear through crafting and pvp (honor and arena) that is truly on par with all the raid gear short of t6. The t6 set bonuses and stats simply own everything else for many classes, as it should be. It's sad and funny looking at some recruit profiles when I know how easy it is to get gear and they’re applying with a near full set of greens. But we are on a very low population server so that might be a factor. Getting 25+ like minded and dedicated people together to move from 10 man Kara and into the 25 man content seems to be the biggest stumbling block many guilds have. But what cracks me up even more, is that the 25 man raid limit is down from the previous 40.

Well, I think it's both. The raids aren't overly hard but getting the 24 other people to run them with you is. At least that's the problem we are having atm. A couple of healers, tanks or even mages need an off night and it could mean an off night for the whole guild. But I guess it’s always sort of been that way.

Why is it harder to get 25? there should be many left overs that want to raid from the reduction of 40.

Because downsizing the raid cap from 40 to 25 had the effect of causing a crapload of guilds to spring up. These guilds iinitially had high numbers that waned over time for whatever reason. Many of these guilds also did not want to have an inflated roster so everyone can get in a raid without sitting out for 2-3 weeks. So now it seems that every guild clearing Karazhan and wanting to move on is recruiting, and there just aren't enough quality people to fill those spots. Look at any server board and you'll see the whole page pretty much filled up with recruiting threads.

That's what I see.

People just need to learn to partner with guilds to do 25-mans. Works great for us. We have a core of about 20 people, with around 12-15 online on a typical night, and we partner with another guild. You're right, there are dozens of guilds on any given server in Kara or cleared Kara, and stuck. To me, recruiting is not the way to go. Partnering is.

I have always been an advocate of a difficult game, because I like many others in my guild, and many that have moved on, are a different breed of gamer. However, with each passing month, it gets harder and harder to get good people and it goes back to the introduction of 25 man content. You're right Big, you would figure that getting 25 people is easier then 40, however, that's not the case. The biggest issue right off the bat is the number of people itself. 30 people can easily carry 10, we did it many times through many fights, there's room for error.

With the introduction of 25 man content, that equation was changed. 15 people can not carry 10. The margin of error is slim to none. When then happened there was a chain reaction of massive failure. Guilds fractured 3 and 4 times, each "offspring" if you will, differing in ability and skill, but with each containing only a handful of really top notch players, which is evident I'm sure on every server, but I'll illustrate mine.

Oryx has killed HK and Gruul, working on Mag. 11 other guilds are at the same spot as Oryx, while 20 others are farther.

I'm sure every server can say the same exact thing. This prooves that the quality of player is the problem hindering every single server, every single guild. People are spread far too thin, too many with barely enough people like Jateki just pointed out, making it so that if a few healers are gone, no one's doing anything that night.

This as a perfect example illustrating the problem. Givin recently got geared on his horde rogue for Kara, pretty much every slot, both daggers out of the zone. The other night on Lady Vashj, between 8 attempts, he pulled top DPS once and 2nd the other times. He destroyed the DPS of other melee, including a rogue with both Vashj and Solarians dagger with 3 / 5 tier 5. He said this to me in vent last night and I quote "it's no use being the best because no one else wants to bring that type of game to the table" and he's dead right. Either they don't want to, or they can't do it.

This is why I say that raids have to be tuned down to the point of the lowest common denominator, because the Skilled player is very few and far between, either logged solidly in a guild working on The Eye breaking into Hyjal / BT, or stuck in a guild of 15 trying to carry 10, due to loyalty or what have you.

Joxur has a great point, the last 2 out of 3 guild's I've taken over has bit me in the ass.

_________________
"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

I told you you guys should have rerolled on Uther!

I genuinely don't mean offense by this statement but it sounds like it's a guild problem, not a game problem.

You're almost never going to get around the syndrome of the 'rich getting richer', that is the top guilds constantly attracting the best players while the middle of the road guilds constantly struggle with incompetents as they try to make a name for themselves.

Givin, do you have a WWS of that Vashj fight, curious as to how the damage was allocated for the fight.

_________________
Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Umm, this is a good idea and there's nothing at all wrong with the idea itself. But this is the deal for my guild atm. We 'normally' have enough to raid 25 man content and being that our raid nights are only four nights a week (T,W,TH, SUN) I wouldn't call ourselves a hard core guild despite the fact that we are currently the farthest progressed alliance guild on our server. On a typical raid night we have 25 in the raid and maybe between 2 to 5 out on standby. So teaming with another guild that is at the 25 man content level would lead to around 20 people out of the raid on standby and that just isn't going to work.

Coming out of Kara, your idea is great and makes sense and could lead to a merger down the road. But if you're already passed Kara, it's easier to rely on filling spots with recruits or even some random friend from another guild. We've taken random people with us into Gruuls before, and with the attunements off SSC/TK we could do the same there. But I think normal progression for a guild would be to clear Kara with one group, then with two groups, and then move on to 25 man Gruul and the world bosses, followed by SSC/TK.

Then cool, welcome to SSC/TK where a single mistake can wipe the raid. It's not exactly the best place to bring recruits or random people that may or may not be able to 'single right click' in mags, not pull aggro during a hydros transition, avoid a big ass orb on lootreaver, or even simply kill their inner demon on leo. None of the above is hard, and none of the above takes much skill, but that's mainly because you run stuff with the same people day after day. Everyone knows their role and the encounter.

Again, it makes good sense for two guilds to team up coming out of Kara.

After having played this game seriously only since TBC, and nothing prior, I've never been on a 40 man. But I'm a pretty smart guy, and I strongly believe that Blizzard's biggest mistake was in putting 25-mans AFTER Kara on the progression chain.

They should have put in a 25-man dungeon that requires the same gear levels as Kara immediately. This would have let guilds practice 25-man content and bulk up to the size needed to do them.

The biggest problem with Kara isn't the specific classes needed. It's a problem, for sure, but the biggest is that you have to constantly farm Kara to gear up people for raids after that. It leads to a core of about 10 people that have to do Kara over and over and over to gear up new members, alts, etc. Burnout occurs, guilds shrink or fracture and by the time 25-mans are doable, you've scaled DOWN your guild size because of Kara.

I hope they fix this with Naxxramas in Northrend. If they truly make that the entry-level raid,I think it will help later down the road.

_________________
Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

I thought this particular point needed further mention because of just how true it is. I played a rogue and basically topped the DPS charts in every single fight that it is possible (obviously a rogue isn't gonna top Shazz dps for instance). The other rogues with similar gear were 15-20% lower than me on the DPS charts. If you looked at the actual parsing you could even see where they got lazy. Low number of backstabs v. ordinary melee, perhaps they actually used eviscerate other than when using AR.. whatever. The point here is that when it was brought up to them they didn't really care. They were fine with their 80% effort and didn't think there was any point in fully focusing. The rationale? "Well we are still killing bosses right?". Come AQ40 and Huhuran we hit a roadblock and basically could no longer progress. Our DPS was not high enough to overcome the fight. We had maybe 10-15 people who really put in their all and the rest kind of just floated along with us.

The problem was we had no other options. It wasn't like EQ. We couldn't just kick someone and have a line of people waiting to take their spot and give their all. Recruiting in general has always been a horribly mixed bag in WoW for me.

I don't really think casual v. hardcore is "truly" the issue. Thinking back I realize that in other games there wasn't the 2-3 hours of farming per raid that occur in WoW. Repair bills pre-TBC were horrible. People with limited time would actually have to sit out raid nights or whatever so they would have time to farm in their spare time. In a game with no AA's, no sort of "advancement" beyond gear at level 70, and really nothing to do beyond raiding and pvp at that point.. it stands to reason that you should feasibly be able to log in for raids and raids alone. I had countless members of my EQ guild who did just the same thing. Some of those were some of the very best members too. Building timesinks into games on purpose is just stupid imo.

I just don't see the need to farm consumables or whatever as an issue anymore. Before, when guilds were all flasking to the hilt, I could see the potential problem, but now making money is easy as shit with daily quests, so that timesink isn't even a problem anymore. Plus, now you can get the flasks from the marks of illidari as well as potions just from doing Tempest Keep instances. The problem seems to be dedication.

Oh ok. Again I haven't raided or done high end TBC. Thanks neesha .

Once you get your Epic flying mount, you can easily do 10 daily quests in about 1-2 hours which pay 12+ gold each (one pays 18g). If you don't have your Epic flying mount, you can still do like 6 daily quests, from Skettis and Blade's Edge Mountains (with more on the way), that pay 12g each (and one gives 3 potions as well).

Yeah, I normally make around 200g a day from the daily quests (counting the grays and greens) and I've had two epic patterns and a blue dagger drop for me this last month killing the flayers in the mines. I can easily support my raid costs for repairs, wizard oil, food and potions for a week or two with a just a couple hours of farming. But I’m trying to help my son out with his character so I’m still broke.

Rogues/Huntards/WannabeDPSWarriors get the added benefit of getting Ravager meat for Ravager Dogs while killing those guys in the mine also.

Yeah I am the MT, and I know it comes with the territory which is why another level cap is making me QQ.

For such a hardcore guild, you don't sound all that efficient forcing one person to farm mats which benefit everyone.

_________________
Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Yikes, this WoW is not a good WoW. I liked the 40-man WoW better. 20+ guilds doing the high-end zones? That drains the "skilled" players as you say. But then again, it opens it up for more and more people to learn the zones and become "skilled".

Yep, I'm a cook and love the stat food. I keep my son supplied the dogs and then sell some on the AH.

As a Holy Pally, farming isn't fun.

We are having almost the exact same issue in our guild. Gnomer has traditionally been the last server to do anything (we didn't open the AQ gates until AFTER TBC), my guild was the first one on the server to kill Vael and that was done the week before the introduction of the TBC talent trees and a few weeks before server transfers. We had three Kara teams, two had it on a sub five hour clear, the third could clear it. We have Gruul on farm. We are stuck at people not being able to click right on Mag, avoiding the orbs on Loot reaver, or not pulling aggro on Hyd. People are getting upset and not showing up for SSC/TK runs now and we have too many people showing up for Gruul. We have a lot of people that have no clue what 40-man raids were like.

As a part of the guild council we are implementing "raider" ranks for the guild. We have a list of six questions that we ask each member if they want to be a "raider". Really they are silly, stupid stuff that ALL raiders will do, but with the WoW player not being as intense or raid focused we had to spell them out (Will you make at least two raids a week? Will you sign up when you can and can not make the riad {we use guild calendar}? Will you be on your main, fully repaired and supplied at raid invite time? Will you do everything possible to improive your performance/output and to assist others in your class/role to do the same? Will you have all the addons, macros, and other mods listed as required by the guild and have them up to date?) To be set as a raider, they have to answer in the affirmative to all of the questions. Raiders will get priority in raid invites. We are hoping that we can find out who wants to be the best and where the hangers on are. We know that we are sadly needing Shadow Priests (we have one level 70 non-alt SP in the guild). We are doing OK on healers overall. Last week on Gruul I was able to sub out for a Melee DPS during Gruul and I am consistantly one of the top two healers for every raid. (Even while sitting out of Gruul I was #4 for the whole raid).

Well I can't speak for Khameir but I'm still going with too goddamned easy. The only reason raids are difficult is the same reason as throughout time in any given MMORPG: You need 24 other people who have a clue. Most of the encounters I've seen are surprisingly easy and require a minimal amount of coordination. Same ole, same ole. The only real challenge in the game is PVP, where players essentially make the content.

That being said, I think there's a fine line between "challenge" and sheer overtuning. A mob that uses a zonewide irresistable AOE of 30k for example would not be a challenge, it would be stupidity. Hopefully you see the distinction.

In the interest of promoting further discussion, can you provide some examples of the latest content you've experienced?

Personally I've really enjoyed the encounters in SSC and found them to be some of the more creative ones to date. Are they incredibly difficult, not at all, but each is its own unique challenge.

Vashj is hard though, fight reminds me of The Rathe Council somewhat given all the independent teams you have working on the various NPCs.

_________________
Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Won't mention Kara because it's not really a raid but I think it was overly easy for a 10-man.

Encounters I've done, my guild isn't really that far atm though: Gruul, (Magtheridon down but I haven't done it yet), Al'ar, Void Reaver, Doomwalker, Lord Kazzak. It's a small sampling of the 25-man/world boss stuff, but a sampling nonetheless. Having seen videos of kills from SSC, TK, etc I'm not seeing anything that looks particularly challenging.