WoW: Warlords of Draenor

[Sharp-kun]

From my side I'm fine with it. I might well buy / sell game time with this and if I do I want it to just work. I don't want to be fucked over by the inevitable people who will want to shenanigans it if they get the slightest chance.

My concern is that I suspect the buyers market will be smaller than the sellers market, but maybe I'm underestimating the number of people with fucktons of gold and overestimating the number willing to sell tokens.

[bilateralrope]

When you list it it goes into the queue and they're sold in the order they're listed at.

Ah, I see that bit now:

In most cases, Tokens are sold in the order in which they were put up for sale; however, there are some exceptions to this, such as when a Token purchase is undergoing verification.

Though there is still the possibility of a long wait to get your gold. Especially if someone dumps a large number of tokens into the system.

Even if it sells for less you get the gold you listed it at.

If they are doing that, what's the point of making players wait for their gold ?

It really sounds like Blizzard are overcomplicating matters, to the detriment of how well this system will fight gold sellers, just so they won't be accused of copying anyone else.

[Grumman]

My concern is that I suspect the buyers market will be smaller than the sellers market, but maybe I'm underestimating the number of people with fucktons of gold and overestimating the number willing to sell tokens.

Then the gold price should go down, both decreasing the number of people buying tokens to sell for gold, and increasing the number of people willing to pay the new gold price. From the sound of it, there is no actual connection between the buy price and the sell price - if you have already listed a token and then the price goes down, you might receive more gold than the buyer paid.

[TheFeniX]

On another note, is it just me or are the 6.1 patch notes pretty underwhelming. Sure, I can now login to my account and level up to a level 20 character.... all so I can see the new twitter integration, Belf models, and more Garrison shit? This is what blizzard considers a major patch in 2015?

Question: what is there to do in WoW right now that doesn't involve the Garrison? Raiding and?

[generator_g1]

Soloing old content? Lol.

Although lore-wise, the story gets interesting....Spoiler

Guldan takes over the Iron Horde and Kilrogg becomes the 1st orc to drink the demon blood instead of Grommash. Also Guldan tells Grommash that Garrosh is his son...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfScVNF ... e=youtu.be

[Grumman]

It's about what I expected, really. You pay 1 month + a few bucks for a token, then try your luck on the AH. I wasn't expecting the specific AH set up they went with, but it seems reasonable enough.

It's more than a few bucks - Blizzard charges 16.50 AUD for 30 days of game time, but 25 AUD for a 30 day token - just over 50% more.

Or to put it another way, if two people start selling gold to fund their game time and a third quits the game in disgust, Blizzard has come out ahead.

[bilateralrope]

It's about what I expected, really. You pay 1 month + a few bucks for a token, then try your luck on the AH. I wasn't expecting the specific AH set up they went with, but it seems reasonable enough.

It's more than a few bucks - Blizzard charges 16.50 AUD for 30 days of game time, but 25 AUD for a 30 day token - just over 50% more.

Or to put it another way, if two people start selling gold to fund their game time and a third quits the game in disgust, Blizzard has come out ahead.

Eve Online also charges more for PLEX than the same amount of time via a recurring subscription. I can't quickly find the exact prices they charge for PLEX, though I don't think the gap is as large as WoW's gap.

[Sharp-kun]

I believe Wildstar and others also do the same, but can't comment on the price gap.

I'm expecting it to be around £15 in the UK when it comes here.

[TheFeniX]

Time to yell at some clouds: Crafting in FFXIV is an... involved process. Since my macros are setup, all I need is time, but it's pretty boring. Anyways, I decided to load up some WoW on my second monitor what with the "play all you want till 20" schtick they got now.

God damn this game is ugly, but whatever. I loaded up my lvl18 Warlock I was messing around with before I quit. Figured I'd get her to 20. My old "Call to Arms: Redridge Mountains" quest was still in my log, so I headed out from Stormwind. Chugging along, I remember how much I loved just running around the areas. So, I hit the border to Redridge and hear the "ttttsh-dun" which is what happens when you flag for PvP. And all I can do is roll my eyes, when that shit used to get me PUMPED.

I'm going to cut off here and say, I like (used to love) WPvP. I had some good times. Getting ganked was dumb, but livable and there was always another way to level. Also, being on Naz: there just weren't that many people around to actually gank you. I could rant at length at the fun I had in WPvP, but whatever.

I pick up a few quests, start killing my gnolls and ?? Rogue out of fucking nowhere. Respawn same thing. But what really pisses me off is..... Actually made me angry was after his name was -Arathor. It's a fucking PvE server. Since, I thought/think x-realm is only PvP-PvP and PvE-PvE, I have to assume he grouped with someone to get onto a PvP realm because he didn't think to roll on one or couldn't hack it for more than 5 minutes. Either way: fuck you Blizzard. Just as I have to deal with gankers because I rolled on a PvP server, PvE players should not be able to x-realm and gank the fuck out of lowbies. I signed up for "PvP happened on a PvP server," PvE players did not. Both forms of x-realm combined with flying in old zones makes me hate the assholes who came up with the idea. I can't even add him to my KoS list because, if I still played the game, I'd likely never see him again. Holy shit, I used to LOOOOOVE hearing "BEEP BEEP BEEP.... BEEP BEEP BEEP" when my KoS sound popped because it was fucking GO TIME!

Oh well, let's go to Duskwood. Oops! More ??s with -notmyfucking server showing up. So, I do a dungeon because questing is out and get into Wailing Canverns. God damn that dungeon is terrible.

[Highlord Laan]

Don't you just love CRZ zones? They improve the game, really. /sarcasm

[TheFeniX]

CRZ is a great concept made terrible by WoW's outdated mechanics and Blizzard's refusal up to update them into modern gaming conventions. They instead keep slapping new coats of paint and ground effects on a '94 Civic. I could rant at length, but what it really comes down to is other players (of either faction) are competition considering the set spawn locations of nodes (both for quest items and farming) mob tagging, and the spawn rates of both.

This is forum info so bear with: but they didn't bother "fixing" the cast-flagging option in WoW until God damn WoD. I ran into this during my first foray into CRZ on my warrior. An unflagged Warlock opened up on me with Fear (that poor opening notwithstanding) and he didn't flag until his cast was completed. I just Berkserked before-hand, and he died in 2GCDs, but I couldn't even attack him until the cast went off. How fucking dumb is that? Now, you can basically only pop-CDs before your opener because starting a cast flags you. Welcome to modern gaming.

Compounding this is one of the advantages of being on a PvP server means that anyone on the opposing faction who is farming what I'm farming is fair game to kill. Titanium nodes spawning in Wrath were fucking warzones. But players on PvE servers can farm all day long with no repercussions.

Even Rift and SWTOR were bad about this. The only modernized MMO that could do well with CRZ is probably FFXIV. Nodes spawn for the player only, even if they spawn in a given location. There is no mob tagging, but getting full credit means you have to do X% of damage to the mob. Really though, the entire game is pretty much setup with the idea in mind that other players in the world are not your competition, so seeing them all huddled around waiting for a spawn means nothing to you because when it does spawn, you get your own. Also, no world PvP which I can't really complain about.

But Blizzard instead likes to live by the dumbfuck "PVP Happened" mantra they and their idiot fanboys love to quote like it's still relevant. But WoD doesn't interest me much right now. If I came back, I'd probably be to level a Lock or Huntard and I'm not doing that in dungeons queues and I'm not going to hang around to get mauled by ??s in every fucking zone I care to level in. I'm not rolling on a different server and leaving behind all the stuff I can make for my alts and I'm not paying Blizzard for the privilege of not getting slaughtered by PvE players.

[Darmalus]

I don't think it's possible to make WoW players stop hating the sight of another player in their questing/farming area at this point. I know that my first reaction on seeing another player is "Just go away!" and is unlikely to change without a ton of work on Blizzard's side to change the fundamental way players interact with the open world and each other.

Which is kinda a moot point, since people in the world is at an all time low these days.

[Zwinmar]

Except in Hellfire which is camped 24/7. I don't think the 100's even bother fighting each other, just camp each others bases.

[TheFeniX]

I don't think it's possible to make WoW players stop hating the sight of another player in their questing/farming area at this point. I know that my first reaction on seeing another player is "Just go away!" and is unlikely to change without a ton of work on Blizzard's side to change the fundamental way players interact with the open world and each other.

I have to disagree. It only takes a few small changes, of which Blizzard is not known for, cobbled together from other games. Just removing the mob tagging system (like they've easily done for some rares in WoD) would be a major start. Right now, if I came back, seeing a group of Horde killing an MoP rare I want means kill them before they down it or troll them with taunts to force a wipe/reset. Even for Alliance, I have no incentive (other than goodwill, HA!) to help them down a Warbringer if I'm not grouped with them before the pull.

Also, Blizzard has done nothing to "force" max level players into the leveling zones. Worse than that, with the focus on Garrisons, they have incentivized staying away from them completely. The only max level characters you see in leveling zones are bored 100s looking for lowbies to gank while they wait in LFR queues or those rare few who try and stop the gankers. Blizzards atrocious patching schedule and "do nothing while you sit in queues" gaming mentality does. not. help. Meanwhile, other games keep their players busy by going wide, not long.

Even before CRZ, I've run into exactly one ?? who didn't try to immediately explode me. Some Priest was MCing my Rogue and using emotes to get me to calm down and hang out (I assume) with her in the blasted lands. I instead gouged the shit out of her to break the MCs and took a dungeon queue the second it popped up because PvP servers had conditioned me that a Red ?? meant I was about to die horribly, usually over and over again. I didn't even really mind that. What I mind now is PvEers being able to gank away with only a "leave party" command in their way from dealing with counter-gankers.

But in a game like Rift, even flagged players had to choose between killing other flagged players or completing the region Rifts for whatever reason they were there for. The opposing factions had to choose between PvE gains or their lust to destroy other players. WoW has nothing of the sort. It's fair game to assume that, in WoW, a red ?? player is there to kill you. That said, seeing Red in Rift meant I only had to be on guard, but maybe 50% of the players actually bothered to attack me. Then again, having a sword and board in Rift meant most DPS classes would just let you alone because tanks were so fucking broken in that game.

Which is kinda a moot point, since people in the world is at an all time low these days.

I saw more than enough people in leveling zones when I was leveling a Belf Pally, Human Lock and Warrior, or a Nelf Monk. The problem is, I viewed those same faction players as competition, obstacles to my leveling experience, rather than a resource to exploit to level faster. Even those leveling solo on Naz before CRZ or our merger with Blood Furnace and Mannoroth was just empty fields with the odd ?? or Horde leveler, after CRZ: I saw players everywhere.

It lead to some great WPvP scenarios. It also lead to some annoyance, mostly from my own faction. Luckly, once I hit around 50, the AOE warrior fear and double-time was usually enough to get away from ??s who couldn't one-shot me.

Except in Hellfire which is camped 24/7. I don't think the 100's even bother fighting each other, just camp each others bases.

Ah, you mean "Honor Hold is under attack!," AKA "Why I unsubscribed from WorldDefense?" Hellfire Penninsula is a case in point on why CRZ was a bad idea even before CRZ was a thing. The choke-point design of the zone could only have been conceived by someone on a PvE server.... or a masochist. Not to mention it's just too quick and easy to get out there. At release it probably wasn't that bad as players fell over each other to reach max level. But leveling there now is next to impossible. I only ever got my DK through that zone, shortly after 4.0 hit during Wrath because people were too busy dealing with all the changes that went on. That and Naz had a dedicated group of Alliance to counter-gank when I leveled my first character through there (still died a lot though).

During the boring parts of "no content for 13 months" that Blizzard is prone to: It doesn't take but 5 seconds to see a shadow appear overhead and
"X's Y hit you for 214523541234523 damage."
"You died."

to appear 1ms later. That zone, by itself, would be a perfect place for Blizzard to test some real WPvP changes. But those lazy fucks can't be bothered to do anything as long as so many people will eat up their shit and lambast anyone who points out obvious flaws with the system.

[bilateralrope]

The only modernized MMO that could do well with CRZ is probably FFXIV. Nodes spawn for the player only, even if they spawn in a given location. There is no mob tagging, but getting full credit means you have to do X% of damage to the mob. Really though, the entire game is pretty much setup with the idea in mind that other players in the world are not your competition, so seeing them all huddled around waiting for a spawn means nothing to you because when it does spawn, you get your own. Also, no world PvP which I can't really complain about.

That sounds very similar to what Guild Wars 2 does.

[Civil War Man]

This is forum info so bear with: but they didn't bother "fixing" the cast-flagging option in WoW until God damn WoD. I ran into this during my first foray into CRZ on my warrior. An unflagged Warlock opened up on me with Fear (that poor opening notwithstanding) and he didn't flag until his cast was completed. I just Berkserked before-hand, and he died in 2GCDs, but I couldn't even attack him until the cast went off. How fucking dumb is that? Now, you can basically only pop-CDs before your opener because starting a cast flags you. Welcome to modern gaming.

From what I've heard, the only things that automatically flag you if you are on a PvE server are entering combat with a flagged NPC, entering an enemy capital, entering a dedicated PvP zone like Wintergrasp, or joining a cross-realm group that switches you to a PvP server. If you actually target a flagged player and try to cast something in any other scenario, the cast will fail and the game will tell you that you need to flag yourself.

But yeah, it's absolutely insane that it took them 10 years to fix something that obvious.

[Lord Revan]

This is forum info so bear with: but they didn't bother "fixing" the cast-flagging option in WoW until God damn WoD. I ran into this during my first foray into CRZ on my warrior. An unflagged Warlock opened up on me with Fear (that poor opening notwithstanding) and he didn't flag until his cast was completed. I just Berkserked before-hand, and he died in 2GCDs, but I couldn't even attack him until the cast went off. How fucking dumb is that? Now, you can basically only pop-CDs before your opener because starting a cast flags you. Welcome to modern gaming.

From what I've heard, the only things that automatically flag you if you are on a PvE server are entering combat with a flagged NPC, entering an enemy capital, entering a dedicated PvP zone like Wintergrasp, or joining a cross-realm group that switches you to a PvP server. If you actually target a flagged player and try to cast something in any other scenario, the cast will fail and the game will tell you that you need to flag yourself.

But yeah, it's absolutely insane that it took them 10 years to fix something that obvious.

at least they fixed it, it was bloody annoying when you had people that were up to 10 or more levels above you trying to flag by accidently hitting them so that they could kill you got kicks (as you were generally too low level to really allow them to gain honor from the kill).

I play (well played) PvE cause I want to be able to choose when I go PvP, not because I'm stupid or a coward, I don't see how attacking a person so many levels under you that they have no chance of winning makes you brave.

[TheFeniX]

That sounds very similar to what Guild Wars 2 does.

I meant to say "MMO that I played." Sorry about that. But yes: I've good things about PVP in GW, such as certain zones down-level your character so ganking isn't possible. And that the game basically gives you a set of PvP gear to use and all you actually work for is cosmetic upgrades. No idea if this is correct or not, but it sounds awesome. Modern gamers in general are used so used to the "time > advantages" bullshit WoW and CoD started in with, the idea of dealing with a level playing field is almost alien to them.

From what I've heard, the only things that automatically flag you if you are on a PvE server are entering combat with a flagged NPC, entering an enemy capital, entering a dedicated PvP zone like Wintergrasp, or joining a cross-realm group that switches you to a PvP server. If you actually target a flagged player and try to cast something in any other scenario, the cast will fail and the game will tell you that you need to flag yourself.

But yeah, it's absolutely insane that it took them 10 years to fix something that obvious.

Blizzard has kind of adopted the "WPvP happens, who gives a fuck" mentality and has spent next to zero time to stop it, bolster it, balance it, or anything related to it. They will however make sweeping changes to a class to balance it for Arenas or Raiding. I've said this before, but there was about a month or two stint in WoW where my Paladin's Avenger's Shield would either interrupt 3 mobs, 1 mob, or no mobs. I literally could not tell you what it would do on a given day. This was all due to the addition of grand crusader procs (free Avenger's Shield) making it into a sometimes spammable silence in PvP and casters were QQing like mad. I didn't PvP much back then, but I did notice Frost Mages were actually avoiding me for once and those that did attack me, I could actually kill them because I could almost completely lock them up. The casters that relied on more hard casts didn't stand a chance.

The problem was: I needed a fucking interrupt for trash (to move caster mobs) and bosses and this was before they added rebuke to prot. So, the patch team just went crazy.

I play (well played) PvE cause I want to be able to choose when I go PvP, not because I'm stupid or a coward, I don't see how attacking a person so many levels under you that they have no chance of winning makes you brave.

The problem is boredom. Blizzard has long stints where the playerbase has nothing to do besides a few sets of dailies and/or cap on points. Dedicated gankers are actually pretty rare. I never see more than one of two out making life Hell for lowbies. Maybe some guild will put together a group out of boredom to gank an entire area. See, one 90 used to be able to lock down a server location unless other 90s came to run him off. On a low-pop, there may be no available counter-gankers, but there were always other places to level (except the choke-point that is Honor Hold).

But now a single 100 can lock-down multiple servers. I used to be able to free quest in Redridge, even more so Duskwood. Can't fucking go near them now. I tried again the other night just for giggles.

[Serafina]

Open-World PvP is not a thing in Guild Wars 2.
The downleveling on maps happens so that you can run around every part of the world without instantly killing everything.

You DO however have server-vs-server PvP-maps with capturable objectives. You always get leveled UP there, to the maximum level. It doesn't adjust for lower-quality gear though - if you're actually level 50 and your gear is a mixture of level 40 to level 50 common and rare gear, then you'll be weaker than someone who is actually 80 and wears level 80 exotic gear.
You also don't unlock any abilities or skill tree abilities you don't have yet either.
Still, unless you want to run solo you can do it with a character who is not yet a maximum level.

Now, for actual battleground PvP, everyone is equal. Everyone is at level 80, everyone has all abilities, everyone has exactly the same gear. Swapping gear is very easy, just a few clicks and you can completely redefine your stat distribution.

Both types of PvP are on their own maps though.


Resource nodes, chests and everything else is unique for each character, so nobody can steal them from you.
Mobs aren't, but as long as you attacked them everyone gets their own unique reward - no shared loot or anything. That also goes for dungeons and world bosses
I guess it's technically possible to kill-steal by killing the mob before the other player can get a shot in, but I've never seen that happen. The only area where having other players around can even be a nuisance is open-world events, because the events typically scale up in difficulty and if your percentage of completion is very small, your rewards are reduced a bit. But even there it's rarely an issue unless there are dozens of players, and then it's arguably more an issue of the system overcompensating and spawning level 83 elite mobs or such.

[bilateralrope]

Mobs aren't, but as long as you attacked them everyone gets their own unique reward - no shared loot or anything. That also goes for dungeons and world bosses

To the point that other players don't even know if anything dropped for you unless you tell them.

I guess it's technically possible to kill-steal by killing the mob before the other player can get a shot in, but I've never seen that happen. The only area where having other players around can even be a nuisance is open-world events, because the events typically scale up in difficulty and if your percentage of completion is very small, your rewards are reduced a bit. But even there it's rarely an issue unless there are dozens of players, and then it's arguably more an issue of the system overcompensating and spawning level 83 elite mobs or such.

My experience is that almost any enemy that could be killed that quickly would respawn quickly enough that it didn't matter. The exception being one heart location where, if the nearby dynamic event chain was pushed towards the total victory position, the enemies you needed to kill to progress that heart were basic mooks that spawned once every few minutes. So, even if you were the only player there, you were still better off doing something else and coming back later and hoping that players had lost. Which they often did by the simple process of being somewhere else when the next event started because they had no reason to wait around.

The players I saw others complaining about were:
- Players close enough to a dynamic event to make the difficulty scale up, but who weren't participating. Some were afk, others were doing something else nearby.
- Players who just run through an area. Sometimes because they caused an event to scale up as they ran through and the code wasn't very good about scaling back down afterwards. Sometimes because they had a bunch of enemies chasing them who would switch target to an unsuspecting player the runner ran past.

[Darmalus]

WoW has dropped from 10 million to 7.1 million, single biggest drop in it's history. Profits are still about the same by tapping into the MMO whales with value added services, and this doesn't even include the game time token (that's next quarter).

Which makes perfect sense. The (non-LFR) raiding community was never larger than 10% even at it's peak, so losing tons of subs in the most raid-or-die expansion yet was inevitable.

[TheFeniX]

Which makes perfect sense. The (non-LFR) raiding community was never larger than 10% even at it's peak, so losing tons of subs in the most raid-or-die expansion yet was inevitable.

It's funny because the "hardcore raiders" (read: people who can follow basic instructions but can also invest the time into dealing with pugs or squirming their way into a raid group) were/are constantly telling other people who wanted in on the action to "git gud" or "you don't have to raid, there's plenty else to do." When it became increasingly apparent, like you said, that WoD is "raid or die" they now want to tell people "quit playing" or "wait, you want Blizz to make it easier for you to get into my content!" But with the popularity of LFR, this was pretty much a given because releasing instanced content is much easier than a living world. Obviously, "quit playing" was a viable response to this.

You should see the reaction to the PvP players. PvP forum posters have usually been pretty whiny, but I actually feel sorry for them now. PvP got shafted even harder than non-raiding PvEers and they are consistently either ignored by the devs and/or belittled by the larger community.

Raiding in FFXIV has to be the weakest part of the game. It's basically a trash pull (maybe) then 12 different phases (which it isn't even fair to call them phases, they are pretty much separate boss fights) all strung out over 15 minutes where one "mistake" means wipe and do it all over again. But it doesn't matter because there's a hundred other things to do in the game and Squeenix is constantly adding content in to facilitate running of "older" content by people who have surpassed it. The Trials (fighting old summons like Titan, Ifrit, Shiva) are much better balanced (except Titan, but that was a release fight) and show how to handle raid style combat without making it banal. Sadly, I won't even see the death of Bahamut (the real ending to the expansion) because FFXIV raiding is balls and I don't have it in me again to become a progression raider.

The community is so fucking spoiled, they were complaining that there would be no more relevant content patches till Heavensward: in 2 months. ZOMG 2 months without content!

Honestly though, I don't think I could ever go back to WoW at this point without a serious graphical overhaul. It's finally come to the point where it's painful to play, which means something coming from me. It was like loading up Galaxies before the servers shut down. SWTOR, Rift, and STO might have looked better (depending) than WoW, but they all suffered from the same "our animations are janky and don't fit with what's going on" style of "whatever works." FFXIV might have glacial combat, but I'm spoiled by the way the graphics and animations work together. Back in Cata, when Haste-Frost was still viable for Dual-Wield DKs, my character always looked like he was having seizures. The updated characters models clash terribly with the rest of the world as well.

[Darmalus]

But with the popularity of LFR, this was pretty much a given because releasing instanced content is much easier than a living world.

I think has less to do with it being easier and more to do with the head honchos at Blizzard being hardcore raiders, so they want more and bigger raids, and they have the power to make sure all other content will be sacrificed for that goal. LFR is popular in the sense that the only game in town is popular, it's LFR or depart, and it looks like a lot of people picked the second option.

[TheFeniX]

Are current raids since Dragonsoul any more expansive than Firelands and before? While I bet the desires of the developers had a lot to do with it, they were devoting resources into an area few people were actually using. LFR opened up that story progression to the masses. The problem is that LFR became a crutch. WoW would have died years ago if raiding was the emphasis because the majority of the playerbase would never have seen it, because they either couldn't or wouldn't bother dealing with raiding guilds, thus would have had nothing to do.

But Blizzard loves this, like you said, "you're using it because we forced you to use it, so you must like it" style of bullshit with Garrisons and LFR. Since the success of Dragonsoul LFR, that's where they've wanted to push the game, so that's what they offered.

[Darmalus]

Are current raids since Dragonsoul any more expansive than Firelands and before? While I bet the desires of the developers had a lot to do with it, they were devoting resources into an area few people were actually using. LFR opened up that story progression to the masses. The problem is that LFR became a crutch. WoW would have died years ago if raiding was the emphasis because the majority of the playerbase would never have seen it, because they either couldn't or wouldn't bother dealing with raiding guilds, thus would have had nothing to do.

Current raids tiers are easily double the size of Firelands or DS, and it's clear from the results this is where they are pouring the money and time. Like a perfectly realistic solid gold statue of a turd, I may argue it was a terrible idea, but I wont deny the time, money and talent that went into realizing that bad idea.

I've had virtually every friend who came back and later depart a few weeks after hitting level cap this expansion say basically the same thing, "This is it?" and a lot of them were actual raiders, but raiding alone was not enough it seems. The few who are still around seemed to fill their days with older content they never finished, having largely abandoned WoD except for raiding a few hours a week with their guild.