The blogging communities thoughts on Ulduar
Over the last few weeks the feral druid blogging community has lost 2 of its greats, flyv and karthis, because they say the game is to easy and no longer holds enjoyment for them. Most of the blogs I follow have posted similiar comments about how they feel blizzard is cheating the hardcore raiding community with its focus to this "we want everyone to see content" kick.
One of the most positive and non-controversial ones ones was posted by marino at http://omen-of-clarity.blogspot.com/...illed-pve.html
In the comments for that post he stats something that finally made me understand my own feelings.
When you kill something in hard mode it is not only something you have already killed in hard mode in 10 man, but also because you have killed that boss in 25 man on easy mode. Here are his exact comments
This made so much sense to me. That is why I am feeling upset at blizzard, not because the game is easier, but because the thrill of knowing you worked your butt off for this kill and it took days and days of constant attention and 1% wipes, kills are no longer rewarding.
Even lore posted on the topic but from a different perspective: http://lore.ftwgaming.com/2009/06/08...uined-raiding/
As a healer pre 3.0 you had to think, A LOT. Whats my mana at, how much time is left in the fight, when will my mana pot come of cooldown, how much healing does a person need, and all this lead to the end result of choosing which rank of the heal to use. Now you spam the max rank of a heal and the only though process is who gets the heal (which even then is usually shaman targets a melee for chain heal and they all get it, one other person on group healing, everyone else spaming an assigned tank).
Lore commented on sunwell, but even in sunwell shaman were juggling which rank of chain heal to use.
One of the most positive and non-controversial ones ones was posted by marino at http://omen-of-clarity.blogspot.com/...illed-pve.html
In the comments for that post he stats something that finally made me understand my own feelings.
When you kill something in hard mode it is not only something you have already killed in hard mode in 10 man, but also because you have killed that boss in 25 man on easy mode. Here are his exact comments
Quote:
The thing with hardmode is that you can as previously not kill anything till the boss is down. But there is always the choice made to take a look at it later and do it easy mode after a few hours of wiping.
Now this is where the thing is. Getting a boss down on easy mode is no accomplishment. A trained monkey can do it. Killing the boss after on hardmode offering the same (maybe 1 better item) loot does not EVER feel the same as then you kill a boss for the first time pre hardmodes (Vanilla & TBC).
So taken from the equation is the feeling of the first kill, the feeling of the first real kill. Killing something you slaved your ass over was THE one thing hardcore raiders went for. That has been taken from the game.
Now this is where the thing is. Getting a boss down on easy mode is no accomplishment. A trained monkey can do it. Killing the boss after on hardmode offering the same (maybe 1 better item) loot does not EVER feel the same as then you kill a boss for the first time pre hardmodes (Vanilla & TBC).
So taken from the equation is the feeling of the first kill, the feeling of the first real kill. Killing something you slaved your ass over was THE one thing hardcore raiders went for. That has been taken from the game.
Even lore posted on the topic but from a different perspective: http://lore.ftwgaming.com/2009/06/08...uined-raiding/
As a healer pre 3.0 you had to think, A LOT. Whats my mana at, how much time is left in the fight, when will my mana pot come of cooldown, how much healing does a person need, and all this lead to the end result of choosing which rank of the heal to use. Now you spam the max rank of a heal and the only though process is who gets the heal (which even then is usually shaman targets a melee for chain heal and they all get it, one other person on group healing, everyone else spaming an assigned tank).
Lore commented on sunwell, but even in sunwell shaman were juggling which rank of chain heal to use.
Total Comments 17
Comments
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I'm surprised that Blizz nerfed downranking which was a huge part of how healers managed mana. Then the entire snowball of effects where now they keep trying to nerf healers, while saying we're trying to make it more fun for you!
It's kind of like the law of unintended consequences is all over this expansion (the removal of crushing blows and shield/non-shield tanks being another fun one).
In a sense hardmodes and hardcore raiding guilds are another unintended consequence. The easy mode leaves an out that dillutes the pool of willing hard mode raiders, whereas before if you wanted to see the endgame, you didn't have that out.
However, by Blizz's admission they're still experimenting with hardmodes. Form what I've seen the hardmodes don't change the boss fight much and that makes them seem unsatisfying (no I haven't done any of them yet).
Take Thorim for example... all it is is more magic damage and Thorim does more and more damage.... epic? Yogg is the reverse, so you get weaker and weaker with each hard mode... but the fight doesn't actually change.
I'm not sure if Blizzard sees that as a problem or how different they can make hardmodes from easy modes. But if that's the mode they're going to take to satisfy hardcore raiders (which I'll admit, I'll never be) and casuals alike; then they need to make the fights sufficiently different, not just... boss deal 100% more damage.Posted 06-08-2009 at 01:38 PM by Muffin Man 
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Something I find rather unusual is that blizzard is hemorrhaging players right now.
It's not immediately apparent nor numerically significant in the face of unused but active subscriptions. (Note: I consider a non-raiding player an unused subscription in light of Blizzard's efforts to make everyone raid.)
A friend of mine who went MMO hopping months ago because he just can't succeed at wow, recently noted that the callcenter he works at had the recent trend of ditching wow for other MMOs. He also noticed Age of Conan, which is his current MMO of preference, had a recent inundation of wow refugees who were bored of WoW raiding.
In my previous guild, we more or less lost a handful of our best players early on in naxx to just flat letting their accounts expire. Those people actually reactivated to "try" ulduar and did the same thing. one month to the day they were gone.
If not for Criss throwing me a rope, I probably would've bailed on wow, too. My guild collapsed as a raid guild because people frankly, weren't interested enough in raiding to show up to raid. The question that needs to be asked is - why don't people want to raid?
If I had to blame something for being the problem, I would blame the RNG.
Blizzard has designed the entire game to come to a needle point balance on the RNG. The RNG can decide "oh, you die" on every boss fight in ulduar, without exception. Razorscale, of all ultra trivial bosses, has gibbed me for 50K damage in 1.2 seconds before on 25 man. Kologarn can pretty much kill a player at will simply by clipping them with an eyeblast at the same time he sweeps the room. Steelbreaker can just decide the tank is going to die the same way Brutallus used to.
Feeling utterly helpless even if you do everything right and spend hours and hours preparing for a specific aspect of a raid is never a good feeling.Posted 06-08-2009 at 02:18 PM by Alent - Dark,
Both Karthis and Flyv were in my guild. Both myself and the second guild leader (my girlfriend) left because we were simply burnt out. And we were not burnt out because we could not do it anymore, we were just bored. Achievements and hardmodes just were not the same, I remember working on Sarth 3D, and when it was over, there wasn't any yelling on vent, there was, okay let's hand out loot and go to Naxx.
In TBC I remember working to Illidan, and our first Vashj kill, when those bosses died it wasn't the end of the night, but the night was over, no more raiding was done, but we spent hours on vent and in guild chatting, doing easy stuff because we wanted to spend that time together. Wrath, you logged in to raid, you logged out at the end of the raid, there is no fun 5 man content, dailies are a grind you did for rep if needed and once you were full exalted you were done. It wasn't just wrath raiding that is hurting wow, but the feeling of working together and accomplishing feats. I don't know how to explain it, but the bonds formed in vanilla and TBC don't seem to be as strong in Wrath.Posted 06-08-2009 at 02:44 PM by Vakfaroosh 
- I KNEW!!! someone on tankspot was from QSS !!! I just could not remember who
Posted 06-08-2009 at 03:15 PM by Darksend - Vak - the bonds are hurting because there's no synergy with CC abilities.
laugh if you want, but it's the one thing that tanks are truly dependent on DPS For.Posted 06-08-2009 at 03:20 PM by Alent - You could also argue that the simplification of the threat came also breaks these bonds. There are so few fights where threat matters, that people are surprised when they pull aggro these days =\
Posted 06-08-2009 at 06:51 PM by Muffin Man - I always find it somewhat amazing that it is expected that Blizz continue to make a game that keeps people busy hours and hours a day, days and weeks a year. Is it not possible that along with the feelings you describe feelings of boredom can be ascribed to five (?) years of playing the same game; are you all the people you were five years ago?
Posted 06-09-2009 at 01:51 AM by Shortypop -
Shorty got here before me but I agree. If you play any game intensively and repetitively for several years, you're going to get bored of it. I think when you've completed all the content several times - and there is a hell of a lot of content - you've "finished" the game in a sense. Nobody complains about that with a PS2 game or what have you but for some reason everyone expect WoW to be interesting and new forever and it's just not realistic unless you play quite casually or you play more slowly than Blizzard can introduce new content (which probably amount to the same thing).
Following on from that, the one thing that self-proclaimed "hardcore raiders" seem to miss is that not everybody has the time, or the willingness to commit the time, to downing hardmode bosses and getting the realm firsts. You are a small percentage of players and, as with anybody who's worked hard on a pet project, Blizzard want to allow as many people as possible to experience and enjoy what they've created. I don't think there's any shame in that. Besides, there is a lot more to the game than raiding and while some people choose to focus very strongly on that, there are many other ways to entertain oneself in WoW. Blizzard, I think, take that into account where very keen raiders might be a little more blinker-visioned. To take that wounded attitude towards the way Blizzard choose to make a specific area of content available is really not all that attractive, especially given that in order to finish off all the bosses in Ulduar you're going to be available to play for a significant number of hours a week in the first place.Posted 06-09-2009 at 03:24 AM by Jalousie - To summerize: They left the game on burnout. People are leaving wow after playing it for a very long time. Repetitive? Perhaps.
What is failing to be realized here, is if blizzard can get fresh players (i.e. more like a dialysis then a bleed out) those players are going to be missing out on much of the great stories of the past....Nefarion, C'thun, Kael'Thalas, Illidan...the list goes on.
In which case, they want to see 'the new stuff.' Naxx is a rehash, lower then kara. There was reasoning for this and it was sound. Many casual players were caught in a sort of confused jealousy daze as to what it was all about when hardcore raiders in classic staggered out saying "....patchwerk....nooo." If you weren't one of those 0.1% that were the "in crowd" it really really sucked. Ulduar is the real first tier of raiding. Anywhoo we are getting offtopic. Blizzard needs to get fresh accounts in the game because they know people won't last forever. They won't even hang around unless they get to see something cool or feel that they are accomplishing something.
I can't speak for blizzard though, just good planning.Posted 06-09-2009 at 08:23 AM by Conreeaght -
OMFG Flyv is gone too?!?!?!?! I didn't know that. Man as a druid tank it was hard enough losing Karthis but Flyv too. A lot of knowledge that was handed out freely and respectfully is gone. I will miss them.Posted 06-09-2009 at 12:12 PM by Sylvaneart -
Posted 06-09-2009 at 12:24 PM by Darksend - Although I'm nowhere near your level of accomplishment, I sympathize. Our fairly relaxed group defeated Mimiron 10 last week. This week I didn't make the effort to attend Vejax attempts because the only motivation to do so is he drops a nice looking robe. When WLK was released I couldn't be bothered and took a break. I came back, did the boring leveling, then got "Champion of the Frozen Wastes" in a couple of weeks and was bored. Ulduar is becoming boring only a month after its release.
I think specific problems with Ulduar are the 10/25-man design and the design of hard modes.
The fact that you can do 10-man and 25-man, and 25-man has one tier better loot, trivializes the game. It means that 25-man is the "real" raid and 10-man is some kind of training ground, or what you do if you have an A team and some passengers in your guild. By the time you try the 25-man you've practiced in in 10-man.
The problem with hard modes is that they're contrived and yield only slightly better loot. This is like saying "I'll do a marathon while carrying an egg on a spoon". Well why bother? The normal mode is seen as the true focus of competition. The Strat 45 run or the ZA bear were good hard modes because the thing that was hard was clearly seen as success, and the easier way through the instance clearly involved "not making it" in some way.
So, I think Blizzard kind of botched it. I'm all in favor of 10-man raiding and seeing the content, but I think the goal of killing hard bosses should be "out there" and not devalued with the 10/25 gear mismatch and completely optional hard modes. If I was designing Wrath I'd make it like this:
- 25-man raids would be PuG-friendly and give abundant blue loot and badges.
- 10-man raids would be an elite activity where you kill the same bosses with fewer people.
- Hard modes would be optional harder bosses or timed runs, not the presence of adds or handicaps.Posted 06-09-2009 at 01:16 PM by Machus - Well I'm probably not qualified to really comment either, only been playing WoW for about 2yrs. But I agree with much of what has been said. When I first started playing, long before I even knew what raiding was I'd see people decked out in purple and think, wow I want to be them.
Even pre-3.0, there was alot more team work required, you had to CC at times, tanking was much harder than it is now. Now, its rush in, aggro as many as you can and AoE the crap out of everything. Kind of sad, cause I told my wife, you wait and see CC will make come back, things will ramp up. I'm not that far into 25man Uldar(8/14), but even I realize these fights are not how I'm sure old school raiding was. Everyone in Dalaran is decked out in epics and the quality of players is diminishing. My point simply is, I personally like to earn things. That's not to say we have not in post 3.0, it just seems like the learning curve is smaller.
Tanking use to scare me at times, cause I'd goto Shattered Halls and have to hold aggro on 6 mobs at a time. Now in Naxx we pull 2-3 groups at once and burn them like its nothing. I don't know maybe things will improve.*shrugs*Posted 06-09-2009 at 01:55 PM by dirt - I have to think much of the problem many long time raiders have with current raid content boils down to WoW burnout from years of playing combined with misty memories of raids gone by and a touch of masochism thrown in. Yes it's impossible to recreate the vanilla days of tirelessly farming for consumables, whipping a core of 40 players into raiding shape, and finally getting them all on the same page on the umpteenth night of attempts to get that first kill. But I also remember the laments many raiders had when TBC came out: how Blizzard and ruined raiding by removing 40-mans, that it was no longer any fun, and how farming the mats for the 12 flasks and/or elixirs they used was what kept them playing the game. Yet plenty of players had a blast in TBC raids. Wrath is proceeding the same way but with a new set of players who either find the changes to raiding don't suit them or are burning out and ready for the next challenge.
Me, I'm having a blast in Ulduar.Posted 06-09-2009 at 04:03 PM by Mammoth - I'll admit to never having heard of the two druids you mention but I read the blog you posted and one line stood out "Also, part of my disenchantment is that WoW became too much like responsibility."
So many good players, become leaders and with that comes the time and responsibility very few people seek out. In a much lesser sense I went through this with my old guild when I was MT and part-time RL. I felt I had to log on every night and as soon as any game becomes an unwanted second job it's time to either step back or quit - neither are an easy thing to do!
I'm impressed that despite his obvious joy of raiding he's taken the step to quit and wish him all the best; maybe you've spoken to him, but I don't get the same impression from his blog as I do from yours.
I'm lucky enough to be in a guild that raids 3 times a week and yes while I log on most evenings for half an hour if nothing's going on that appeals I log - read a book, watch TV. Like many "casuals" I'm glad that I don't have to farm mats for flasks on my offnights and that with a max 9hour raiding schedule a week we can experience the game we enjoy.Posted 06-10-2009 at 01:23 AM by Shortypop - I have one scheduled raid a week, four hours, with a group that I've raided with for years now. I no longer raid anywhere near what I was, six nights a week and then some more on some daytimes.
None of that is because of what Blizzard did. I mean, I look forward to my raid every week.
IMO, what WoW needs is something nonraid centric. The high end raiders are going "there's nothing left to raid" while the mid and lower end raiders are still playing through the content. I hope 3.2 brings back Magister's Terrace 2.0, the one HARD 5man, something to do that isn't raiding.Posted 06-10-2009 at 05:37 AM by Finelle - Yea, a hard 5 man with a reason to run it though. MrT had the mount and the orb. It also had some drops that were pretty dam good even in sunwell gear (that dam expertise trinket that took 6 months of running that place to finally drop for me).
None of the 5 mans offer that anymore.
Anyway, http://feralaggression.wordpress.com...eps-pve-alive/ wrote a direct responce to all this. To summarize (in his own words):
Could not agree more with these points. They are spot on.Quote:My thoughts on what Blizzard could do better:
- You’ve casualized instances for more players to experience it. Fine. Then make more than 1 hard mode only encounter and if you’re going to make it geared towards hard core raiders, make it extremely hard core. Don’t just make it hard because you have 1 hr to work on it. Make it near impossible (or just flat out impossible, lol C’thun?) and let those who want to ram their heads into a wall for 6 months do it.
- Make hard modes more worth while. There are few and far gear upgrades/reasons that I would want to pursue 25 man hard modes and only a few 10 man hard mode items that are worthwhile. If you want people to do hard modes, you have to make it worth a lot more appealing.
- Differentiate gear between 10/25 & hard modes. There is nothing more annoying than seeing a casual player running around in the same gear as me or even better gear than me due to RNG. Reward those that invest more time than others.
- Stop nerfing content on the fly every week. Let people learn and in the process become better players. Simplifying content constantly is reducing the talent pool of PVE players.
Posted 06-10-2009 at 06:02 AM by Darksend
