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Total Biscuit Quits WoW
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Post by
skumbananer
There is no such thing as quitting wow, so his fanbase just have to be patient. No one can quit wow, you can take breaks from it, extended breaks even but after six months or so the beckoning call of Azeroth abstinence becomes too powerful even for the strongest amongst us.
Even if you do something drasic, like, lets say delete all your characters you will still be back. A little ashamed when you get a new subscription and a little sad when you see your level 33 warrior new main with no achievs and heirlooms, but still back in Azeroth.
Post by
reddwarf
TB has even said he unsubs frequently during the game, only to come back later for a little bit, and unsub again. So this is nothing unusual.
As I said the issue that I personally see is this: As best as I can describe it, Wrath seemed fun. I liked having 10 and 25 man raids separate (even though I thought merging them was a good idea to stop the "I'm better than you" complex 25-man raids had at the time). I liked being able to Pug a few bosses in each week in whichever content my guild wasn't doing, and getting the gear/badges/fight experience via that. I liked not having to spend 45 minutes or more in a dungeon hoping to get it done, although I didn't like at the end everyone demanding 10 minute speedruns.
When Cata came out, it was like two steps backwards. Dungeons were hard again - okay, that's not a bad thing but they were a little TOO hard, a little TOO much like TBC Heroics when they should have been more like Forge/Pit (not HoR as that was overtuned too at launch) when they first came out - challenging (here's looking at you, hill mobs after Ick) but you could still do it reasonably in a short period of time; I played when those came out, and I never saw them reach the level of difficulty that the base Cata heroics could, but they were challenging and fun. Even as late as three months ago when I would go on an alt into a random heroic there was a chance we would be in there for an hour or more; these players weren't BAD, they were geared right, they were gemmed/enchanted, and they were doing the right priority, they just weren't "superb" players. I still never got the Tol Barad epics because it was way too annoying to do every day, and the quests weren't fun at all so there was no desire outside of "I need item X". The raids were a bit overtuned as well; Pugs didn't form anymore for them, and I distinctly recall only a couple of months in the attitude of "Anyone good has already cleared T11" popping up. Since you only got one shot a week to raid, it killed many weekly Pugs that used to do fairly well in ICC, usually getting at least up to Sindragosa if not getting a few attempts in at Arthas (and that was a good thing since many of the people in those Pugs were working on Sindy or Arthas in their guild, so it was good experience), and even the not-as-good players were able to usually get up to Putricide (often downing Princes as well and sometimes Dreamwalker before getting to PP) so even if they weren't getting as far they were getting badges to help them out in their guild runs.
So Blizzard took a step back with Cata because they thought the people wanted harder content, and they made Wrath too easy. The problem with Wrath, though, was that the stuff was being outgeared due to their idea that everyone MUST be on the current tier the moment it comes out so let's just invalidate the previous tier when the new one is out; a mentality that they still have to this day. The problem with Wrath was never the ease; I don't recall ICC being laughably easy but it wasn't crazy hard either except for Sindy who was fairly challenging and Arthas of course, but as the second to last and final boss they should be expected to be difficult. So yes, I think Cataclysm went in the wrong direction. The average person doesn't want to spend the entire evening doing dailies, or hoping to get 2-3 dungeons in, or wiping for the whole night on a midway boss that shouldn't be crazy difficult. They want challenge, sure, but still the kind of challenge that reasonably can be done in a couple of evenings (assuming here the average player has work or class in the morning and can only play a couple of hours at night), and Cataclysm didn't provide that IMO while Wrath, at least in the ToC/ICC era, did.
Post by
Interest
I can only speak for myself here, but for me what BC had that cata severely lacks is optional non-gear-driven content. BC had several rep grinds that were mostly solo-able, didn't have time limitations, did not offer significant gear if any, and were FUN (again, all my opinion).
Admittedly some of these were not available at release of BC but were later patch additions, but I really don't see them adding anywhere near as much of this type of content...it honestly doesn't even seem to be on the radar anymore.
In bc I could do netherwing dailies, skyguard dailies, ioqd dailies, shat dailies, and/or hellfire dailies. I could grind mobs for repeatable rep hand-ins for at least 3 factions I can think of off the top of my head. I could also attempt group play if I wanted, and many of the dungeons offered further rep items for turn in as loot. Basically I could play in LOTS of different ways...now you do your dailies and then start your dungeon grind.
While tabards are awesome, to me it really stinks that there is now only 2 ways to grind rep with factions :/ I prefer many paths to exalted instead with more dynamic dailies, at least 1 grindable turn-in item, and dungeon grinding.
Most of that is quite true. But here's why I have some issues:
-To be honest, I think we're past making a bunch of daily hubs and calling it a day. Considering we've had them for 2+ expansions, and because there's only so many ways a daily quest can be designed (although to be fair, the BC daily quest design was pretty creative overall), having daily quests and only daily quests will get old.
How to solve: There's nothing wrong with bringing back SOME daily hubs. However, dailies are not for everyone. Forcing people to do dailies to increase a reputation will only allow some groups of players to increase reputation with X reputation. Adding in some alternative method (non-tabard) would be a good idea as well. For instance, you can slowly gain your respective Tol Barad reputation by participating in PvP matches only (although this is really slow and generally pretty impractical).
In fact, I even recall TB comparing daily quests to a minimum wage job of flipping burgers (lol).
In BC there were world pvp objectives...they might not have gotten used much on many servers but there were options. Personally I still love the hellfire towers and halaa and I still snag the terrokar towers if I'm there when they're up. I'm not a huge pvper, far from it, but those random objectives that affect the zones they are in are an awesome optional fun feature.
It would be great to see this coming back. I feel Tol Barad/Wintergrasp were pretty insufficient in terms of sating world PvP. Having some options beyond Battlegrounds, at the very least, would be great.
In BC there was a starter raid, it was large, interesting, and taught players the skills they needed in that xpac. In wrath there was a starter raid, it was large, interesting to some, and taught players skills they needed in that xpac, In cata....not so much, hopefully the t11 raids will fill this purpose in t12 and beyond.
Basically the biggest difference that really messes with me the most is the clump effect in cata. Everyone is in one spot and yet are usually queued for other things so don't interact much...it's an odd effect in an mmo (imo).
Agreed. I feel they went a bit overboard in what the tier 11 raid was supposed to do. It felt more like an extension of all other previous raiding, meaning players are "expected to have raid experience", resulting in newer players and such to be SoL. I wouldn't have a problem with tier 11 raiding if there was some way newer players can learn or "bad players" can catch up. In fact, it would be far better to just give players the tools to learn how to play where no other player can interfere and criticize (because to be fair, some criticism is really negative). A tutorial wouldn't really cut it for the reason that each class is distinctly different. In addition, the game evolves frequently, meaning that tutorials would become obsolete from time to time.
Post by
xaratherus
I Guess total end game consumption wasn't the bottom line for people choosing to play this game back then
Actually, I think it proves the exact opposite of what you're saying.
A new player would not have any clue about the accessibility of end game until he had leveled a character to end game. He doesn't start at 70/80/85. During BC, it took a long while for a casual player to get to the level cap and thus become eligible for end-game content - and then even longer to gear for it.
So here's how I'd hypothesize it played out: New player starts in BC. New player is casual and doesn't hit the level cap until the second tier of raid content comes out. Because of the gearing model, they aren't geared for raiding until sometime near the end of the life span for that tier of raid content, so then they're almost two tiers of raid content behind. Despite the fact that they're running way behind, they keep pushing because they want to see BT/Sunwell - but they never get there during its lifespan, but they're having fun in other ways and see that Blizzard is making changes to make content more accessible. The new player is frustrated, but he sticks with it.
Now
Wrath comes out, and with it a change in design to allow raid content to be more accessible. They don't have to level all the way to 80 - only ten levels, so they much more quickly get geared for the raid. The same is true for people just picking up WoW for the first time, because of the streamlining of the leveling and gearing processes. Those people get into the raid content more closely as it's released, and so they're happy.
That model of more accessible raiding continues into Cataclysm, which causes them to retain those new raiders - but for the veteran players, a combination of dislike of those changes and that direction, as well as the age of the game and the draw of new games being released, causes them to start leaving in large numbers.
Now, both of our situations are assumptions. I think mine is right, you think yours is right. Neither of us has the information necessary to make these statements with any basis in fact, other than our own limited observations. The truth is that it's probably a combination of the two.
But here's the thing: Your hypothetical situation is based on an impossible premise: You argue that the game's growth had to do with end-game consumption.
How does a new player know what end-game looks like until they start playing?
They don't. Even if a friend gives them a preview, all that they see is the raid - not what it takes to get into it. So your hypothetical puts the cart before the horse.
I hazard to guess that although there is easier end game accessibility the quality of play doing so has become so poor that people like TB and like minded players have had enough.
Or it could be, as I mentioned, that the game is just getting old for them.
How many games have retained players' interest for 7+ years without sequels that greatly altered gameplay and massive graphics updates? Not many - and if those games
are
still played, they're generally played for nostalgia's sake.
Am I saying that's the only reason? No. Obviously TB has a number of complaints about the game's direction, as illustrated in the video. However, as others pointed out, many of these complaints predate Cataclysm -
so why are they a deal-breaking issue now
? My guess is that those issues, coupled with boredom with the game, are what led to his decision to leave.
Post by
reddwarf
Agreed with Interest. Cata raiding has so far felt very unfriendly and has an "experienced raiders only" mentality from what I've seen. In contrast, Wrath felt more welcoming - a newbie could reasonably get a chance to do at least a handful of relevant bosses even with no raid experience prior, and in the process LEARN to raid and become better.
Post by
Fulgorater
Agreed. I feel they went a bit overboard in what the tier 11 raid was supposed to do. It felt more like an extension of all other previous raiding, meaning players are "expected to have raid experience", resulting in newer players and such to be SoL. I wouldn't have a problem with tier 11 raiding if there was some way newer players can learn or "bad players" can catch up. In fact,
it would be far better to just give players the tools to learn how to play where no other player can interfere and criticize
(because to be fair, some criticism is really negative). A tutorial wouldn't really cut it for the reason that each class is distinctly different. In addition, the game evolves frequently, meaning that tutorials would become obsolete from time to time.
Yes I think this would help. However, I think what they've done in ZA/ZG (as well as the previous heroics) helped a lot in training people what to do. Venoxsis --> Be raid aware and don't stand in fire... Panther-->healing triage + interupts Jindoo--> positioning positioning positioning
But these are also high stress situations where you will catch flak hard if you don't get it in three tries or so. But that is part of the issue with raiding is the high stress environment, can't replicate that by yourself.
Post by
lankybrit
IMHO Cata Dungeons weren't too hard, just too long. If they had all been a bit shorter, I think people wouldn't have cared about the difficulty so much.
Combination of Difficulty + Length = Frustration.
Cheers.
Post by
812974
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Interest
Agreed. I feel they went a bit overboard in what the tier 11 raid was supposed to do. It felt more like an extension of all other previous raiding, meaning players are "expected to have raid experience", resulting in newer players and such to be SoL. I wouldn't have a problem with tier 11 raiding if there was some way newer players can learn or "bad players" can catch up. In fact,
it would be far better to just give players the tools to learn how to play where no other player can interfere and criticize
(because to be fair, some criticism is really negative). A tutorial wouldn't really cut it for the reason that each class is distinctly different. In addition, the game evolves frequently, meaning that tutorials would become obsolete from time to time.
Yes I think this would help. However, I think what they've done in ZA/ZG (as well as the previous heroics) helped a lot in training people what to do. Venoxsis --> Be raid aware and don't stand in fire... Panther-->healing triage + interupts Jindoo--> positioning positioning positioning
But these are also high stress situations where you will catch flak hard if you don't get it in three tries or so. But that is part of the issue with raiding is the high stress environment, can't replicate that by yourself.
Except you have to be in a group to do dungeons. This means you have to deal with other players who'll call you out (using positive or negative criticism). In a good number of cases the player being criticized will overreact, but in other cases the criticizing player is simply too elitist. Having a place where players can learn without critics gives players to learn at their own pace without the negative side effects of conflict and "failure."
Hopefully, by the time a player has done enough of this "learning alone" sort of deal, they are ready to do dungeons and do them at least moderately well. I can't say much for the criticism part though (human nature).
Post by
reddwarf
IMHO Cata Dungeons weren't too hard, just too long. If they had all been a bit shorter, I think people wouldn't have cared about the difficulty so much.
Combination of Difficulty + Length = Frustration.
Cheers.
Agreed on that as well. They are all a bit too long. Personally I think they should all have been just a tad shorter and a smidge easier, and there wouldn't have been an issue.
Post by
Interest
IMHO Cata Dungeons weren't too hard, just too long. If they had all been a bit shorter, I think people wouldn't have cared about the difficulty so much.
Combination of Difficulty + Length = Frustration.
Cheers.
Agreed on that as well. They are all a bit too long. Personally I think they should all have been just a tad shorter and a smidge easier, and there wouldn't have been an issue.
The normal modes should be a little bit "shorter"
The heroic modes should be shortened somehow, but I believe the difficulty should be increased again by a bit.
Post by
812974
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Sweetscot
Not really, you just axe some trash. That's the only real difference as far as length goes between wotlk dungeons and cata ones. Deadmines will always be long because of nightmare phase but the rest could have a little cleaning up.
Post by
apocalypsa
So wait, hes qqing about A) raiding gear one tier down being purchasable with 5mans (been like that for AGES) B) a 20% nerf to obsolete raids so people can actually see the content without being in a hardcore raiding guild.
THE HEROICS ARE STILL HARD. If you want to work 5h on one boss, you can do the heroics while the casual players kill normal bosses. Everybody happy; you still get your shiney heroic items. They even added a "heroic" tag to show your hardcore awesomeness.
Blizzard is making raiding more accessible while keeping hard content for the more serious raiders. I really dont see why you would complain that people are doing the same raids as you, half a year later, with a few nerfs and welfare gear. There really is no harm done at all.
I dont see why you would think it is a bad thing casuals get to see the content hardcore raiders see. Back in TBC I was a pvper and thus never killed Illidan - is that a good thing? No. Is it good I didnt get to kill him along with the hardcore guilds? Ofcourse.
And TBH, if you do think doing certain content should always be for the elite, I say this: GFYS.
Post by
Interest
TB is concerned it that deliberately making the content easier for the more casual players will pretty much "keep them" in the inadequate state.
Pretty much, he claims you do not learn as much when doing watered-down content. That is where his concern lies. It's not about the actual content nerfing as opposed to keeping content somewhat difficult and "keeping the other players down" or keeping them from the content. It's a reverse of the situation, where giving people what they want will, in fact, make players put forth less effort and never really become more skillful, never learn the game, or anything like that. He, by his argument, cares about the player-base in this regard.
(Trying to keep the statements as neutral as possible. I personally think he has a point about this.)
Post by
91278
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
238331
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Interest
THE HEROICS ARE STILL HARD.
And, as such, the gap between Normal and Heroic has been expanded, such that the jump in difficulty will put off even more people from doing them. This is a bad thing.
Last I heard, the Heroic versions of the nerfed raids also got nerfed.
Post by
Deepthought
THE HEROICS ARE STILL HARD.
And, as such, the gap between Normal and Heroic has been expanded, such that the jump in difficulty will put off even more people from doing them. This is a bad thing.
Last I heard, the Heroic versions of the nerfed raids also got nerfed.
With the upcoming content patch, 10- and 25-person Normal mode raid encounters will be receiving a comprehensive set of tuning adjustments to decrease their difficulty.
Post by
Interest
THE HEROICS ARE STILL HARD.
And, as such, the gap between Normal and Heroic has been expanded, such that the jump in difficulty will put off even more people from doing them. This is a bad thing.
Last I heard, the Heroic versions of the nerfed raids also got nerfed.
With the upcoming content patch, 10- and 25-person Normal mode raid encounters will be receiving a comprehensive set of tuning adjustments to decrease their difficulty.
Despite that statement, Heroic versions of the ability are being nerfed anyways.
Or so the Wowhead spell changes have revealed.
Good job trying to use the official statement to contradict me though. =D
Notice how 4 versions of some boss abilities have been altered
(Disclaimer: This doesn't necessarily mean it's true, but it's a possibility.)
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