The Weekly Marmot - Surviving WoW til MoP

[Lore]

[feralminded]

One of your best intro's yet man ... I was close to ROFLing for real.

A few quick points.
#1. End of expansion burnout is ALWAYS bad. The only time it wasn't strictly terrible was in vanilla and then it was only because we really didn't understand how much content turnover there was (or at least my guild didn't until very late). The only reason why BC didn't experience a major lull was because of the content nerfs that came in and opened up content that was largely unreachable by the majority ... essentially opening up new content in the 11th hour. Obviously WoTLK's year of nothing sucked too.
#2. This was the worst expansion ever and Dragonsoul one of the worst real raid tiers (I'd have to say Naxx v 2.0 and ToC were worse). What made it worse was Dragonsoul followed an already lean (but high quality) raid in Firelands. Ultimately this entire expansion was super thin on content and people just ran out of things to do. Therefore this end of expansion is already double stacked in the wrong way.
#3. LFR made the content even thinner. Many players in my guild burned themselves out on DS by raiding it on all their alts ... theres only so many times you can look at the same encounter before it loses any and all meaning to you. Yes I know this was their own fault but that doesn't change the fact that it happened to many people (thankfully I never did this)

All of that makes this end of expansion significantly worse than any other one. In the end I believe WoW's end of expansion design
(turn over all content, essentially making everything done before worthless) is somewhat flawed. I understand why they do it (it's far easier than anything else) ... but I believe they have the creativity and skill to essentially remodel the end of expansion design such that not everything is completely invalidated and therefore leading to ultra-burnout for everyone who ever raids/plays for character progression.

[Aggathon]

I still contend that Naxx and ToC were better than DS. The only reason people hated ToC was because they got burned out REALLY fast running it at least 4 times a week. HM 25 man ToGC has some of my favorite fights, including one of my favorite of all time: H-Anub25... just doing it 4 TIMES A WEEK, when there were only FIVE BOSSES, was awful. In a vacuum, I really liked the fights though.

[feralminded]

Sure, I personally hated DS more than either of those but I was pandering to the ToC-hating crowd ... oh and Naxx was just too stupid easy (but at least had a large variety of content).

[Aggathon]

Sure, I personally hated DS more than either of those but I was pandering to the ToC-hating crowd ... oh and Naxx was just too stupid easy (but at least had a large variety of content).

True, and Naxx at least had interesting mechanics... even if they rarely killed you. Kinda sad when the only hard thing about the instance is to do the entire thing without anyone dying to a boss.

[Theotherone]

As has been said ToC has some fun fights, but the presentation just sucked and it suffered from having come on the heals of Ulduar. Naxx was my first introduction to raiding so like of like your first girlfriend, she probably wasn't as hot as you thought she was at the time.

If Blizzard took some time to make an interesting bridge between old content and new expansion that would help a lot. The Cata pre-launch event was meh - I think something more engaging would help.

[Fim]

Personally, I blame LFR for my boredom with DS. The burnout didn't start now for a lot people - we had guildies quit all the way through the tier from Jan and attribute it to being bored of DS. Sure by the end of May, every one is probably bored with DS, because it's the same old raid for half a year, but that doesn't explain the roster turnover we've had throughout the expansion.

My early boredom with DS wasn't even because I thought DS was a bunch of reused scenery or boss models or badly designed fights - I started playing in Cata, so it's all relatively new to me. The thing that differentiated DS from FL and T11 though was LFR. I think it kills a tier very prematurely if people see a fight more than once a week in any form. Sure there were people who did LFR on 8 alts every week, and they've only themselves to blame, but they were the exceptions. Most of us though did do it on our mains each and every week initially just to get the tier gear, because the 4 set this tier was such a huge deal.

We cleared all DS right after release, but I was still seeing every fight twice each week until mid Feb I think, just because LFR was a second shot at loot, if not for me, then for someone in guild. Combine that with many guilds still running FL when DS came out, even if just to work on H. Rag and of course we'd get sick of raid times quickly.

I think it'd have helped to have LFR share the loot lockout with NM and HM - i.e. you get 1 shot at loot per week from each boss so there isn't any reason to see them more than once a week. I think that'd have help with the burnout earlier on this tier.

But if you are only just starting to get sick of DS, I think it's purely because it's now old content and we ought to have gotten something else to do before MoP. D3 is helping for some of us - we log off from raid and log over to D3 and work on Inferno while sitting in mumble and just being social.

I've been spending more time outside WoW, working more -.- (novel concept I know)

[Mwawka]

I'm a huge supporter of LFR sharing a lockout with all other modes, at least on a boss by boss basis. LFR really should be for alts and non-organized raiders, not a supplement to normal/hm raiders. Doesn't mean people won't burn out on content by running it on their alts, but at least that is by choice and not because you feel you have to.

As for DS being the worst raid tier ever, I have to agree. ToC was bad, but it was really filler content to buy more time til ICC was released. As such, it wasn't that bad and as others have said, it wasn't the fights that sucked, it was the presentation. DS was an end of expansion raid and as such was absolutely terrible. So combine a bad tier of raiding with an extended shelf life due to end of expansion with overexposure due to LFR and you have a cocktail that had to lead to burnout. I haven't raided in 6 weeks or so, because we can't get a group together to finish up the last couple of heroic fights and unfortunately, I don't really care.

My plan for surviving til MoP is enjoying my summer outside, drinking beer on the patio, biking, and getting some fresh air. I am looking forward to MoP, but I'll enjoy my break.

[Aggathon]

I know the feeling Mwawka. I haven't consistently raided since January. I joined a guild of a fellow tankspotter, but they're already 8/8 HM so at most it takes up 4-5 hours of my time a week, hopefully soon it will be more like 2 hours.

In the sted of raiding, I've started focusing on my health, working out almost every day. It feels good!

[tawnos]

I guess I'm about the only person not burned out on DS. To the point of 'don't worry about quitting and if your raid doesn't understand then they're just being dicks' the problem is that especially with 10m a couple of people doing this means the other 8-10 people just don't get to raid. Especially if you look at non-hardcore guilds they simply can't maintain a bench and that means that even one or two cases of diablo'itis means not raiding for a week and a couple of weeks of that means the guild is gone. This is exactly what just happened last week to my dk's guild and now I'm basically bored and trawling through world of logs, chat logs, and forum posts trying to find a new guild that matches my severely constrained schedule yet again. Its fine if you have enough of a cushion to absorb the loss and continue raiding or if everyone simultaneously decides to go to another game, but it definitely does have a negative impact on the other people in the guild for most guilds if you unilaterally decide its time to go play diablo just because its the new game.

I understand the reason but find it incredibly frustrating there is a general sense of tolerance for raiders who 'just get bored' and end up not showing up both in hardcore and less than hardcore guilds (the latter of which can pretty frequently fall apart as a result). Typically its not at critical times and thats the key to why its tolerated. Its frustrating for someone with a job that requires complete dedication of time at any random time of any random day though to not be able to find more hardcore raid guilds because there is (justifiably) no such tolerance for missing raids at uncontrollable and potentially critical periods as a result of work.

[Aggathon]

I don't think you understand how fun D3 is...

... but seriously... I know it sucks to lose raiders, but if you're not having fun for ANY reason and you just do not want to play the game, you shouldn't be forced to or have to feel bad for wanting to do other things with your life. Trust me I've led guilds for over 4 years, it SUCKS losing members, especially critical role members, but I mean... if they're not happy then they should be playing a game they DO have fun with. Or they should go do something else, like exercise or hang out with friends or something.

... or play a fun game... like diablo 3... no srsly... it's awesome.

[Theotherone]

LFR is at the point where I que and reque and reque my healers just to get 3/4 so I get one fight and 250 VP. DPS and tanks I put in there if I'm bored of leveling my 'lock. Not really burnt out by it, just find myself taking more and more breaks to watch sports, or mess around in the garden or go to the gym - damn Yankees were on the West Coast this week which just sucks; watch a few innings then go to bed.

[Mwawka]

I'm loving D3 because it isn't a huge time sink for me. I can actually sit down and play for 30 minutes to an hour when I feel like it. I play a bit in the morning before work and a bit before bed, but I don't feel like I need to burn hours at it because I'm playing for just me. As for WoW, I'd be happy to raid 3-6 hours a week still, but I'm not upset that it's not happening, I'm just doing other stuff with my free time. I really don't think it's the worst thing in the world if WoW has a little downtime, a little time away from it will make MoP more fun.

[Theotherone]

I'm loving D3 because it isn't a huge time sink for me. I can actually sit down and play for 30 minutes to an hour when I feel like it. I play a bit in the morning before work and a bit before bed, but I don't feel like I need to burn hours at it

I find the same thing, I can only take D3 in one hour or so bursts, there's only so much run around and shoot things I can do for any extended period of time.

[Hightotem]

I know the feeling Mwawka. I haven't consistently raided since January. I joined a guild of a fellow tankspotter, but they're already 8/8 HM so at most it takes up 4-5 hours of my time a week, hopefully soon it will be more like 2 hours.

In the sted of raiding, I've started focusing on my health, working out almost every day. It feels good!

Very true, dispite the negative comments which is mainly around the battle.net issues, D3 is a excellent game, I haven't been this happy with blizzard since TBC endgame and ulduar content. Sure it's shorter then D2 but overall there was a lot of improvements.

TBH I wasted 8 months of my gaming life playing cata and wasn't planning on trying MoP, but have been so impressed with D3 that I will give wow another go to see if blizz has improved on things.

[Gregasaurous]

Cata is my first full expansion, so i can't really fairly compare it to others. But the raiding was so dynamically different from tier to tier. What really killed Tier 13 was LFR not sharing a loot lockout with normal and heroic. Yes it was my decision to do so, but i felt that i was under an obligation (to be the best raider for my guild that i could be) to get my DPS Tier set completed, and pretty much just eliminate any 378 pieces i wasn't able to roll OS for in raid. This left me farming LFR until just a few weeks ago. Granted i was having a decent amount of fun doing it... (loot pinnata LFR VS 400 iLvL prot warrior = ROFL what boss mechanics?), but i think all in all, definitely sent DS into the grave a bit faster.

So, i ask out of pure curiosity, how hard would it have been for Blizzard to have a 3 boss raid instance in their sleeve for a quick 4.4 patch just to give people something new to gnaw on? They wouldn't have necessarily had to make the encounters super complicated. Just make everything hit like a truck solely with the purpose of being difficult to progress through. It doesn't even need a LFR difficulty, since LFR raiders could quite easily be progressing on 10 N DS. Just a lil somethin somethin for those who got their Savior title to go bash their faces into.

[Theotherone]

So, i ask out of pure curiosity, how hard would it have been for Blizzard to have a 3 boss raid instance in their sleeve for a quick 4.4 patch just to give people something new to gnaw on?

Two words..Ruby Sanctum.

[Aggathon]

I could probably do an entire video response as to why they didn't do another raid instance. Really what it comes down to is: they're just done with cata. They want to focus all of their power on MoP... and frankly, I'm okay with not having a ruby sanctum if the next game is just far more fun to play that cata was. If that new raid boss they might have dropped at the end of cata ends up getting saved for MoP and they get to put some time in on it, I'm very OKAY with that.

[Theotherone]

I played a little of the MoP beta last Saturday, and I was really impressed Granted it was just some questing and poking around, but they really seem to be doing a bang up job and making up for Cata - just the artwork alone is fabulous; the zones have a nice feel and look to them, very inviting and non-Deepholmish (if you get what I mean).

I agree with Agg, keep the creative juices flowing toward MoP - between, fishing with my sons, golf, the garden, leveling my 'lock, the MoP beta, D3, vacation, Blizz can take their time and deliver the quality their capable of; I have more than enough to occupy my time.

[Gregasaurous]

I know why they decided to just shoot straight for MoP, and essentially yes, it's Ruby Sanctum 2.0. I'm just wondering if they really expected D3 to carry us 4 months till they could MoP out?