PST - Episode 81

This week:
0:29 - How do you feel about shared boss loot?
5:12 - Could WoW ever have solo queue ranked PvP?
9:58 - What happened to weekly raid quests?
12:59 - Would having portals available in every city help the issue of everyone just hanging out in SW or Org?
16:38 - Why do we need such a dramatic gear reset each expansion?
23:04 - Do outdoor raids seem less creative?
31:45 - Should Blizzard release a WoW 2 instead of constantly updating WoW?
36:55 - How would you feel about another Quel'Delar-style weapon?

Hardheart Ring would be the "mythical tank ring" you refer too. I got the LFR version week 3 of DS, my co-tank is still toting a 378. I was lucky enough to get a heroic one 2 weeks ago while he was on vacation. Indomitable Pride is still MIA on normal and heroic mode though. I don't even know how much DPS gear we're missing from shared boss loot. I think we might have seen one of most of it though at some point. Now i'm sitting around 175-200 boss kills that are eligible for shared boss loot (1-6 normal & heroic).
So, yeah, current implementation of shared boss loot is far from ideal. What might make it a little better is a larger number of bosses. Granted this only increases odds of seeing the items by a small ammount, but it's something. Another thing would be as lore said, just make shared boss loot a small upgrade as apposed to the "one of your two available items for the tier".
Though now that i think about it, there were a few problems in Firelands as well with seeing loot and lack of options. So yeah, small raid tiers = clusterf#cked loot tables. I think i would much rather have "rofl stomp this filler boss" then have to deal with another loot table that was split between less than 10 bosses where RNG can easily make or break your future progression.

0:29 - How do you feel about shared boss loot?
I will be up front I do really hate random boss drop loot. It wouldn't be so bad but it just seems like RNG just way over delivers it for some (the few it seems) or the more likely way under delivers (the vocal majority). I know how I get may data is bad, but forum complaints is really the only meter I really have to measure on that.


9:58 - What happened to weekly raid quests?
Weekly raid quests were great. But like you said it. Don't change boss mechanics or add in different deals for bosses. It was annoying. Sindy really comes to mind -- a fight that takes everyone paying attention, keeping their spacing, and before a lot of nerfs (ICC I suppose was a buff to player) it took pretty focused DPS. Nothing pissed me off more then seeing 10 people stopping to use the item on Sindy suddenly leading to a wipe. Even when we tried to have one person assigned to do it.. it just seemed someone would refuse to listen and try to channel. (Yeah I raid lead then, so maybe that was the que of frustration or maybe it was just undisciplined raiders)


16:38 - Why do we need such a dramatic gear reset each expansion?
Gear does need to be reset for each expansion. I think the gap does get opened up a little faster then it needs to. In my personal ditch for this question it is rough when it comes to set bonus's and when maybe gems or a mere enchant make an item better then the new one and I am not going to get a new enchant and gem leveling gear in all likely hood unless it just happen along into it.


23:04 - Do outdoor raids seem less creative?
Much love on the bad design part. People might not like it but it is the honest to god truth as far as my opinion goes. Your reason was spot on. It could be done right, but it just hasn't been done right yet. If Blizzard would listen to your reasons then it might be able to hit it closer to right then closer to wrong. I love riding my mounts in an instance.. I just hate seeing the whole thing or it being a rehash.

My guild has been raiding DS for a long time also, and our Tank is missing the Ring only for his Full 397, we are still working on heroics, and on our Alt DS run, the Heardheart ring dropped, and i was lucky enough to be tanking that day and got it.

I felt bad for our other tank that was on an alt healing for the raid but still damn ahppy i got it. =)

Dear Blizzard,

Please do not, for the love of all that is holy, put best in slot trinkets and rings that half the raid needs on shared boss loot with a sub-1% drop chance ever again. Also, do not give certain classes/speccs a 410 option while leaving a 390 item BiS for others (morchok necklace for boomkins and healers vs the BiS heroic staghelm necklace for warlocks and mages).

Yours,

Frustrated raider.

hodir's hallway is prime example of what lore is talking about.
it was quite a surprise the first few times going through it
those big guys and the traps in icc
even in naxx there were surprises and ambushes in construct wing and shades

the trash in fireland and DS are just awful

And yes, this is long, and my $0.02 it has been a while since I actually hopped in to don my tinfoil and ramble.

Q1; Sorry I know this has been beat to death, but still a question on the show.

There are so many woes to the shared loot in ds, and those of us that do 10m only feel the impact more. Granted my guild stopped raiding a month or so ago until mop. For us at least the shared loot had not been favourable to us at all (mind you we have cleared 3x a week with the same 10 people since 4.3). We had no vial of shadows drop at all, 2 str trinkets, 1 tank ring, and a mix of the other rings and such. On top of only ever getting 1 heroic hand of morchok of that because we would get the same one shared loot(which I am extremely pissed as main is frost dk). Some of those shared loot items are bis, a huge jump over some of the others, and shouldn't be there.
In ds the shared loot shouldn't even been there; t11, sure that had plenty of bosses to adjust it well. Or, had the loot per boss not been dropped from 3 to 2 (10m) from t12 to t13. On top of, 5 of the 6 bosses that drop shared loot, also drop tier as well, which further adds to the dung pile. Keeping it at 3 instead of 2 would allow: 1 slot for tier, 1 slot for boss only table, and third to be boss w/ shared table. (or mix for slot 2&3)

Q2;

I agree, a solo queue would make a great stepping stone between the two gaps. Not a whole lot to say on it really but would be interested to see this with the ability to queue with friends. You can already do normal bg's with a group as easy as solo with little impact over all. But being able to do this with friends without the whole having to get an rbg group would pique more interest in rbg. The friends that started out just 3 or 4 pick up more along the way (or want to) and start an rbg team when before all they would do would be an occasional reg bg or arena.

Q3;

NO! NO! NO!!!11! The weekly raid quests was okay for the fact that they gave the emblems, but unless it was just kill x boss it was just a headache. Although, if they make them just kill x boss, it becomes boring and would be mandatory so you have the maximum amount possible. If they did some gimmick it changes the fight which can be fun a time or two, but as you said some weeks it just wasn't worth the time to waste specially during progression. Which leads to more heart, head, and toothaches.
Now if the reward was great, again it would feel mandatory. If it wasn't substantial enough then it wouldn't get done and drama would happen because can only kill the boss once a week now compared to wrath. The currency changes from then to now have a major factor in it as well, since the cap comes into play. If I get capped from raiding, why should I do a weekly that makes my life harder. And if it isn't vp than what would be substantial enough to warrant it? Those bonus loot tokens that are coming? Again that would just turn into mandatory and defeats the whole purpose. Weekly raid quests should just stay dead, or be for content that isn't relevant. Maybe t15 they come out and t14 is in rotation to get people to do them, would be understandable, but anything during a progression tier is just a hindrance. BUT BRING BACK DAILY HEROIC QUESTS!!!!

Q4;

The portals as you said wouldn't solve the problem of just standing in org, I agree on that completely. It would just take that same amount and disperse it else where. Think outlet gates on a river dam opening, still same amount of water but it isn't going far. But there still shouldn't be a reason why they could not be there. Quality of life should be a big concern, and taking away something because too many was just standing in one city, but yet when they are gone it completely floods everyone to one city. Just like the reforger changes in 4.3. There is no logical reason for every major city to not have all the services, granted some specialized things should be localized, but still.
After my guild stopped raiding a while back we all went to other games, myself I chose to go back to eq2 and QoL things like this are real noticeable after picking that up. Every city, town, zone all have a portal device that can port you to any zone. Due to this people actually spend more time out in the "real world" instead of the major city. Every major city has every service as well so getting things done isn't a major hassle. Sure people still stay in cities or the guild housing, that will happen no matter what, but in all honesty I encounter way more people doing things outside of a city at all level ranges more than I do in wow. Mind you, I am on one of the highest pop servers in wow.

Q5;

Gear resets like that need to happen for players that are late so there is some kind of ball park range for catch up. Now in cata that reset was retarded and poorly planned. There is no reason why the full bis gear shouldn't last until the last little hump before raids. Shouldn't be optimial, but like you said it doesn't feel too bad in beta atm. I haven't played it in a bit last time I played was when L89 cap hit. Even by then which I stopped @ like 80% into 89, I had only really gotten just a few odd and end upgrades over my hm ds gear.
It is likely that will probably be 90 and still have some of my 410/416 ds gear on still. That is okay, the flow felt good so far, and a natural progression happens, not a shit storm that happens soon as you step foot into mount hyjal thing again... When tbc came out I was raiding t4 still in most of my t3, and what little upgrades that came before we hit the raids a'runnin. Most t3 wasn't replaced til L67+ anyhow and even then some was still only side-grades. In wrath we was doing 25m < a week after release and most of us was still rocking 4p t6. T6 wasn't really replaced til 77+ and it still felt right. We get to cata and our 10.5 is replaced 20 min in. I think some still have this stuck in their head, assume that is how it is going to happen in mop, and give up on it. I think blizz learned a bit on cata, or at least I hope the dumb cunts did. It should flow better this time around, and if we had the item squish, we wouldn't even notice that much because we would be too rattled to grasp it fully.

Q6;

Open floor raids can be done well, but for instance look at t12. Had there been some linearity to it, at least enough to divide it up some. Then, it could kind of pull you through and have a sense of accomplishment, but it didn't. It just felt like you was starting over after every boss and you turned around to see. The other raid zones are just a big battle field with walls guiding your way. I think they just quite haven't struck the right note for how to fully do a big open raid. Had fl had 2 levels to it probably would have felt better, just the biggest pitfall to open raids like that is trash implementation. FL had less trash overall than some previous tiers but felt like more because of the way it happens. Often it feels like there isn't as much when you cant see it all from the door, and the fact people had just came off of t11 where there was ~20 trash pulls across 3 instances, and you have to get almost that much to get 1 boss in t12. Whereas before it would be sometimes an hour between bosses but it didn't feel like it because was being driven by the walls.

Q7;

There is no need for it for a while, the engine is still fairly capable and has much potential to continue. If they was to just put out wow2 they wouldn't stop making content for wow for a good while. And yeah eq2 never shared the fame that eq1 did, it had a huge following at first, had decent play, but was not very polished. It shouldn't have been released when it was as it was pushed out to put the running against wow.(those of you that don't know, eq2 came out a few days before wow) It had failed because of that, and by all means it isn't or wasn't a bad game, and had many world firsts in eq1 /2 but because they split the focus to make a second one, both suffered. Both are still going eq1 is on xpac #18 and eq2 is on xpac #8 and both still hold a decent subscriber base, nothing compared to wow, but that matters little.
Wow would be free to play completely (sub model+micro-trans still there ofc) and dwindling to nothing before it would make sense to stop producing xpacs and just scrap it completely for wow2. Even if wow2 came out today, you would never get the full subscriber base to follow. On top of that the development time taken to create an entirely new game could have been spent working on doing things to wow now. A new engine doesn't mean a new game has to come out, that can be patched into a current system, new models would be better done here than wow2 as if updated they could roll over at some point later on. Wow2 would never see the height of the market of just continuing to add onto wow unless it was 10 years down the road and wow was no longer supported. Which would mean some other game would have had to captivate the market completely. Rift is coming out with an xpac, cough cough... Trust me 13 years of playing mmo's and in the industry; sequels are rarely the answer, it is better for both business and the consumer to improve one game and keep it going than it is to create a sequel and then convert its subs over without paying dearly.

Q8;
I think along similar lines, could open up a big window for things such as, class quests, cosmetic stuff, etc. Maybe if they did something like that we could finally get away from all these legendaries that have no bloody place in the game.

I know exactly how you feel about solo pvp.

I usually do BG weekends with a friend who doesn't get to play much on weekdays, after having some really bad runs in the weekly BG (WSG iirc) he suggested we just queue for BFG specifically, which we both love. I replied that we'd get no CP if we did that, he retorted that we could just pvp "for fun".

I remember how bizarre and novel a concept that felt.

Also, there are NO max level normal dungeons, the max level dungeons are now heroics, a title they probably don't deserve considering the connotations that has with difficulty.

For shared loot, the root is the same thing that I think causes most of the problems with DS - 8 bosses instead of 12 or 13. Hardheart ring could even have e.g. an extra gem slot with a bit less of some secondary stat such that it was clearly better than the other tank rings, but if you don't get it you get the slightly worse version on theoretical_boss_10 instead. Though really I think given the unique nature of the items trinkets are the one slot you wouldn't want shared loot on no matter what - the differences in trinkets are just too extreme to have luck play such a big factor.

EQ2 took years to surpass EQ1's playerbase and never did get to the numbers that EQ1 had at its height despite the MMO market increasing by about a factor of 20. It was a huge flop in terms of replicating market share of its predecessor though its a somewhat difficult comparison given how rapidly the MMO market expanded in the interim between the release of the two. Still, the tagline from SOE's perspective with EQ2 vs WoW was "the 800 lb gorilla of the MMO market versus the guys who made warcraft3 and starcraft". I doubt even their worst projections could have guessed at how badly that would turn out for them. The reality is that with an MMO (and given that MMOs are just an evolution of MUDs the same thing occurred in those as well) the game is driven in large part by nostalgia after a while. If you remove the nostalgia of the existing game and the attachment people have to the game world and even to individual characters they have played within it nothing really binds them to your followup games even if you attempt to tie in the lore.

Outdoor raids made a lot more sense in Everquest where pulling mobs, CC, and kiting were much larger factors. WoW never really replicated those gameplay elements but outdoor raids used to be some of my favourites. I used to hate claustrophobic trash clears where your only strategy degenerated into tank/heal/dps but WoW is really designed around that so it doesn't matter much from a gameplay perspective whether its indoors or out. It might be possible to make some interesting outdoor trash clears in WoW but not with the standard paradigms - if a tank being on the mob means its melee is no longer dangerous and yet its death for anyone else to tank it and if everything can outrun players with ease the only thing that makes sense is to pile mobs up and tank/heal/dps them down. About the best you can hope for is the occasional need to interrupt.

About solo queue ranked pvp. That's like a Looking for Hc Raid. That's stupid. A "hard mode" gameplay -either pve or pvp- should never be PuGable.

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Originally Posted by Alantor

About solo queue ranked pvp. That's like a Looking for Hc Raid. That's stupid. A "hard mode" gameplay -either pve or pvp- should never be PuGable.

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League of Legends and Starcraft II say "hi"

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Originally Posted by Alantor

About solo queue ranked pvp. That's like a Looking for Hc Raid. That's stupid. A "hard mode" gameplay -either pve or pvp- should never be PuGable.

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As lore says, both say hi along with many other competitive games like shooters as well. I don't know if you fully realize but most of the gaming you do could be considered "pugable." Until you have had an established team for a long time, you are still pugging to a point. You are coming together with people across a cloud that you have probably never met. Not that it really matters on that but any capable person should be able to drop in and fill the job they do.
And as you say pve should never be pugable, so does that mean that I can't hop in a group and be successful with either my 407 ilvl dk, 405 rogue, 404 ret/holy, or my 402 prot war? Just because that you believe that it shouldn't be possible unless you have a full group established? Which again is still a pug unless you are all sitting in the same room beside each other. I'm sorry that maybe your server isn't fully capable of pugging the real content or whatever issue that may be there.
And on PvP. that is player vs player, I mean come on, do you really believe that a person shouldn't be able to join in the rankings on just killing each other because there is no establishment? A solo ranking system would allow a player to hop in to an environment that the object is ranked, and show-case their skills or lack-there-of. This would actually bring out better games and it causes people to actually focus on objectives instead of "lol imma campin gy." Not that RBGs don't have their place, but honestly I would rather just hop in a pug than go through the trouble of setting up a full rbg group now a days. And yes, rbg's can be successful as a pug, our team started off as just a low mmr pug that most of us went on to 2.2k+.
If you was to play some CoD, would you not hop in a hardcore team match because it shouldn't be pugged? No, because the jobs are clear, and any capable person can carry out their job. Win or lose it makes little difference as long as it is good matches. Ranking ladders require 2 extreme poles and a middle ground to work well. If you was to hop in, where would you fall? Somewhere on that curve, of course, but the whole lot is what makes it so. If you had an understanding of "hardcore" gaming that would should make sense. Not meant to flame, but as a whole the game would be better with a system like this, and but ignorance is bliss, I reckon.

Hey Lore, I remember you mentioning something about an 'MMO #2' that WAS successful, but you never elaborated on which one, I'm just curious, which one?

Personally, it sounded like Runescape to me, which didn't add a 2 to its name, but did a major rehaul of its graphics and engine when it went from Runescape Classic to Runescape and did very well after having done so (to my knowledge the subscriber base improved dramatically compared to Classic's, although it did fall into the pitfall that others did when it repeated the process [and removed the Wilderness]).

Solo Queue Ranked would be a great idea in WoW. I stopped playing WoW awhile ago in favor for LoL simply because I felt no sense of accomplishment or real progression in WoW. I dont have time for organized raids and LFR is a loot pinata and running it makes me sick. Doing Battlegrounds is pointless when your have all your honor gear and Rated Battlegrounds are annoying to pug.

In League of Legends I make progress my ELO slowly goes up and it feels good, its something to work on. Yes you have idiots its something you deal with. WoW should think about implementing it. The only problem I see however is proper gear matching and team composition. I mean naturally there going to give each team 3 to 4 healers but certain teams could randomly have the advantage.

I know in RBGs for example (at least when I left) You nearly never want to have two of the same class, except maybe a mage and having all four healers be a different class is best I think. Some Flag Carriers are better then others etc.

So why not looking for hc raid as well? Why not "looking for everything"? We just loggin and join a hundreds of queues while /dance in SW/Ogri. And we never talk to anyone. That's not fun. Hard content should require some kind of organization. That's make you interact with people, that's make the game feel more epic. That's fun.

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Originally Posted by Darthruneis

Personally, it sounded like Runescape to me, which didn't add a 2 to its name, but did a major rehaul of its graphics and engine when it went from Runescape Classic to Runescape and did very well after having done so (to my knowledge the subscriber base improved dramatically compared to Classic's, although it did fall into the pitfall that others did when it repeated the process [and removed the Wilderness]).

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I thought of that one as well. But i think the reason for it's subscriber boost from RS "Classic" to what we have today was because Classic was mostly played in the UK, whereas the "new" (over half a decade old) version reached out more globally as well as at home. So, idk if that counts or not. That game got sent downhill though by goldselling and the developers attempts to counteract it (removing wilderness "pk'ing"). I don't know how they're keeping up these days. I haven't spent more than an hour in one sitting on that game in almost 3 years.

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Originally Posted by Kahmal

Solo Queue Ranked would be a great idea in WoW. I stopped playing WoW awhile ago in favor for LoL simply because I felt no sense of accomplishment or real progression in WoW. I dont have time for organized raids and LFR is a loot pinata and running it makes me sick. Doing Battlegrounds is pointless when your have all your honor gear and Rated Battlegrounds are annoying to pug.

In League of Legends I make progress my ELO slowly goes up and it feels good, its something to work on. Yes you have idiots its something you deal with. WoW should think about implementing it. The only problem I see however is proper gear matching and team composition. I mean naturally there going to give each team 3 to 4 healers but certain teams could randomly have the advantage.

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Stop your train there (jk). To be able to get a solo queue you get a group of people that you don't know that aren't doing a full RBG (mostly non-healers, non-tanks) and you, nothing else; you get a team as good as luck can provide (cause if you get into specifics your gonna hate the queue times so much); almost always one team will have a noticeable advantage. If you want a balanced or something group go usual RBG.

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Originally Posted by Alantor

So why not looking for hc raid as well? Why not "looking for everything"? We just loggin and join a hundreds of queues while /dance in SW/Ogri. And we never talk to anyone. That's not fun. Hard content should require some kind of organization. That's make you interact with people, that's make the game feel more epic. That's fun.

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I understand the feeling, I agree with the epic part (for example 5-man dungeon, that later will be done by 4 or 3 people as the game end content feels so weak), but if people want to play by themselves and they happen to like wow is hard to say: just don't, get out of my game. I don't feel that this is a big amount of effort for Blizzard to do, something in the back-end behind RBG's queues and so of course, small UI elements and the ranking storage and calculations (moar DB's). And could provide a new progression path, maybe the personal ranking should be included in the normal queue and split this queue in tiers depending on ranking.

Really liked your points on the Indoor vs Outdoor raid question. if you want one word to illustrate your point perfectly, I think you could use: Karazhan

I think everyone has fond memories of the instance as a whole, and of all the raids this was one that gave you a very real sense of progression through the instance. Many of the unique touches and flairs in the architectural design were noticed and appreciated because you go to experience them up close. It very much was a Point A -> B -> C -> D etc in brief 5-10 minute chunks.

I bet Firelands took way more design/art time than Karazhan, but Karazhan feels so much better.

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Originally Posted by Lore

League of Legends and Starcraft II say "hi"

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Yeah only SCII is predominately a 1v1 game (at least on the competitive end) and LoL ranked solo queue is usually a nightmare full of idiots (not to mention the competitive players don't care about personal ratings but about how good their team is). Basically like trying to PuG HC raiding (when it's not nerfed). Sometimes it works very nicely but more often than not you end up frustrated.

On the weekly raid quests, I think Lore only really discussed one form of them that there was in Wrath. As you recall, there was the ICC weekly raid quest (go kill the Giant dude, do Sindy different, do DW different, etc.) but there was also the weekly quest you picked up from in front of VH in Dal, the "Sarth must die!", "Patchwerk must die!", etc quests. As a Wrathbaby that got into raiding at the point ToC was released, I enjoyed going back to see a sample of those "old" raids. 9 times out of 10, it was a pug group and you rarely wiped on something like that, but it was another thing a raider had to accomplish in a week in order to maximize their frost badges. As you rightly pointed out, the use of badges/VP is now quite different from that tier, but the idea was good. As in, "here's an incentive to go kill a boss or two in an older raid." Would people put together groups to go down Halfus/Omno/Conclave/etc these days if the reward was right? Probably.