Pandering to the Casuals: On Raiding.

"Welfare epics. Morons and slackers being in full Ulduar gear. Back in the day, you were ready for Molten Core if you were wearing good blues. If you were in half epics you had respect. If you were fully purple, you were a god of war. I know that Kungen, main tank of the world-renowned guild Ensidia, still makes money just by sitting in Orgrimmar. People will swarm him and trade him gold. He can make thousands an hour. Because he's pro. Because they know he's better than they are. Because he is hardcore and can do the fights.

Nowadays, who knows. Anyone can do those fights. Any loser can get fully naxx geared within a few weeks of being level 80 if they just join some raids. Ugh. Blizzard is pandering to the casuals and getting rid of hardcore raiding."

People who honestly believe things like the fictional quote above are stupid. OK? I've said it. It's facts. It was, perhaps, true before 3.1, when Naxx-25 was easily doable with a pickup group, and anyone could fairly easily achieve best-in-slot gear--a time when really you were only impressive if you had done Sarth+3.

Sarth+3 was difficult, but it was not necessary to do it with three drakes up. In fact, it was puggable like nobody's business. Only the best of the best did it with three drakes up.


Hardmodes are how guilds define themselves in Wrath. Many, many guilds have killed Sartharion, but with three drakes up? That's much more difficult. Only a select few have done so.
But every raider has SEEN Sartharion, if not with 3 drakes up. Thus, the content is exposed. It's possible to do things many, many ways--which means variety, which keeps things interesting. I, personally, have not done Sarth+3, but I have done Sartharion and think that with 3 up he'd be very interesting.

This is part of Blizzard's new and overwhelming philosophy to show everyONE everyTHING. Naxx is well-regarded as one of the best raid dungeons Blizzard has created. When it was released in 2006, only a small fraction of the population had seen it--I was not one of them. And yes, I would have enjoyed doing it when it was difficult, required 40 people, and intense strategies, but I am glad that I HAVE seen it at level 80, and that I can now properly imagine the difficulty of the fights.



The best example I can think of for this is Flame Leviathan. You see FL PuGs everywhere, because ten (heck, five) fresh 80s can beat it--with zero towers up, or just one.

Tonight I did FL+4, or attempted it. I was on the chopper. It was hectic. Not only were there two or three kinds of fire to not-stand in (Thorim's beams, Hodir's Beams, Mimiron's Fire), there were some powerful adds and some simply crazy outgoing damage. We wiped three, maybe four times, and we just wanted to Get It Done so we one-shot FL+2.

Yet FL+2 still dropped hardmode loot! Pandering to the casuals! FL+2 is very very easy for any group who's done FL and is not a primordial fish-beast. High ilevel epics for something that any old PuG can do? I'm cancelling my account.

Oh wait. I remember now. I remember that I'm not doing that. Because even though I got some hardmode items (well, technically the enchanter got em--none of us needed Twirling Blades) and the achievement for FL+2, I did NOT get what I actually wanted. Orbit-uary is required for Glory of the Ulduar Raider, and my 310% speed Rusted Proto-Drake. If you skip FL+4, you won't get the achievement. Therefore, the escalating nature of the rewards system is actually well balanced (The only weakness, I think, is that FL+3 only drops a single conquest badge more than FL+2, nor does it count for Glory of the Ulduar Raider)

And like I say, anyone that believes that Blizzard is dumbing down content and making it easier for people to do things... well, have they done Yogg+0? Every top end raiding guild I've read about, such as Fusion, has said that it's a well-tuned encounter that is entirely doable but requires incredible coordination and skill--as did Sarth+3, as does Algalon, and to a lesser degree: FL+4. A pickup group, even a skilled pickup group with vent, cannot immediately one-shot FL+4. We probably could have done it in another few attempts, but we wanted to speed on by to do Razorscale/Ignis/Deconstructor. Neither can ANY pickup group do Yogg+0, and very rarely Yogg+4.



Which amounts to the genius of Ulduar. I hope that Icecrown's 31 bosses have multiple levels of difficulty--two or three of them, at least. I'm okay with having a Super Easy Intro Boss or two with no harder modes, and I'm also okay with one or two Only Hard Mode bosses--such as Algalon. Overall though, I'd prefer that most of them have a variety of difficulties such as Freya, Yogg-Saron, Flame Leviathan, and Sartharion. I'll also take "Activated" Hardmodes that significantly alter the fight, such as Thorim, Mimiron, and XT-002. I think that Ignis' hardmode (Kill him in <4>

Next time I'll either talk about leveling, or general tanking strategy, or maybe glyphs, or possibly 4.0, or more on my Glory of the Ulduar Raider runs, or even professions. I don't really know.

Thanks for reading,
-Hyperiom

PS: I've decided that this idea of "I'm going to do EXACTLY THIS tomorrow" doesn't work, because writing these few paragraphs above killed me when I realized there wasn't much to write. Or maybe I had a more cohesive thought process two or three days ago when I thought I wanted to write this. I'm not sure. But I have to write what I'm passionate about at the moment of writing or else I get this post above, which I don't think was that great. Whatever. We'll see--but I WILL write something tomorrow.

-Hype

Daily Quests--how to make them more FUN!

Preface: We all know daily quests. In Burning Crusade, daily quests were the thing to do. The cap was twenty-five a day, and I hit that near cap every day. Why? Well, I would do thirteen or so on the Isle of Quel'Danas (at first for an insane 3000+ rep a day, then for an insane 120+ gold a day), then another four or five for Skyguard Rep, trying for an Aether Ray--then another five or six doing Netherwing dailies trying to get a netherdrake (that was hell, so I quit when I got my Aether Ray. I finally got a netherdrake about a month ago).

Blizzard cut down on daily quests in Wrath. The two Sholozar Basin factions, Oracles and Frenzyheart, only have 3 a day, granting ~1700 rep. The Tuskarr have 3 a day, granting 1500 rep.

But now they're making a bit of a comeback. In the Crusader's Camp, not only do we have people like me (too lazy to have done all the Home City factions in 3.1, 3 days left till Crusader title) doing their four dailies for City/Sunreaver rep--we've also got people doing 4 dailies from the Argent Crusade (again, rewarding sunreaver rep), and for those that are Exalted with Sunreavers, another few.

I don't like these quests very much. They aren't that fun. Jousting has always been clunky to me, and I do it 4 quests a day. It's slow. I cast shield breaker, and about a full second after they take damage do their shields fall off. That doesn't mean it's difficult. It's dangerously easy. It's not challenging, just boring.

Boring is a very, very bad thing for the most popular MMORPG ever.

==========Now, on with the show!==========

I was doing these disliked daily quests, executing my nifty little circuit which involves using my normal weapon for "Cultists=>Threat=>Converted Heroes", then switching to a lance and doing "Both Corprethar Quests=>Champions=>Valiants".
It's fairly efficient. Goes in a big circle, only swaps weapons once, and it's not frustrating or anything. Just dull.


The only problem with this circuit of "equip weapon for first three, use lance for last four" is that damned quest where you get a special sword for your City-Faction Champion, which requires you to scramble around Northrend. It's an annoying quest, or rather an annoying set of quests, and I came to realize I would actually be significantly less annoyed if there was LESS variation so I could plan a single circuit.
Then I realized... less is fine and all, but what if there was MORE?

What if there was more variation?

What I mean is, I know that my first stop is either Grizzly Hills to kiss frogs, the dam by Dalaran to get Winter Hyacinths, or Lord Everblaze to get an Everburning Ember. If there were ten options, including one that's in Icecrown, and therefore fast to complete, I'd be more immersed (there are only 3 Blades Fit For A Champion in all of Northrend?) and have more fun doing it!

Better yet, if there was more variation in the entire circuit. IE, for the "Kill XX scourge". It used to be ANY scourge, now it's either 10 converted heroes or 15 cultists of the damned, depending on whether it's a City-Faction questgiver or an Argent Crusade quest giver, respectively.
If both those questgivers, City-faction and Argent Crusade, rotated in a pool of (say) "15 vrykul; 10 converted heroes; 15 cultists; 5 frost wyrms; 20 of any scourge; 10 nerubians", I'd be more intrigued.
Or if "Threat From Above" drew from a pool of "Giant Frostwyrm + Cultists; Big Crypt Lord; Pair of Necromancers; Thaddius-Type-Zombie; Huge Gargoyle" as the named elites. Heck, I can even think of the abilities on all those mobs off the top of my head.


When I think about it, I would prefer even more variation. That would be hugely more interesting. I hear Icecrown Citadel, the raid, is gonna have at least 31 bosses (Compared to ulduar's 14 or naxx's 15 or Crusader Colliseum's 5) which makes it the largest raid in the game by a VAST amount. In fact, it's such a vast amount that Blizzard created a raid-extension feature in 3.2 so it'll get heavy use in 3.3: Icecrown Citadel, because only a few Top-50 guilds will be able to clear out the thing in JUST ONE WEEK.


I think it's genius. Hardcore raiders will have months to butt their heads against this content without Blizzard having to put up artifical blocks like they're doing with the Colliseum and what they did with Sunwell. My biggest hope is that the bosses follow a gentle curve upwards in difficulty, similar to what Ulduar does (the Seige being puggable, the Keepers being difficult, Yogg being VERY difficult, and Algalon being one of the hardest in the game) so that
=>Casuals will see some of the earlier content up to maybe 1/3 of the way through (10 bosses),
=>Middling-level people we see the harder content up to maybe 3/4s of the way through (20-odd bosses)
=>Hardcore people will see it it all.

The best part is, when you factor hard modes into it (espeically multiple-level hardmodes such as Sarth, Freya, Flame Leviathan, and Yogg), this will be a huge expanse of content.
=>Casual-level raiders might see ten bosses and one of them downed on hardmode (obviously the first, very puggable boss, like Flame Leviathan)
=>Middling-level raiders might see 25 of the bosses and maybe 5-10 of those downed hardmode.
=>Hardcore raiders will see 31 of the bosses and most of them (say 20) downed on hardmode, and 5 of them downed on "semi-hardmode" (ie freya with two adds, yogg+2, FL+3)
=>The 1337357 0|= 7|-|3 1337 * (Ensidia, Premonition, Stars, Fusion, etc) will have all 31 downed on their hardest modes (Such as Yogg+0, which when last I checked, less than 20 guilds worldwide had killed)

You think I'm on some crazy tangent, right? WRONG. I'll talk about the above two paragraphs with more detail related to raiding later. Right now, I'm talking about daily quests.

See, I think this giant variety in bosses, be it the variety of 31 bosses, or the variety of being able to fight Flame Leviathan a ton of different ways (4 ways of fighting FL+1 alone) is genius, and Blizzard obviously agrees--they're creating it like that, after all!

So Blizzard, I ask you from the bottom of my heart:

I know it's a fair chunk of work to do this, making each daily draw from a pool. But a pool of three or four--even two--different quests per daily would be so refreshing. The evidence shows that you, as a company, enjoy doing this, having a variety of things to do (be it multiple tactics on a boss with multiple levels of difficulty, or dual-specs for more flexible raiding compoistions, to these 3 rotating get-the-sword quests in Icecrown). It keeps the players coming back and reinforces the idea (that you seem to subscribe to) of "The Game Starts At The Level Cap". So, in patch 3.3, I would love it if the next set of three or four dailies each give you multiple options, every day. It reduces the monotony, and would be excellent.

-Hyperiom

PS: *Leetest of the Leet.
PPS: Next post, which will probably be tomorrow/day after, I'll talk in more detail about my thoughts on Ulduar and how it's pretty much the best design for a raid ever.