Ok this is a rant, if you looking for info and helpfull stuff then check the previous post on my addons.
This is a pure, paying customer is pissed off entry into this blog of mine.
Levelling in WOW is great fun and most new players are engrossed by this huge world which has been painstakingly created to be as amazing as it can be in terms of Aesthetics and interaction.
Now from experience I can say that I have found myself lost in this world many times, playing for must longer as I planned by searching for this special item or running around in this maze of an instance.
So I hit 60 a few days ago, meaning finally being able to get some good gear in terms of socketed gear and Tier Armors, but I was sadly mistaken on the latter.
Now blizzard has thought of after many complaints about allowing players who have levelled all the way to 80 to start any alt toon at a hight level than 1, i.e. 40 or 55 like a DK.
I think this is very wrong as its part and parcel of the game. You start at level 1 to enjoy the story and learn how to play the class.
My problem: how can I as a player enjoy the game at level 60 if I cant even get the armor I want. My problem arose whilst in this flurry of excitment about grinding and raiding for my tier armors and after seeing the Tier 3 armor for level 60's on Wow-europe's website I though about getting those instead of the 1 and 2 sets (another rant, but ill keep that till last).
Searching google and wow head for info on this Tier 3 Frostfire armor for my mage I started reeading comments etc on this armor of how and where to find it. Comments dating back to 2006 shows that this armor rocks for a mage and you need this and that all the whilst my excitement was growing as this armor did not really need me to spend 2-4 hours getting a raid together for Oznia's Lair or Molten core and where to get the damn key.
BEATEN DOWN:
After patch 3.? this armor set was kind of disabled, meaning quests and drops pertaining to this armor set was disabled and thus the armor set is still in the game, you just cant get it any more.
Now this is why im MOST pissed off and am actually taking the rest of the week off. How the hell can I enjoy a game which Im paying for if the stuff which makes me want to discover and explore every nook and cranny of it is disabled? Why must I go to the level 60 raids (25-40 man) if the gear I wanted is not there anymore, or if I need to spend 2-4 hours getting people together for raids which will net me worse gear?
And this is where my second gripe comes from, this is the reason I actually am getting the same ideas as 90% of newer WOW players out there.
WotLK gets released and NO one wants to do classic or BC anymore. Only level 70+ stuff matters and its a race to get there.
I cant even get a decent crew together for a 20 man raid in Classic or BC because people are too busy trying to hit the magical 70-80, so they actually skip entire chapters and areas of the game missing out on the magic which is WOW.
I now actually want to use the guide I posted a day or two back to go and QUICKLY level my 63 mage to 80, just so I can solo most places, so I can in fact experience some of the WOW areas I cannot right now.
The problem with Blizzard pushing all this new stuff and forcing people to push for the WotLK instances etc etc is that most players are newbies when they get there.
Example:
•Level 55 WArlock gets tired of warlock getting killed due to cloth armor etc etc. He rolls a new lvl55 DK....
•Firstly he doesnt know how to play a melee class and thus wipes the groups he plays with.
•70% of players rolling a DK in this fashion cant play the class effectively and thus RUINS the DK class reputation
•Levels as quick as possible to 80, meaning he has no understanding of real RAID and 10/25 man groups.
Where Classic and BC instances and raids are designed to teach players about specific situations, the players are now not learning that and thus these virgins walk into Ulduar and get not jsut their own but their RAID groups asses kicked as they cannot fill there role in the group.
An example is a raid in BC, where players gets a charge from a boss, either Negative or Positive.
If you get close to an opposed charged player you do damage (explode kind of).
Same type of raid in WotLK, but people never did this BC training and dont know what to do, so people keep wiping and poeple get pissed off, not wanting to play with DK's and level 74 and lowers etc etc.
Good bye for the rest of the week!
Posts
Have you played a DK? You don't just start out at level 55, dumped into the world.
ReplyDeleteThe DK starting area is a brilliantly crafted tutorial on how to use your DK skills. You gradually earn your talent points and skills as you do the quests, follow the storyline, and level up. By the time you finish the starting area at 58ish, you have a fairly good handle on what your spells are and what they do.
Now if you were given a mage at 55-58 and simply dumped at the Dark Portal, I agree, that's not going to work all that great. But most of the folks that want to start an alt at 55 are not frustrated 55s. They are 80s that want to add a little versatility and variety in what they bring their guild. Maybe they want to help a 2nd or 3rd raiding group without eating their RaidID for the week. Maybe they just want to do a different set of quests or experience a different type of gameplay.
The frustration of DK retards has nothing to do with people not knowing how to play them. It is completely due to DKs being very, very overpowered at LK launch and fully able to simply zerg any TBC content they wanted. I guarantee you, however, that all those DK zergs were having a blast. It is only the healers they tricked into running Ramparts and BF with them that were frustrated.
Look I get what your saying and know about the DK starting area being a great intro to the class but you dont learn a class in three levels, its as simple as that.
ReplyDeleteI dont really have a gripe with DK's as I want to roll one myself.
Im just syaing Blizzard makes mistakes like everyone, but they make mistakes that ruin it for certain players i.e. ME who is trying to enjoy the entire game and now having to be stuck with less than if I started playing 2 years ago.
You're angry because there's no reward for exploring Classic and TBC raids with a level 6x or 7x character, as the game is now encouraging players to simply level through old zones to reach Northrend faster. That's a valid response, I guess, but you may be ignorant of a few things about old content.
ReplyDeleteThe old raids are HARD, and long. Even if there were many players in the 60s who wanted to raid Naxx or AQ40, I doubt you could kill a single boss in either with a green/blue equipped PUG. The kind of entry-level epics you could acquire are quickly eclipsed by questing gear, though I think it's the lore/cosmetic aspect that interests you more.
As for people levelling to 80 with no experience of raiding and poor class skills, the truth is that WotLK raiding is quite simple, with a big margin for individual mistakes. I've no TBC raiding experience but anyone who raided Classic is overskilled for Naxx10 and similar raids.
I think that progression from instances to heroics and raids is good in WotLK and prepares players for the larger raids just fine.
I absolutely agree that it is a sad and a waste how lonely the old zones are.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, I don't as much see your point on the learn the character aspect for a number of reasons. For most of my 80s I did a couple of run-through of DM, GnM, SM but few if any on-level runs of instances; it was just too much time and trouble to find pugs, I was better off questing/grinding and with much less hassles. Unlike the glorious experience of very slowing leveling my first toon, a TBC ret pally, I did not bother much with gear; it will be replaced soon.
A lot of 1-79 is not that relevant to 80 play. A few of the significant spells you only get at 80. I am used to my pally, shaman, and priest who leveled as DPS before going resto at 80; extra time as a DPS would not help much towards 80 healing. Even hunters and mages level as BM/Frost with different talents than they would have at 80. but in fact there is considerable expectation that they will not raid as BM or Frost in the current game.
You may also not be pleased with the hitting 80 experience. While non-heroic instances are not MC-deserted, there is certainly no push to work on non-heroics to get ready for heroics. In fact, if you plan ahead and buy the gear in advance, there is no reason why you can not add some rep gear / PvP welfare epics and have Nax-ready gear within a day of hitting 80.
I think there is two sides to every story. I remember playing in "vanilla" WoW which leveling 1-60 was a pain but dungeons were always filled. I have been playing since closed beta, leveled a warrior on the Horde side to 60 then moved to a Priest, leveled that to 60 and eventually to 70 once TBC came out. So I do have a main at 80, and now multple alts of various levels. I do not want to level to figur out the class or enjoy the story since in the 4-5 years I have done that...multiple times.
ReplyDeleteI can see where automatically starting off at a certain level is a bad idea, I could agree with that. I also will agree that everything from the original should still be there, working fine and of course is a shame of how much is empty now.
I could personally see a compromise, having started my wife an account and the buddy program of 3 times the exp was amazing. It didn't make it seem so long, which I could honestly say I would have 1 of every class at 80 with the amount of alts I have started and deleted through the years. My view is something similar to the buddy program but based on account age. Account 0-1 year would give that account 1 times the experience...the same. A 2 year old account, would take exp and times it by 2...etc.
I think this would be a fair reward for people spending money on the game, giving their hard earned real life money to a company for a game for so many years. Wouldn't totally get rid of original quests and zones, even though it won't help populate those zones (but will not get ride of them if you started at 55).
I almost forgot, they should also make some type of help for the dungeons in leveling and such. There is plenty of options and ideas from the countless players. Maybe no more exp split, maybe dungeons give better exp in the long run over quests...something does need to be done for those dungeons to make them worthwile to visit. (maybe the bonus exp due to account age only affects dungeon exp).
ReplyDeleteI know I have leveled many characters to 20, 30 and even 40...multiple times. I have spent a lot of money 3 years would be roughly 540 bucks, 4 years would 720 dollars)....with a bunch of old zones, that I have done till they are a dead horse. Do not get me wrong though, I think they are important (once, twice even maybe 5 times).
It is interesting to learn that in WOTLC, normally quests give about 1% of your total exp to level...while a dungeon can easily give 10-20% easily. So you could do 100 quests or 10 dungeons...while in the older WoW it seems to be better to quest then dungeons.
It's a shame that lots of old zones only exist as curiousities, that's for sure, but your anger at Blizzard for it is misplaced. These old dungeons with tier gear had a specific purpose: to give players at the level cap something challenging to do. It would take a typical guild months to progress from instance to instance, many of them never making it to Naxx and tier 3 at all. So for one thing, expecting to head right to Naxx at level 60 without gearing up from the other zones wasn't how it worked, unless you were able to get carried by a guild for some reason. Now with 80s helping you, it would certainly be possible. But a full raid of 60s who just leveled up? Not a chance.
ReplyDeleteI can see why these zones can be a source of fustration if this is your first character, but you should keep in mind these zones are not like any dungeon you've come across so far. They are not designed to be done once as you level, and you move on after you finish all the quests. The fights in Molten Core assumed you had geared yourself up from Stratholme and Scholomance. Blackwing Lair fights assumed you were wearing gear from Molten Core, and so on. If your raid was not properly geared, fights were either extremely difficult or flat out impossible.
Fights tuned for well geared, high level characters are not compatible with players who are leveling up. While it would be nice if they could retune old raids and make them relevant, that takes time and resources which Blizzard prefers to spend on making new stuff, which is of more interest to all players. Game development is a finite resource, after all.
I'm going to have to disagree that Blizzard is pushing new stuff. Most people want new stuff. Most players want to get to the max level, and that's been the same since the max level was 60. They're facilitating the process, with recruit a friend and experience increases, but that is because most players want to finish leveling quicker, not slower, and get to the endgame instances/raids (or pvp). There was a game that did force you to work your way through old content to get to newer expansions. It was Everquest, and it was a design that few people liked. Once a new expansion came out, most players moved on to new zones. New players were left to struggle through old stuff, with very few similarly leveled players around to help them. As a result, if you started late in the game, you never caught up to your friends. Blizzard has (wisely I think) avoided this pitfall, and not forced old content on players when it's past it's time.
I totally understand wanting old stuff to be relevant. But that's not within the design of WoW. The old stuff had it's day in the sun, and it was fun, but now it's time to move on. If you've never been involved in raiding, that might not make sense, but raids are very difficult from the instances you're used to. I do not believe it would be possible to make old raids worthwhile to do, or at least not without making other, unwelcome changes to WoW. I look at them kind of like this. I love the Who. Unfortunately, I'm in my 20s, so that means I've never seen the real Who perform, and I never will. I'm forever sundered from experiencing the band when they were new and fresh and young by the inequality of time. Old raids may not be as cool as rock bands (in fact, they're not), but the concept is the same. Everything has it's time, and then loses relevance.
Also, with regards to the poster who said WotLK dungeons are really good for leveling: I'm not sure what you're basing that on, but most people would agree Wrath dungeons give you the lowest relative experience of all dungeons. The reason for that is obvious; Wrath dungeons have the significantly less trash than classic or BC ones. If you have friends you can run a lot of dungeons with easily that's fine, though after the initial runthrough when you get quests done, returning won't be worthwhile. If you have to spend time forming groups and have to group with unknowns, that's time lost forming groups and potentially more time lost wiping.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how you are enjoying *cough cough* the latest patch 3.2...there are so many problems the game is nearly unplayable!
ReplyDelete