Minischoles wrote:Broomstick wrote:Reminds me of vanilla Hillsbrad, except back then there was no LFD option. You learn to get sneaky. I learned how to hide an 8 foot tall red Tauren in the green foliage of Strangelthorn Vale back in the day.
If you don't like that challenge there are PvE realms.
Frankly, I've had no trouble with leveling my low alts in this expansion.
It's not really like Vanilla at all, since the moment level 90s come to respond the offending griefer can just switch zones and end up somewhere else - or just sit nice and high on a flying mount where you can't get at him.
Yes, it is like vanilla, back when a level 60 would be stomping the lowbies just outside the starter zones and would simply go elsewhere when your also high level buddies showed up. Or you'd have two groups of maxed toons lay waste to an entire zone in an impromptu war. Like so many others you view those days through rose-tinted glasses.
I don't mind pvp, when it's a max level vs a max level, or at least similar - world pvp is not getting auto shot killed by a level 90 hunter on your lowbie toon.
Same shit as when my lowbies were getting one-shotted by level 60's.
Seriously, if you can't stomach that risk don't play on a PvP server - go to a PvE server where you only have to PvP against those you allow to battle you.
This happens every new expansion. The problem is that EVERYONE is trying to level an alt right now. Wait a month and this problem will go away by itself.
Except it didn't happen in Pandaria, there was maybe one zone where I found it hard to finish a quest and that was at the very start as Horde when you jump off the ship to go and fight. Other than that the mob spawns were tuned high enough. And the problem won't go away, as long as there is CRZ, you're always going to have a lot of people.
And this is a problem because....?
You already stated you didn't have a problem leveling in Pandaria. The lower level zones are still not as heavily populated as in the past. You say it's a problem then say that problem didn't happen. Which is it?
Find another zone that is less populated. Work on something else for awhile.
Bliz does want to shake up the server economies, some of which have become quite bloated. Hence the gold sinks, and making some resources harder to obtain.
Except a lot of herbs/mining nodes now are completely zone based instead of being spread across serveral zones. It makes leveling a new profession extremely unpleasant, which some professions already are to a degree, while some are easy some are outright painful to get up to a useful level.
Professions aren't "gimmies". They, too, are supposed to require some effort.
So? There's no reason you can't dally in a zone as long as you like. You aren't forced to go elsewhere once you reach a given level. Sure, your XP gain suffers but if you want to quest longer somewhere there is nothing stopping you other than your own self-imposed headlong rush to a particular goal.
Meanwhile, those who do want to level relatively quickly can do so.
I, for one, do NOT want to return to the endless grind of vanilla.
Orange quests/group quests are gone - there are no longer any quests that are actually difficult from 1-90, that would require grouping up as an incentive for the extra reward.
Right -
because the player base asked for that. People were bitching about how in the older areas you
couldn't do the group quests anymore at the appropriate level because the zones were so damn deserted. Hence, CRZ so there would be enough people for spontaneous grouping if anyone wanted it, and re-tuning quests so less grouping was necessary.
Quests gray out incredibly quickly, the only reason to even stay in a zone anymore is if you're a completionist after the achievement points.
That describes a significant number of players. Even some raiders like to go back for completion points, as it were, in their spare time. Sorry, dude, you're in a minority.
I'm not asking for a return to Vanilla, but something more like TBC or WOTLK would be better - leveling wasn't hard, but it took a little extra time.
You're complaining you can't gear up fast enough for raiding, but you want the days when leveling took a little more time - again, you seem confused here. Do you want to take more time to get where you're going, or less?
They HAVE offered incentives for people to transfer to low population servers, including free transfers, and directing new players to low pop servers, and not enough people took advantage of them. They tried it way you suggest and it wasn't enough. The player base reacted negatively to the idea of closing some of the lowest pop servers. This is the current compromise. If you have a better idea tell Blizzard, they might even implement it if it hasn't failed before and makes some sense.
Just offering a free transfer isn't enough of an incentive. The better alternative is to forcibly merge or even split the higher population servers - an option that is actually coded into the game already, and apparently has been for a long time.
And when that was floated as an idea the player base screamed NO! - for some of the same reasons those incentives failed:
- economy can be severely screwed by the AH players who have enjoyed advanages for years, accumulating massive resources, and the bots
- being forcibly separated from friends you've likely had for years
- for imbalanced servers, why would you ever want to merge or be forced to move? Less chance of getting the world bosses, harder to do dailies, no longer enjoying massive advantages
Blizzard did the right thing with WOTLK and Cataclysm, they made rep grinds infinitely easier and also removed the massive consumable farming that was required. Gaining rep from Tabards was a fantastic idea, since it got more people into dungeons and it meant that any gating was simply a matter of how much time you personally were willing to put in.
And people tore through the content in record time and screamed for more, which then then tore through in record time... the developers can only work so fast.
Now everything is stuck behind rep vendors - behind daily quests that in some cases give absolutely pitiful rep (wtf is with Golden Lotus dailies giving 110 rep with the guild perk?) and you can't do things are your own pace anymore. You do things at the pace the daily quests give you - and you have to do said grind on every character that you wish to raid with.
It's been repeatedly addressed that gearing for raids is not the arduous grind you portray it to be. Raiding really
isn't just about gaining the absolute highest gear, there are other things involved that, as pointed out, have allowed guilds to complete raids this early even without the highest possible gear ever.
The level 90 normals were deliberately made low so the very casual and/or inept player can see the content. Blizzard is trying to make more of the end game and instances accessible to those without L33T raid skills and solid guilds, a trend I, for one, applaud even if I myself play at a higher level than "least common denominator". I don't feel threatened that someone else can see an instance with less effort than I'm exerting to get into the heroic version.
Think about it though. Will you be happy in two months when you're still having to farm those same 'heroics' to get your weekly valour cap?
Yes, I will - because I sample from the buffet that is WoW instead of stuffing myself on just one selection.
Look if YOU want to go after highest level raiding and highest level gear like a bat out of hell that is YOUR CHOICE. A lot of the player base - literally
millions of people - don't have the same drive towards that goal that you do. Not everyone gives a damn about "weekly valor cap". When I feel like working on those sorts of goals I do. And other times I just do dailies or just explore or do something else. I recently spent three months seeing how much gold I could amass from crafting and AH, a task I found just as fulfilling as any raid accomplishment (and has also left me in a position that I simply don't have to worry about gold anymore, even if I choose to buy a few gold sinks or play the black market).
My guild fields a 25-man raid team. Do we get world first? No. But I suspect we have a hell of a lot more fun than you do. We also have a contingent of "support staff" who don't raid but, in exchange for helping the raiders, reaps some of the perks of being in a high-level guild. It's a win-win all around and we all have fun without gnashing our teeth over self-imposed deadlines in what should be
entertainment.
If you don't find chasing the brass ring in WoW fun anymore, or no longer fulfilling, then reconsider your choices, or find a game more to your liking.
it isn't lowest common denominator, it's braindead - it isn't anything about effort, it's about realising that terrible easy content is a bad idea for everyone - it's not a question of feeling threatened either.
Those will be it for some players, they'll never raid or go above LFR - so they'll be farming those dungeons for months. Easy braindead content is great for a few weeks, but these dungeons will have to last for months.
Apparently you are clueless that there are some players, even some long term players, who
never venture into instances. My spouse has been playing WoW for six years and probably hasn't been in a five-man for the last four - just doesn't like them. Still has a toon in Panderia, though. Even so often someone says "That spec is terrible for raiding! Don't you know that? WTF is wrong with you?" Nothing - they're talking to someone who has
zero interest in ever raiding and chooses specs for solo and world PvE play.
"Some" players will never raid or LFR? Try
most players won't. Some of them got a taste with LFR in late Cat and said "yup, not for me" and others weren't even interested enough to try it.
It's rather like PvPer's who simply can't comprehend why players
don't BG or gank others - isn't that the POINT of WoW? No, actually for many it's not. That's not why they play the game.
So... no, I don't think "terribly easy content" is bad for "everyone", especially since there is still plenty of "terribly HARD content" still in the game. Blizzard, like any good capitalist company, is attempting to please ALL its customers, not just 1% (or whatever) who engaged in hardcore raid content.
I'll reply to both points about the valour gear here - you may not need to go for them if you're a casual player/raider, but if you're a progression raider, you have to get every possible upgrade you can.
Then why are there guilds
already completing the highest level raids currently available when it's
impossible for them to have gained "every possible upgrade" at this point?
YOU and your guild are choosing to do this. It's not "required". The top world guilds don't depend just on gear, there's teamwork and being willing to wipe over and over until they get the perfect teamwork and timing to take down the bosses. Sure, they do it easier with the very best gear, but it's not
required if you've really got the chops.
That's why some of us were laying out hundreds of thousands of gold to level professions and get gear.
"Hundreds of thousands of gold"?
Really? Then you aren't doing it right. Seriously.