Well, not tying to be facetious, but why wouldn't they? They played the game x number of months in such a fashion, purchased the expansion, then get this in return. I can see why people would be upset.

But I think this discussion is ultimately meaningless: Blizzard will tune the game back to what it once was, make no mistake. Like I've said in other threads, I'm waiting for those changes before I even bother resubscribing. I've been listening to coworkers talk about the game ad nauseum, and tried the starter zones myself. I have no interest in enjoying a refined 1-60 experience just to grind through old TBC and WotLK content to arrive at frustrating Cataclysm heroics. Ugh.

 

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It is overwhelmingly apparent Blizzard doesn't only not know their own player base very well, they don't care to, instead believe they are better at thinking for them.

I think it boils down to those who have been playing WoW a long while. People are just getting tired of having to adapt to a new design vision. So it is probably time for these people to move on, or do as most do and take a break from WoW.

This expansion is a throw back to TBC dungeons where one had to think just a little bit more. No longer can a tank simply spam their AOE's and keep agro. No longer can a healer overheal by millions of HP and never have their mana deplete.

I come from the EQ days where as a cleric I looked a spell book most of the time. Healing has been made more eq'ish like and requires that you actually be looking at the screen etc. When I tanked in those days I needed to pull carefully and I had to tab through my targets to keep aggro on multi mob pulls.

Was this change a mistake? Perhaps. But they will change it again anyway. As to expectations for cata I had none really.

For now I am enjoying WoW... for how long? Who knows really. I have tried the RIFT beta and will probably play that for a bit. But it is WoW with a new wrapper. It plays exactly like warhammer as well. Have to give the devs credit they took what works from other MMO's and wrapped it up with some of their own elements. Still though, it won't provide much competition for wow. Probably just provide a temporary home for the burned out on WoW crowd.

 

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Well that is something else we kind of touched in the "leveling is too fast" thread. Because it is so easy now to level, it creates the mentality of instant gratification. So when you can go from 1 to 85 in no time flat and then people are hitting this wall where they have to grind normal dungeons, they are like.. wtf.


Personally I don't mind it, I like learning my character, I like PuG'ing and of corse guild runs and so far from what I have seen I like these new dungeons too.


Blizzard has fast tracked us to their end game content with all these leveling tools, for the first real time sink to be regular 5 man dungeons where the loot doesn't seem so phat well.. you are getting "I want it now" players all the more.

 

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Excellent perspective on the whole situation, Gutter. Inspirational, too. I fell into that mindset myself a little bit, once I saw how daunting it would be to gear up my priest.

My only remaining issue was priest healing, and the lack of fun involved with it. I've respecced to Holy and plan on experimenting with new methods of healing. If it works out, and I hope it does, then I look forward to the work involved with getting geared up with my guild mates.

I'm still going to avoid heroic pugs, however.

Great thread.

EDIT: On account of the regular dungeon I just did, and the mage not CCing, DPS not killing marked targets, me talking to myself the whole time, and me having to heal 4 players who can't follow simple instructions (and thus going OOM on a trash pull that wiped), I won't be healing pugs anymore. Done.

Going shadow in pugs to gear up. I've had it.

BOY can i feel this...

 

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Unstruck, Sorry that you had a bad group.

But, hypothetically, if we had to level to 90, rather than 85, most would just now be getting there. (time wise)

Yes some faster, some slower...but that is kind of the point of all of this.


People hit 85 in a flash, and are just jumping into randoms using the RDF. They have to learn that this isn't Wrath anymore.


Instead of spending time getting those last 5 levels, as in previous expac's, it almost seems the Dev's have produced a design (whether intended or not) that requires us to spend that time "struggling" in 5 mans.


Give it time, and remember that perhaps up to 90% of the players don't read forums. They have to learn by doing, and its only been 3 weeks.

Time (or the proverbial "timesink" will solve this issue.

 

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Gutter you keep pointing out that it has only been 3 weeks since the xpac has been out and I keep doinga double take every single time.


I guess for us here on the VN because we discuss the xpac in debth well before release, we have had people telling us all about the beta for much longer and then once Cata hit we have all been discussing the xpac in debth some more it makes it seem like this xpac is much older then it truly is...


..three weeks really is not long enough to judge anything this complex fairly, especially when much of the expirience relies on players gaining more expirience themselves and adapting to these changes.


Even at three months I don't know that we'll have a complete view but at least by then the pool of more expirienced players would have grown some.

 

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There is absolutely no difference between running an easy dungeon 4 times at 15 minutes a pop and 1 hard dungeon at an hour long.

If you think there is, you probably believe America has a two party system too.

 

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Actually Arc I can point out a few differences.


4 dungeons requires you to queue for different times

-Yet it also provides you with 4 different chances for loot.


4 dungeons is much more repatative, rince and repeat style, then completing one hard dungeon.


Doing 4 easy things is not equal to doing 1 hard thing, even if the time to complete is the same. For example, if I had to walk up 4 small flights of stairs to reach my goal, or scale a wall to reach the same hieght, I can tell you I would feel very different after climbing that wall rather then walking up the stairs.

 

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