I'll give you that. It's not within the frame of my argument at all, and I agree completely.

Achievements are, by and large, useless. Mounts are pretty. Titles are flair. That's about all they serve.

They're a way to flex epeen in a way that AA's never were. Sure, people bragged about how many they had, but dude... at least they had 100% tangible effects on your character.

Achievements are just a way of keeping score.

_________________

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

EZ mode and hard mode is not about OMG ACHEEVEMENTZ! They are a way for Blizz to basically release two (or more) raids by using the same content. IMO it is not cleared unless it is cleared on "hard mode". I believe that Hard Mode is the way that the encounters were designed but Blizz know that there are too many pussified casuals that will never be able to clear Hard Mode so they dumbed it down by creating more and more different EZ modes so captain casual will be able to at least see the "End Game" and feel like they did something.

They had too many people NOT see Naxx or Sunwell before the respective expansions so they wanted to ensure that didn't happen again.

Please explain, in detail, exactly how they should go about making content more enduring.

_________________
Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

The thing is, though, that in the majority of cases, they're right. Achievements are frikking genius. They've extended the playability of the game for hordes of people, they don't require Blizzard to balance anything, and they probably took like 20 minutes and a bong to come up with and implement. Return on time invested there is off the charts. Heh

I do want to say, though, on a personal note, fuck Immortal. One achievement away from my black drake when they patched. I wouldn't have even used it since I have flight form, but I still wanted it!

Finally got in to raid last night. FL is stupid ez if everyone is in ilvl 200+ gear.
Razor is just a flying Archimonde without the punt.
Screech boss is annoying as hell

Aaaaannnndddd.....it's gone again.

Having enough of it ready to go at the beginning of a MAJOR expansion would have been a great start.

Is this some kind of inside joke?

_________________
Avelle <Risen>
80 Mage
Ner'zhul Server (Fuck Illidan)
Avelle 75 PLD/DRG/DRK/BRD
Midgardsormr - Active again
Elidrin 75 Paladin
Midgardsormr - Retired
Elidrin 65 Ranger
Lanys T'Vyl - Retired

South Park I believe, hilarious episode.

_________________
Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Days behind I guess but ya...

http://www.risen-guild.com/avelle/wotlk/yogg1.jpg

_________________
Avelle <Risen>
80 Mage
Ner'zhul Server (Fuck Illidan)
Avelle 75 PLD/DRG/DRK/BRD
Midgardsormr - Active again
Elidrin 75 Paladin
Midgardsormr - Retired
Elidrin 65 Ranger
Lanys T'Vyl - Retired

So I read on one of the news sites that Algalon can only be attempted for 1 hour per week.

Crazy. So, instead of the pendulum swinging to the ridiculous 10+ hour fights in FFXI, we have a game that swings to the exact opposite and only allows you to attempt for 1 hour per week. What a great way to ensure that content lasts.

Maybe we could have a boss in 3.2 that actually requires you to drive to Blizzard headquarters and play in extreme hot and cold environments.. or, I know.. while getting stung by bees. That's a great way to ensure content that should have been in-game at release lasts more than 2 weeks.

http://www.worldofraids.com/wow-blue-tr ... empts.html

My gimpy guild got to Yogg-Saron, don't think they downed him before raid reset on tuesday though.

I've been skipping raids to play EQ though, so I wasn't there to find out.

/yawn

Apparently Blizzard didn't like people destroying all the bosses and many of the hard modes right away, so they tried buffing the hard modes. Then guilds went and started beating the new buffed hard modes anyway.

I dunno. Just seems like they've gone overboard with the accessibility...but people have been saying that since WotLK release, so it's not a new comment.

I skipped Ulduar to go and run around Guk and Befallen on my necro and it felt more dangerous and involved than Ulduar. Is that sad? I dunno. My heart actually started beating faster when I got an unexpected add at one point deep down in the green froggy dungeon and I'm pretty sure I exclaimed, "Oh shit!" while mashing feign death with a bunch of frogs chasing me.

I can't remember the last time I felt anything more than a dull sense of just trudging along "doing stuff" in WoW.

Why do people continue to post the same thing over and over? If there are no artificial blocks, content will be beaten in a matter of days. Do people really not get that?

What's your poison, massive gear checks (4H), time locks (Sunwell), attunements (TK) or leave the encounter broken (Everquest)?

People will complain about any and all of those and offer no alternatives to boot; should all the content be tuned to M'uru level difficultly? Somewheres in between Kil'jaeden and Illidan perhaps? Was Nefarian a good benchmark? What percentage of the game's population should see this content without making it too accessible?

_________________
Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Accessible and trivial don't have to go hand in hand. How many people did you see steamrolling Black Temple or Sunwell when they had no attunements?

The point here isn't that just hardcore guilds are beating it fast. That's expected. The problem is that hardcores all the way down to, "We raid one night a week for fun." guilds and even pugs consume this content at an alarming rate.

Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me that it was perfectly ok to release WotLK with a total of 3(?) new raid bosses and then bring nothing new to the table for 6 months, and then THAT is getting consumed really fast too? That just reeks of laziness on Blizzards part. Sure, there's hard modes I guess...that just doesn't feel like content to me though, I dunno.

I still think TBC had it right. I dunno, maybe I'm nuts.

I don't really get why they nerfed Ulduar already. I expected it to get nerfed, but not after one week. My guild raids pretty casually(2 raid nights, 3 hours each) and we spent the majority of our time the first week of the patch getting 4 bosses down. We did 2 per raid night and had a fair amount of wipes each night. We went in tonight and killed the first 6 bosses and still had time left. I don't think it was because we solved them or anything. They all really felt much easier. I never really felt like I was "learning" the new bosses we hit this week. We just walked in and knocked them over.

I begin to wonder if easy mode is just the next naxx and hard mode is the only real progression.

I don't think I follow your point; just because I can go into a zone and look at a boss, like Sunwell, does not make it accessible.

Serious question though, what percentage of people who play the game and want to raid, should see all the content of a given instance prior to the next one being released? 5%, 25%, 50%?



No I'm not, but I didn't realize we were still discussing the woes of Naxxramas.

_________________
Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Um, we're not just discussing Naxxramas, we're discussing the entire expansion and the state of the game as a whole.



100% wouldn't be a bad number, actually. The issue is that people - lots and lots of people - destroy this content very quickly after it is released and then there's NOTHING ELSE for 6+ months.

I don't care if EVERY casual in the game gets to see it eventually, this isn't some elitist thing. But when damn near every guild and even pugs are churning through their content releases in the first couple days, weeks or even the first month and then there's nothing else to do for a very long time...well, that's a problem and why people like me are even playing friggin' EQ again.

Ulduar will actually be even worse. With Naxx people had to gear up via heroics/badges/etc early on and they wanted to run the 5-mans for stuff, and all that gave people a variety of stuff to do and delayed some peoples early advancement a bit. With Ulduar, as long as you were 80 before 3.1, you're probably plenty ready to step right in.

With no new 5-mans to replace the jokes that currently exist, and not much else to do other than that weird Argent Tournament thing and running the same 3 single-boss instances, you can see how boredom and burnout would set in really, really fast.

That's the big problem. It's not JUST a matter of "too easy". It's also an issue of there just not being a lot to do to fill the time once you've plowed through the easy stuff. Sure, I can go do other things to fill my entertainment time up, but I don't really wanna pay $15/month for one evening a week's worth of the same raids over and over.

I'm not sure why they nerfed Ulduar either. It gave us some trouble last week but it wasn't something most guilds couldn't overcome. This week we're working on hard modes and they are a complete and total bitch. Some of the incoming damage seems like it's way too much, but we'll see how it goes the rest of the week. On a side note, the hard mode stuff on 10 man seems kinda easy.

_________________
Avelle <Risen>
80 Mage
Ner'zhul Server (Fuck Illidan)
Avelle 75 PLD/DRG/DRK/BRD
Midgardsormr - Active again
Elidrin 75 Paladin
Midgardsormr - Retired
Elidrin 65 Ranger
Lanys T'Vyl - Retired

I certainly can't speak for everyone, but I'd definitely prefer massive gear checks and attunements, particularly over what we have now. Prolongs content, and IMO it's not as artificial as time locks or broken encounters.

You want to know why Ulduar is getting nerfed? Here's why.

The Descent Heroic 0.00%

Algalon 0.00%
Yogg-Saron 0.21%
General Vezax 0.47%

+ The Keepers Heroic0.72%

Mimiron 0.72%
Freya 1.60%
Thorim 1.43%
Hodir 2.10%

+ The Antechamber Heroic2.64%

Auriaya 2.64%
Kologarn 3.98%
Assembly of Iron 3.77%

+ The Siege Heroic2.67%

Ignis 2.67%
XT-002 6.30%
Razorscale 8.89%
Flame Leviathan 17.63%

Those numbers are from 66189 ranked guilds, and I'm sure that list is not even close to complete. Those numbers are very, very dismal compared to what Blizzard thinks they should be at, which is very evident, as the gateway mob (XT) to the inner sanctum has been nerfed twice in 2 days.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I thought it was fine too, but obviously, Blizzard doesn't think so.

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

Fuck ya, I'm in the .21% of Yogg Saron kills. Super nerd for life.

_________________
Avelle <Risen>
80 Mage
Ner'zhul Server (Fuck Illidan)
Avelle 75 PLD/DRG/DRK/BRD
Midgardsormr - Active again
Elidrin 75 Paladin
Midgardsormr - Retired
Elidrin 65 Ranger
Lanys T'Vyl - Retired

And I'm left wondering why they're nerfing it still(I know you said you thought it was fine Sola, but I'm wondering why Blizzard thinks it's necessary). This is without question the most fun I've had raiding since WOTLK release, and my guild has been wiping fairly consistently! We're working on Auriaya now. My 10-man isn't very far either at just killing Hodir last week.

But we're talking about 25-mans here. It's literally a week after release, and that batch of numbers is unlikely to have calculated this fresh week's clear because many people are probably still working on finishing up the farm status bosses. I don't understand why these judgements have to be made after ONE week. These kinds of numbers go up EXPONENTIALLY when word gets around and new videos are released with good strats, and as people are given time to gear up and get some serious face time in.

This would be an even worse move than the original mistake of Naxx 25's difficulty.

Yeah, I don't understand the knee-jerk reaction after just one week.

I'm not 100% I trust those numbers, either. I mean, my guild is sure to down Yogg-saron this week, and we're not some uber guild. We couldnt' even field 25 people every night the first week, and ended up not raiding at all the second half of the week because of it. Had to run to trade chat and start recruiting people to field a full raid force this week, heh.

I think the answer lays with the hard modes, Eli already said they were nut busting hard.

I think that's good enough for them. Casuals get ezmode while the nutbusters get their nuts busted.

And I'll admit, we're not far either, we've been in there one night not a full raid due to server issues etc but, man I love this shit so far.

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

btw, I just went and checked XT's enrage timer, and it still said 6 min, does anyone know what it was changed to?

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

DBM says 6, but it was changed to 7, as of our kill last night.

_________________

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

I refuse to call that boss anything other than "Gluth Reaver".

heh, that's what we call him too

_________________

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

actually GluthReaverArian, since he has bombs like solarian

_________________

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

We're working on Auriaya also. That pull could use a good monk!

If only there were things in WoW that were comparable to the art of FD pulling and stuff.

That pull would be the perfect opportunity. Pull around the corner, get the boss stuck on the corner while the adds come, kill adds, boss gets unstuck, kill boss!

I really really really really miss monk pulling. I can't say really enough.

_________________
This thread brought to you by a tremendous dickhead!

Bard pulling with FM before they nerfed lull was pretty overpowered, too.

Expect more nerfs inc


Quote from: Daelo (Source)We're currently in the process of making further difficulty adjustments via hotfix to the following encounters:


Ignis the Furnace Master
Razorscale
XT-002 Deconstructor
The Assembly of Iron
Kologarn
Auriaya

The difficulty of these encounters is being lowered in multiple ways. Some of the adjustments are live already, others will be live soon. Note that some of the spell tooltips for the encounter will not reflect the hotfixes being deployed until the next patch. As the hotfixes are deployed, the Service Status board will be updated. You can check the current hotfix thread here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 8165&sid=1

Further adjustments are highly likely to some of the other encounters in Ulduar, but these were the highest priority encounters for us. We want to allow additional players to experience more of the cool Ulduar content.

Recent In-Game Fixes - 04/28

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)Keep in mind that some of these changes my require the realm to be restarted to take effect.

Noblegarden

Spring Flowers will not cast or go on cooldown if the target already has the buff.

Ulduar

Pure Saronite mining nodes have temporarily been disable in Ulduar and will return in the future.
The Ignis the Furnace Master encounter has received the following changes: The interrupt effect and duration of the damage from Flame Jets has been reduced, the damage from the Slag pot has been reduced, the number of Heat stacks needed to transform an Iron Construct into a Molten state has been reduced, the base melee damage done by Ignis has been reduced, and the damage bonus Ignis receives from Strength of the Creator has been slightly increased.
The Assault Bots on the Mimiron encounter will now attack faster, in turn they will do less damage per hit.
The XT-002 Deconstructor encounter has received the following changes: The duration of Tympanic Trantrum has been reduced, the timer for XT-002 to hit berserk has been increased, the damage of Light Bomb has been reduced, the effect radius of Light Bomb has been reduced, and the health of XM-024 Pummeler has been reduced.
The aggro radius for several trash mobs before General Vezax has been reduced and the health has been reduced on Void Beasts and Faceless Horrors.
The Kologarn encounter has received the following changes: The damage of Stone Grip has been reduced, the amount of time to break someone out from the right hand has been increased, the radius and damage of Rumble has been reduced, and the damage of Focused Eyebeam has been reduced.
The Assembly of Iron encounter has received the following changes: The damage of Rune of Death has been reduced, the damage of Chain Lightning has been reduced, and the damage of Lightning Whirl has been reduced.

The XT changes are live

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

Also nerfing Emalon. The 10-man is pretty easy, but I guess people were crying about not being able to pug the 25-man with 1700dps.

Crazy.

I love how the Noblegarden bunny ears bug got hotfixed. Game-breaking crisis averted!

More nerfs? Jeez.

I mean, Emelon? Seriously? Ugh.

I had four people chase me around trying to get orc female for that stupid achievement.

I lead them down to the pipe in dalaran sewers and jumped out. They didn't have parachutes.

Ok..

You need to take a video of that, man. You could get some hits on Youtube if you did a good job, heh.

Self-buff the ears, do a couple laps and sit at the bank to get a good crowd, let it fade to 20 seconds and log out.

And wow I wish I had safe fall now, that's genius.

How I hate this patch. Geeeee, now shut off your anti virus software and firewalls so you can patch wow. Give me a break. They really think that is a safe solution to their lousy patch? That's right you too can make your pc vulnerable while our patch crashes at 70% over and over and over.

More nerfs for Ulduar. Big nerfs. 10 man is a ridiculous farce. The 10-man encounters are easier than Naxx 10-man, when you look at the entire dungeon.

Almost time to tell us how much fun we'll have in the new Argent Dawn instance!

Oh, and Blizzcon announcment of 2 year away raid content.

Nerfed 25 pretty good too, took out some trash packs here and there, lowered the damage on them, no more flame jumping on ignis trash.

_________________

I'm all for getting rid of annoyances like jumping flames and ice turrets. Nerfing HP and stuff of bosses is just silly, but we can't change it no matter how dumb we think Blizzard is being.

I'm half expecting them to announce at Blizzcon that for only $5 extra per month, you can play on permium servers that don't crash or have huge lag spikes during certain events.

edit: Our server crashed several times last night, Wintergrasp is currently inactive for all realms and there are a handful of realms down completely.

Yogg is still causing us issues on both 25 and 10-man, but he'll be down eventually. The rest of the dungeon is absolute cake(minus Algalon of course) now.

Oh Ulduar, we barely knew ye.

I'm still enjoying it personally, mind you, but it's absolutely stupid to go nerfing content after only 2-ish months when they've really barely had enough time to see where the more casual guilds will actually end up standing. It's especially the case when people have to wait for 6+ months for the next raid content.. it's almost like they don't *want* it to last. Give people an opportunity to push themselves for heaven's sake.

Server problems after a patch?! Say it ain't so!

ps: WG was screwed up for us during the day but they fixed it (hotfix, I am guessing) in the evening

Current numbers disagree with you, as they are still well below 10% of 86k ranked guilds doing non hard mode keepers.

Shit barely 15% have gotten Ignis.

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

Disagree with me on what, that it's cake?

I would point to some of the numbers we saw of people completing Gruul's and SSC. SSC isn't quite in the same ballpark as it was, in a way, more difficult to bust into(gear requirements, skill level, etc), but we still saw a very small fraction of the overall population inside it.

My point is that only a small fraction of casual raiding guilds actually manage to plow their way through these zones, and significant headway is usually made a few months down the road after an instance is released. They're barely giving these casual folks a chance to get their bearings before they nerf it.

You're not going to see Naxx25 levels of attendance until you make it THAT easy, and by doing that you remove any and all challenge from the raid content. Anything even slightly tougher than Naxx 25 is enough to break the ultra-casual raiding guild's back. They STILL do progress, but it's at a slow pace.

Anyway, I wouldn't even dare look at the numbers associated with Ignis. He's significantly easier now than he was, and casuals that may not have even been informed of said nerfs may not even take a second look back as they continue to plow. Kologarn, Iron Council, Auryiana and arguably even Hodir were easier than Ignis.

Our 25 finally downed Mimir this week, were hitting up general and yogg tonight so we'll see how it goes.

Our 10's cleared everything but yogg so far, we cleared the whole place up to mimir with alts and dual spec tanks.

_________________

Yes, that it's cake.

Your idea of where it needs to be is about 4 tiers higher then what Blizzard thinks it needs to be. 90% of this board still is of the mentality that shit needs to be alot harder and we should have to earn it, myself included.

It's just not the way it works anymore.

The first 4 bosses were nerfed into oblivion last month, and still you are looking at only 25.84% out of 85,351 ranked guilds killing Flame Leviathan; steadly it goes down from there: 19.3 % Razorscale, 18.81% XT, 15.68% Ignis, 13.7% Council, 15.3% Kologarn, 13.27% Auriaya. I expect that 2nd set of numbers to even out in the next few weeks, but lets look at the keepers.

Hodir seems to be right around the proper number as %10.55% of guilds have killed him, but it drops fast after that, Thorim 8% Freya 9% and Mimiron 5.6% and still not even 1% have cleared Yogg.

In a nutshell my point is don't be surprised in the next few weeks / to a month you see the back end of this nerfed and brought in line with the front end. We're only going on week 6, but the nerfs are coming.

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

Mimiron sux

It is a crazy fight. The only thing I really dislike about him is how hard it is to see the red landing spot of the rockets and the fact he can target them under himself (where you already have a big red targeting ring).

_________________

Yeah it's not easy to see. I've yet to fall for it, but healers seem to have difficulty seeing it in time. Consecrate also makes it blend in a little more. You'd think they would have learned their lesson with terrain colors/spell graphic colors for Sarth.

We have problems with people just going HURRRR DURDDURDUR right into the mines. Especially when he does shock blast or laser barrage.

It may not be the way it works anymore Sola, but that doesn't mean what Blizz is doing is a good idea. My point is that just because you have a small percentage of guilds doing this stuff doesn't mean that it's completely out of line. There always has, and always will be a very small percentage of guilds that even BOTHER to enter the last raiding zone of the game. Many very casual guilds are completely content with doing 10-man content, or even 25-man-oriented guilds that only do Naxx. Some guilds rarely have the numbers to field a full 25. To expect numbers to be higher than 20 percent ever in the first few weeks of release is a wet dream. The biggest point here is that some of those guilds don't even want to do it! Yet they're still being included in the numbers. I don't have any doubt that 10-man guilds are being included in those figures as well, not to mention PUG guilds.

The fact that 25 percent have killed Flame Leviathan should be plenty of evidence for that. I have gone in with a full alt crew with mostly blues leaving a tower up and we facerolled through that encounter.

The majority of zone, post-nerf, is cake minus maybe Yogg and Algalon. There's nothing particularly hard about these encounters. The fact that there are loads of really bad players that play(or, as suggested above, that there are people that don't even want to do Ulduar or have the numbers for it in the first place) shouldn't be used as evidence that the encounters are not easy.

Saw a video on mmo champ of a 2-man flame leviathan kill on normal difficulty.

I guess 3.2 will test the new boss mechanic - the first boss in argent coliseum falls over as soon as 10 or 25 people zone in.