PST - Episode 96

This week:
0:32 - How will challenge modes work with hit/expertise rating?
3:28 - Will high-population realms not have cross-realm zones in MoP?
8:12 - Is MoP worth trying if I haven't played WoW in a while?
13:52 - Could we see different kinds of challenges than just time trials?
17:44 - Should challenge modes have a queue system?
21:41 - What do you think of the idea of challenge mode raids?
27:12 - Could level 90 challenge modes stay relevant after MoP?
32:07 - Does Paragon's switch to 10 man indicate the death of 25-man raiding?

Hey Lore, just a quick note here, the bosses in challenge modes are the same level as raid bosses, so level 93, whereas heroic dungeon bosses will be level 92 which means that, in challenge modes, you will still need the full 7.5% hit & expertise for mele and 15% for casters.

XD
Your U MAD faces makes me laugh and made the show just awesome to watch. Think I'll post questions on Legendary about th whole Paragon thing and Thnx blizz for content I wont be doing to spice it that show too XDDDD

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y57...n1980/UMAD.png

RAGE PST is best PST.

They said that hit and expertise will not be affected by the item level normalization for challenge modes.

My net was acting up when I got to that last question so I missed your response to how damaging to 25-man raids paragon going to 10-man was. So did you say it was devastating, or the definite killing blow?

I'd actually be very interested in seeing challenge mode ladders lock and reset with every major content patch, like PVP seasons do. It would create "fresh ground" on a slightly more frequent basis, and would present a workaround for the inevitable problem no one is concerned about yet: how major class/ability changes introduced in major patches are going to affect those leaderboard times, and how competitive various compositions are.

WoW really is the only game where the playerbase throws a fit when there's one piece of content that isn't for them. You don't buy MGS and go "VR MISSIONS? THANKS KOJIMA, I'M ONLY INTERESTED IN THE CAMPAIGN!".

Don't get the request for nerfs on the hardest difficulty either, I've been unable to complete Orcs must die! 2 on the hardest difficulty setting, still enjoyed the easier difficulties and trying to beat the harder ones. Do CoD players complain if they can't beat the campaign on the hardest difficulty?

If the content isn't to your taste and / or is too hard, play one of the cornucopia of other endgame content, especially in MOP which has more than ever.

Also, couldn't challenge mode raids just be normals / heroics with no nerfs ever applied? Would appease most (I dare not say all) of the raiders asking for no nerfs on heroics - since there's challenge mode, essentially double heroic... c'mon blizz, Lore - shout about challenge mode raids on legendary so they steal the idea in a few months.

I'd also be totally fine with challenge modes presisting beyond expansions - if they scale the level down but offer a separate leaderboard I think it would be fine.

One leaderboard for the level it was introduced, one for the next expansion - it would give a reason to go back and compete for a new record in the next expansion. I do agree that the leaderboards should be locked after the expansion though, old records should keep their prestige.

Bear in mind that some fuckery is unavoidable, the difference in classes between 5.0 and 5.3 might cause problems, not to mention trinkets and set bonuses that are harder to balance than simply scaling them down.

Paragon are also the worst example for 25mans dying simply because of how hard it is for them to recruit, they've lost 10+ players, when you're the best of the best - it's obviously infinitely harder to recruit, since you can only pick from the tiny pool of top-tier raiders available, especially when you only recruit finnish players.

Also, keep being mad Lore - it makes for fun viewing seeing you on a rant.

Ragnaros.

On the subject of CRZs, a lot of people keep talking about high pop vs low pop realms, but really that's not a direct factor of how CRZs work. CRZs are not based on how many people are on your server, they are based on how many people are in each particular zone. You could be on the most populated server in the world but if you go out to Silithis and you're the only person from your server there then you're silithus is going to be cross-realm. Likewise you could be on a nearly dead realm but if you happen to have like 3 dozen people from your realm all in the same zone then it may not go cross-realm at all or it could get split off into multiple shards (granted I don't know what the population size that zones are balanced around having before they merge/split them).

And I think that this could very well be another factor that helps with the economy side of sharing resources. I understand the concern about sharing nodes across multiple servers, and it is a valid concern. When you're competing with people from your own server at least what they farm stays on the server, it's a closed economy. Either what the other guy farms will end up on the auction house, or what they farmed is stuff that they didn't take off the auction house so you can. But competing with someone from another server doesn't have this, result, what they farm they take with them back to their server, it doesn't go onto your auction house nor does it conserve what is already on your auction house.

But getting back to what I was starting to say, the dynamic of how CRZs work and the fact that they are not directly tied to your overall realm population could potentially help with this issue. Because let's say cross realm competition makes iron ore scarce on your realm, so the auction house prices go up, then more people on your server say "hey this could be a way to make some good money" so they go and try to farm iron ore. If this leads to more gatherers from your server jumping into the same zone to farm it, that will effectively push people from other servers out of your zone. There will still be the same amount of competition for the nodes, but at least all of that competition is from your server so the mats remain available to your server.

The idea is basically that zones where high-demand items are farmed will have higher populations and therefore won't be CRZ (or at least will be merged with fewer other realms which still results in your server getting a higher portion of the nodes).

The only real problem I can see with this is the possibility that people will reach the "give up" mentality instead of the "I'm gonna take advantage of high-demand". Since it does have a little of a snowball effect where if too many people decide that it's not worth it to deal with all that competition then you won't get enough gatherers into the zone to splinter your realm off and continue to drain your realm of that item. But so long as people remain accustomed to competing with a "normal" amount of other people then it should be able to keep the server-economies floating.


Heck, you could potentially even avoid the competition if you can convince a bunch of people in your guild to just go and hang out in the zone you want to farm just to push the server-zone population up (maybe get them to follow your around in case some "world pvp" erupts over some nodes).

I'm still waiting for the casuals to start the QQ about how they can't get the challenge mode rewards, and blizzards resulting response.

My hope is that Blizz will actually tell the qqing casuals that the content isn't for them and to basically STFU. Ok im sure it's going to be nicer, but the meaning the same. This will lead to raids, or at least heroic raids, to be nerfed at a much slower pace if nerfed at all.
I can see the normal version of a raid getting nerfed to 20% while the heroic mode is only nerfed by 10%

Plus another thing about the Paragon situation, they ONLY recruited Finnish players. When you recruit for a small group of players you do run out sooner or later.

A question I thought of regarding CRZ. If they add and subtract zones depending on player numbers in a given zone, can they add zones to a single server? I ask because I play on Illidan, an absolutely huge server when it comes to just the sheer amount of players. When MoP drops and suddenly there are 40k people in the pandaren starting zone, will they actually break it up into a couple more "Illidan panda starting zones" where there are a more manageable number of people, or are we all gonna be in only one?


BTW Lore....you mad breh.

Hate to break it to you but Premonition did quit raiding as well.


I don't think challenge modes would work in the context of raids. It would be hard for groups to continuously push for 2hrs straight with no breaks and reallife tends to get in the way. The 5 mans should generally only take 20 mins or so it is much more managable

You should probably just stop fielding the 10vs25 man question no matter how many people send it in. You're just getting mad at their poor semantics. As you said, 25 mans can't possible die off or become extinct as long as there are 25 people wanting to do them. What I think people are really asking is if 25 mans are going to become less popular or are more guilds going to swap to 10 because of this. The answer is who knows.

People just assume it's a big problem if there is any decline in the amount of 25 man guilds.

Some zones would get some more excitement if the "Firefigh/ ambusht" variable was introduced, say you are travelling thru a zone as part of a party, and you aggro a mob, that mob could have some disguised friends and all the sudden the whole party is engaged......... Also it would be an excellent varible to add so that a +10 level toon in a zone can actually get worked....... Basically a high level toon can find himself zergged down if he is not careful......

As a healer the idea of proving ground leader boards makes me a bit nervous. I know healers are supposed to be normalized and equally capable at all types of healing but it still always seems like the balance is a bit off; for instance shaman are really good at healing a stacked group but aren't as good when everyone is spread out. Having a proving ground that focuses on single target healing might favor one class of healer over another. Likewise some classes of healer might be more suited to challenge modes and while that seems less than ideal, I feel like having 4 other people to consider might allow for group compositions that favor each class of healer.

I really like the idea of raid challenge modes. I think tokens of good fortune might be a good way for people to still get loot while the raid does a challenge mode of farm content. Individuals that still need loot from a specific boss would have a chance to get it while the rest of the group (that doesn't need any gear from farm bosses) would still be engaged in the content to try and get a faster time.

Still can't wait for heroic Gary Busey btw.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by uglie

This will lead to raids, or at least heroic raids, to be nerfed at a much slower pace if nerfed at all.
I can see the normal version of a raid getting nerfed to 20% while the heroic mode is only nerfed by 10%

---

I was hoping for the same in MOP, especially after Lore's reply to how blizzard might handle nerfs with the split raid tiers - but I'm not sure anymore, blues have said they were happy with the speed of the DS nerf and have "numbers" to back it up as being the right choice, it felt like they were hitting every other week in DS - far too fast for where my guild is in the progression curve, were robbed of any feeling of triumph by the time we hit ultraxion I think - who we got to 1% the night before the nerf hit while missing a dpser that would have easily made that difference. Feels terrible.

As I understand it, nodes have a variable spawn rate depending on how many players are in the zone. If 1 node spawns per second per player, then it shouldn't matter what realm those players are from unless NONE of the players from your realm are actually gathering those nodes.

If none from your realm are gathering nodes, then the CRZ isn't the cause of resources leaving the realm. That is entirely due to the choices and actions of the players on your realm.

If players from your realm are gathering, there is a chance some of the CR players are questing etc, instead of gathering and you have a net gain on your realm. The chance of this is just as high as having too few from your realm gathering.

Depending on how well node spawns scale to the players in the zone, it should be very auto-regulating and the biggest effect will be the choices of the players on your realm (e.g. to gather or not to gather).

Also, since this is a per zone feature, even the most populated realms are likely to have CRZ's going on at any given time. How often do you go to Duskwood? Really, the low level questing zones are the target of this feature so I'm not sure how nodes matter much anyways. The idea is that those areas that we are done with and don't go back to will not feel dead for new players or alts leveling.

Dear Lore,

What ever it was that was "irking" you today, can you please make sure it is "irking" you in future PST & Weekly Marmots?

Today's episode was hilarious to watch you all fired up like that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Phyruus

Dear Lore,

What ever it was that was "irking" you today, can you please make sure it is "irking" you in future PST & Weekly Marmots?

Today's episode was hilarious to watch you all fired up like that.

---

Heck yea, it was! I was laughing while going "that's right! You tell 'em Lore!"

As for the 10 vs. 25 man thing - c'mon it's Firelands all over again....they didn't even have a shaman in their raid....I was looking forward to raiding Firelands but because this OTHER guild beat it - it has no meaning for me anymore....boo-hoo-hoo. Honestly - that was one of my most favorite Blizz Blues episodes ever!

Of course, while they said Pandaria wasn't going to have CRZ enabled to merge zones, they didn't say they wouldn't split some full zones on launch day, and you can always 'force' CRZ by inviting RealID/Btag friends over to quest on your server. Or theirs, if they're the leader. Splitting zones on launch day, after all, isn't 'cross-realm', just multiple instances, same realm.