PST - Episode 80

[leethaxor]

All the prestige

That was the problem with most gamers. Your playing for prestige, trying to level up (for lack of a better term) your internet cock and become E-Famous. Am I the only person who raids at a hardcore level because I find it fun?

[Ion]

That was the problem with most gamers. Your playing for prestige, trying to level up (for lack of a better term) your internet cock and become E-Famous. Am I the only person who raids at a hardcore level because I find it fun?

No. I certainly don't care what other people think of me, my guild or our progression. This topic is a bit odd...I also don't walk around org wearing my gear to get noticed. I did (when I actually logged in) get random tells but that always confused me. Why would you PM someone and say "wow man, your gear is awesome"? I know what my gear is...I spent an inordinate amount of time acquiring it, reforging it, gemming it, enchanting it...

I DID, however, roll my shaman because I saw another shaman sitting in org wearing something that looked amazingly cool, though. I KEPT playing him because he's fun...but I started one because I saw someone wearing cool crap in org. But that was years ago.

[Kagitaar]

@Impeesa

Well I'm not to Inferno yet, but it exists to be punishingly hard. In D2, you could out-gear and out-level Diablo and then Baal pretty easily, which is why they made Inferno; so it's only able to be trumped by eventual gear drops. It's essentially the same formula they used in D2, just with an added challenge, and people have been playing D2 for a long time.

@leet

I do as well.

[Kelyne]

No. I certainly don't care what other people think of me, my guild or our progression. This topic is a bit odd...I also don't walk around org wearing my gear to get noticed. I did (when I actually logged in) get random tells but that always confused me. Why would you PM someone and say "wow man, your gear is awesome"? I know what my gear is...I spent an inordinate amount of time acquiring it, reforging it, gemming it, enchanting it...

I DID, however, roll my shaman because I saw another shaman sitting in org wearing something that looked amazingly cool, though. I KEPT playing him because he's fun...but I started one because I saw someone wearing cool crap in org. But that was years ago.

This. Same thing happened to me. The only reason I am raiding at a high-end and found how much I like it is because of a priest I saw in full t6 back in BC. I am still raiding DS am helping other guilds on heroics now that my guild farms it in about 2 hours. I am not a dick, I don't purposely flaunt myself in org. But I do get satisfaction knowing that I am in one of the top 500 guilds in the US. I envy people who have the Hand of Adal title just like people envy me for having Death's Demise. I don't think I should be able to get Hand of Adal, and I still think its freaking cool to see people with it and know they earned it. That is the factor that drives me and my guild to push progression and get the awesome adrenalin rush after finally killing a boss.

I would also add that it's human nature to be competitive and to feel self-important and unique. (Hence the 'I'm a unique snow flake' references.) That is the precise reason several people play MMO's. That is not to say that that is all such people play for; but it is a driving factor I think. Look at the PvP community. That pretty much the embodiment of "internet penis" and people enjoy it.

[thatguyoverthere]

RE glyphs for new/low level players,
What about if a small handful of glyphs were available from a vendor that expired when you hit, say lv60.
Either just have them disappear (clearly marked to begin with) from your glyph book when you ding. Shouldn't be too hard from a technical standpoint. Just add an If statement and loop to the method that runs on ding (the one that checks for newly available abilities, etc.)

[Kagitaar]

RE glyphs for new/low level players,
What about if a small handful of glyphs were available from a vendor that expired when you hit, say lv60.
Either just have them disappear (clearly marked to begin with) from your glyph book when you ding. Shouldn't be too hard from a technical standpoint. Just add an If statement and loop to the method that runs on ding (the one that checks for newly available abilities, etc.)

That just feels icky to me. I don't know how much effort would even be justified as the glyphs we NEED NOW at a low level are primes for the most part, and since those are all going away, we can afford to miss a little utility until the glyph is affordable.

[Darg]

Glyph Price Caps:

I agree that it can be difficult for some low-level toons to pay for high priced glyphs but there are a number of reasons why it would be a poor policy to start controlling the price of any product on the AH.

1) Blizz has always stressed that the AH is a supply and demand economy and to artificially set prices for a group of "products" seems contrary to that philosophy. Probably makes things way more complicated then necessary as well.

2) Blizz would be unable to "target" one profession without applying the same standard to all of then - the forums would blow up. Blizz would find it necessary considering that many professions are dependent on other professions to produce their products. Such as glyphs need herbs, gems need ores and so forth.

3) How would Blizz even determine what would be an appropriate price cap? Would it be different server to server or would they just make it the same regardless of the cost of mats? If so, then price of all the needed mats would need to be price capped as well. So, price cap low-level glyphs would require a price cap on low-level herbs.

4) Any AH seller targets the part of the market that provides them with good returns on their investment of time (farming) and/or gold (buying mats from the AH). If low-level glyphs suddenly provide no to little returns then they would focus only on selling the glyphs that they could competitively price on the AH. The result could be a sudden decrease in the supply of low-level glyphs and the few available will be ones dumped on the AH from leveling the profession - many of which are not ideal glyphs.

5) Black market glyphs. To avoid the constraints of the price cap sellers would simply start advertising in trade channel and if the AH supply was lacking then that could translate into expensive low-level glyphs. Instead of allowing the market to set the price through competition a glyph that may have sold for 150g one day and 25g the next day in the AH may end up being sold for 150g or more everyday because there is little to no competition at the time they are advertising in trade chat. Which is another limitation because it means that instead of a glyph posted on the AH and available for purchase at your convenience , now you are at the mercy of the seller and when he/she decides to come on-line.

Honestly, I've leveled many toons and never bothered to glyph them till they were at level 70 or higher and by then I typically had enough gold through questing or leveling up a profession like herbing and mining to pay for the needed glyphs. Or I just shop the AH until the prices were affordable. And if the prices never change because of a lack of competition then I'd recommend taking up inscription, shake up the market and make some nice profits. That's what I did and it's paid off very well each time.

[sifuedition]

Market controlling is a bad idea. It is in real life (even though it happens somewhat indirectly) and it is in the game.

Alternate idea:

Blizzard could sit down and come up with several sets of new glyphs aimed at the one each unlocked at 25 and one each for the set unlocked at 50 and the set unlocked at 75.

Do this for each role that class can be, so pally would get at least 27 new glyphs; 9 ret, 9 prot, 9 holy.

These glyphs would be less effective for raiding but would be good for leveling and five mans. Sell those from a vendor and add them to the scribes spellbook.

Now they can be purchased from the vendor if the market is bad for them or none are available on the AH. They will still want to buy and learn the best raiding glyphs at max level. This gives the scribes something of a 're-sell" market like they used to have before the learn-once system they have now. Make these economical to make. The vendor option adds a cap to the price artificially but attempt to make these easy enough to make that there is still a profit margin for scribes to sell these instead.

Edit:

Also, as I think about it, there could be a lot of flexibility here. The big goal is just to not have these empty and be wasted space/utility. These could be more than the typical combat related abilities if Blizz needs some room for ideas to make this many new glyphs. Maybe a hearthstone cd reducing glyph. More self heals(edit: this has a lot of implications like pvp. The idea is just less downtime while leveling. Maybe food/drink goes faster?). Portable trainer (class or profession). Portable anvil. Who knows. By the way, the portable trainers and anvils were some of my guild's ideas for guild level perks they could add in MoP for the five new levels. That would still be pretty cool imo.

[vades]

Just a quick thought on the gem question.

In my opinion it's more the fact that red gems cover all three prime stats (STR, INT and AGI) this means that literally every DPS (and a few Healers) stack Red... if the 3 prime stats were seperated to say red=STR (and/or Stam for Tanks) Yellow=AGI and Blue was INT (and/or spirit for healers) we would see a much more robust Gemming market. As it sits right now, red gems are, for the most part, much more expensive and hard to come by due to demand. {17 DPS, VS: 6 Heals, VS: 2 Tanks...} It's economics 101, if the demand for Blue and yellow gems increased because they too held prime stats the gem market (including the dual-colors) would standerize to accomidate.

Also, given the above example; when you factor in which clases want which gear, (for example both druids and Rogues, and soon monks?) want AGI, having pieces with yellow sockets on AGI leather wouldn't make or break the fact that plate uses red sockets. Moreover, Bears/Monks could still use Orange gems (AGI+Stam) in yellow slots for tanking (and/or Kitties/DPS monks could use orange in red slots for DPS) if they wanted to keep socket bonuses...

Short version: There's 3 prime colors and 3 prime stats... each color should represent 1 stat...

Just my 2 cents.

[sifuedition]

The problem with splitting primary stats across the colors is in the hybrids. If you make Agi a yellow gem and crit is yellow, then any class that wants crit as their preferred secondary stat and agi as their primary is SOL. If you try to fix that by making crit a red stat, then any class that wants str+crit is SOL.

[tawnos]

Never really understood why people considered that an issue but its the "reason" brought up every time. If you have to use a combination of a primary stat gem and the second best secondary stat in hybrid colour gems why is that a problem? DPS balancing is holistic and if retribution paladins end up using their second best secondary stats its not going to cause them to be weaker than a rogue who gets their best secondary stat on gems - crusader strike will just end up being 0.01% stronger as a result. It will all balance out (to the best of Blizzard's ability) and you won't have 5 of 6 gems being worthless in any situation in which the market is set by supply and demand for the gems (rather than the current system in which the red gem costs are dramatically depressed by duplicated gems).

[Slyvar]

My point is, Blizzard is removing incentives to actually play the game.

You need incentive beyond "fun" to play the game? Ugh...

[wormspeaker]

You need incentive beyond "fun" to play the game? Ugh...

You assume (falsely I believe) that beyond a certain point WoW is actually fun to play. My position is that WoW is not fun to play the 12th time you are doing a dungeon or raid, but is rather like the maze that the mouse must run in order to get to the cheese. The mouse does not find the maze to be fun, but instead finds the cheese to be compelling.

[sifuedition]

You assume (falsely I believe) that beyond a certain point WoW is actually fun to play. My position is that WoW is not fun to play the 12th time you are doing a dungeon or raid, but is rather like the maze that the mouse must run in order to get to the cheese. The mouse does not find the maze to be fun, but instead finds the cheese to be compelling.

Not sure I'd even bother if I felt that way.

Personally, I do find WoW to be fun in and of itself. I will admit after several years of playing now, that certain aspects of it are making me feel burned out. A lot of that is just being known as a reliable tank...means you ALWAYS have to tank...unless they want you to heal this time. =/

The biggest redeeming factor to DS for me has been getting to go OS ret for half the fights and alleviate some of that burnout.

To be fair, I hate doing old content on an 85. I guess to some degree I would say that a fight/instance has to be compelling beyond just being there. Usually, anything that is appropriate to my level/gear accomplishes that for me, however.

[Slyvar]

You assume (falsely I believe) that beyond a certain point WoW is actually fun to play. My position is that WoW is not fun to play the 12th time you are doing a dungeon or raid, but is rather like the maze that the mouse must run in order to get to the cheese. The mouse does not find the maze to be fun, but instead finds the cheese to be compelling.

If a video game does not entertain you and you continue to play it, there is something wrong with your state of mind. A game is meant to be entertainment. If a movie is bad, do you watch it over and over? Unless your yearly salary depends on playing WoW, it should only be played if you gain some form of entertainment. Otherwise, what's the point? You're then wasting time for no reason at all.

[Aggathon]

Look, some people like cheese, damnit.

[Kelyne]

Look, some people like cheese, damnit.

This pretty much sums up everything.

[feralminded]

I don't think it's fair to judge the validity of anyone's reasons for enjoying this game. By definition it is a theme park MMO and therefore there are many valid reasons to be here. Ultimately whether its because you enjoy questing, grinding mobs in the open world, killing raid bosses, exploring new content with each patch, showing off your e.p.e.e.n, crafting things, chatting with guildies, playing the AH, picking up easy internet chicks (now everyone knows why I'm here ) ... in the end it doesn't matter as long as you the individual are enjoying yourself and it's not for anyone else to judge or attempt to take that away from you. Let's keep that in mind people.