I agree 100% also but I never insulted casuals. I'm a casual but I have a reasonable idea of what I am doing. I have and will screw up but I mostly know my class (just returned, quit after vanilla) and if something is explained to me I can probably get it done. From level 60 to 85 with IL 336 in 5 weeks? The problem is that the vast majority of the playerbase will never reach the skill level needed to complete those instances and they are easily finding themselves at the point where that is their only avenue for advancement. All they really need to do is give the healers the ability to compensate for mistakes and everything would be fine. The margin for error is to small right now.

For me anyway this expansion feels a bit schizophrenic, like it was created by two different dev teams with two different design philosophies.

On the one hand Cataclysm seems to be designed to make WoW less intimidating to new players, especially those new to MMOs. Tooltips have been made more specific, skills light up on the action bars, quests are easier, the list goes on. Overall, the new 1-60 content seems to have been designed with an eye toward, inclusiveness, ease of use, and accessibility.

On the other hand, the lvl 85 instanced content is exactly the opposite, the lvl 85 content seems to be designed to weed out "the bads." It's as though the dungeon designers are trying to run off the people that were brought to the game by the new low level content.

I think that much of the frustration that people are feeling comes from the sudden shift between the two paradigms. There's really nothing in the 1-85 content that teaches players what they need to know to succeed in heroics. Even after playing this game since just after launch the transition from regular 5 mans to heroic was jarring. For new players it must feel like hitting a brick wall, "thanks for purchasing Cataclysm, this is as far as you go noob."

It definately sounds like you made the right choice.

 

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Edited the bold part in. The fact that you are incapable of doing some content doesn't make it too hard. It just makes YOU not good enough, for now, to do it. I'm surprised that you, claiming to be an MMORPG veteran and not one of those noobs always used to faceroll content, can't accept the fact that sometimes, you can also lose, since that was actually a daily reality in games like Ultima Online.

 

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I read it as, GC's post was not as condescending as usual, and he even provided helpful hitns, so I'm going to write this follow-up condescending post.


Korrigan and others though are right about heroics, but the problem is, heroics are practically required if you want to do the end game stuff and get geared. It's not, well do normals and it will take longer (that's correct right?). Blizz made it a requirement and also set the expectation level for the player.


Now they are doing a bait and switch. Yes players are a**hats and expect for some reason to PUG something with cr*p gear, but still, the design is Blizz's.


They've created a nice little problem for themselves. This is pretty interesting. For this follow-up post, there must be interesting things going on behind the scenes.


Note to Blizz, posts that aren't arrogant or contain hubris don't need to have follow-up posts stating that they aren't arrogant or contain hubris.

 

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Ah I like post, couldn't have said it better myself.

 

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I think they are getting to a crossroads like they were with Van WoW they are gonna have to pick cater to the hardcore who are probly 1/4 of there sub base or cater to the casual players who are 3/4 of there sub base.Wanna take a bet on who will win out?

I am not complaining about the heroics I will continue to play how I play as long as it is fun I did the whole raiding is my life thing in the old 40 man days and decided I wanted to actually have fun and not feel everynight I was working my 2nd job in the hopes I might get some gear at some point.Both aspects are fun hardcore raiding and casual heroics that were in wrath.I guess I lean more toward the casual side now as I simply do not have the rl time anymore to run 5 hours of heroics a day.

I will just keep playing alts and doing other things in WoW so long as it is interesting to me.

I don't think that casual players should be complaining about the heroic content at this point, if they truly are casual.

 

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lol...so true.

 

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Those who whine about heroics don't do "end game stuff". If they think not standing in fire in the heroics is too hard, do you even imagine how loud they will whine about the first raid boss they have to fight? Those guys wouldn't even pass the first trash in Bastion of Twilight.



You seem to assume that 3/4 of the sub base is SLACKER casuals. You forget than most casuals do the heroics just fine, and a little minority only do whine on forums. The same who always feel they are self-entitled to everything in the game just because they pay a subscription.

 

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