Legendary - Gone Too Far

[Lore]

Legendary on Gamebreaker.tv | Follow Gamebreaker on Twitter

[Fetzie]

If they were to add perma-death/player looting to PvP servers, they would have to give everybody a free transfer and guild transfer off the server or I think they would hemorrage subs. I think the market for that kind of experience in WoW is really low, so low that the realm population would be neglegibly small and the idea would collapse.

The players would like the "loot another guy's items" until it happened to themselves. If it applied to items, then only PvP items. you can always go back and farm up a pvp item again. You could have been waiting for a year for a PvE item to drop, you get it, then some guy kills you and he takes that item the next day...I don't think that's not going to swing with the players.

[captanmurdoc]

I agree with Fetzie, one reason pvp in wow is so popular is there really isn't any risk and because of that it's fairly easy to break into. The only way the loot the items from the player you killed idea would work is if it was a set zone with a warning before you go in and even then, I doubt it would boost subs or even keep the subs level but more then likely lose subs due to people raging over losing their items.

[Nagassh]

Those servers would have to be fresh ones, and I doubt they'd get enough population to really fuel the world pvp they're made for.

DC, lose the legendary / epic you've spent months farming? You can't spring that on players. It's not like everyone is starting at the same level like in Day Z either, everyone has some beans and a dinnerbell in that, class balance is never spot on, especially in world pvp, not even close.

Also, black market is sickening. I don't want to quit, I really don't - I enjoy raiding. But as Lore said, it feels like blizzard are moving raiding in a direction I really have no interest in supporting. Now begins the battle between addiction and standards.

[Maven]

A couple of notes:
1) Black Market Auction House is seriously bad stuff
2) Does Gary only do Legendary so that he can troll his own show?
3) I am not sure how doable this would be, and I am sure I am missing unintented implications, but I would love to see world PVP give different rewards based on who you kill. For example, currently in battlegrounds looting corpses gives a small amount of treasure. I would love it so that when you world pvp you can corpse loot for treasure, but the treasure range is variable based on how many kills the person has in world pvp. So taking down someone who does a lot of pvp could drop a couple gold, but someone who never does world pvp you get a copper or two for killing. The idea with this is that one serious weakness of world pvp (to me) is that if you see 2 people, one all decked out in this seasons gear, while the other is in greens and blues, the HKs come fastest by going after the teribad gear, but the difference between a single copper and a few gold might be enough to try and get you to ambush the pro.

[Toypop]

Talk about a storm in a tea cup. Lore threatening to rage quit the game over the Black Market AH? You gotta be kidding me? Lets take a chill pill and think about it rationally...

I mean we don't know how much of this HC raid gear will be on there.

It may only be one or two items a month!!! Also who is going to buy it at those prices? Probably Heroic raiders that have been unlucky with drops or top guilds that need a little boost to progress pass a certain boss. As a gold farmer I won't buy this gear, I didn't get rich by wasting money like that. Bad players lack both skill AND gold so they won't buy it either.

However your guild bank can afford it to give your progression a boost. I suspect this is where most of the purchases will originate from and as I say the quantities will be small. It is nice way of removing some of that surplus gold from your guild banks and keeping inflation down. Lets face it your guild banks got bloated by selling the welfare BOE trash drops you were gifted, now you can turn your gold into something useful - something to counter bad luck with RNG in your raids.

I will just repeat again - it will likely only be small quantities of gear................and a few months later the entire population will be handed entire sets of comparible power on a plate from doing T15 raid finder.... Not to mention within a few weeks of a patch you will have the first few heroic bosses on farm with easy HC loot falling from the sky each week. Do you wanna pay 150k or wait for a random farm drop?

Also I don't remember much of a QQ back in Firelands when people were farming trash (some even solo bots) and putting decent gear on the AH. A completely skill-less activity (less skill than gold farming IMO) awarded current raid epics which went direct to the regular AH.

Did we hear Normal mode raiders threatening to rage quit over that? Er nope they used it as an opportunity to pick up some missing slots to help their progression. No different to buying a crafted item or a rep item from the vendor inside FL.

Funny how the heroic guilds go all special snowflake over it though. These items are for YOU to buy with YOUR guild bank money. You won't see ungemmed, unenchanted DK's running around in Dungeon Finder doing less DPS than the tank buying these items!! Your Guild Bank will blow them out of the water, heck they can't even afford 200g for a bold inferno ruby.

Who would you rather get the gold? The ninja-looting raid leader of a trash run? Or would you rather it went to Blizzard via Black Market AH for destruction to keep inflation down? What are the top guilds gonna do with all that surplus gold in their guild banks? Blizz just did you a favour and gave you something to spend it on for those times when you get unlucky - don't expect to be able to buy this gear on tap though, I bet it will be pretty rare and only a few top guilds will be bidding for it.

[Lore]

Talk about a storm in a tea cup. Lore threatening to rage quit the game over the Black Market AH? You gotta be kidding me? Lets take a chill pill and think about it rationally...

I didn't "threaten to rage quit the game." I said I wouldn't be as interested in raiding. I talked about that a little bit more later on -- they've been making a lot of changes to how raiding works in WoW and it's so very different nowadays from why I got into it to begin with that I'm honestly just not sure if I'm part of the target audience anymore.

Also I don't remember much of a QQ back in Firelands when people were farming trash (some even solo bots) and putting decent gear on the AH. A completely skill-less activity (less skill than gold farming IMO) awarded current raid epics which went direct to the regular AH.

There most certainly was quite a bit of QQ, which is why it got hotfixed pretty quickly.

Did we hear Normal mode raiders threatening to rage quit over that? Er nope they used it as an opportunity to pick up some missing slots to help their progression. No different to buying a crafted item or a rep item from the vendor inside FL.

Normal mode raiders raid for a completely different reason than heroic mode. Normal = just hang out and have fun, heroic = being better than everyone else. (Disclaimer: there is of course going to be some spillover between the two, that's just a generalization)

Funny how the heroic guilds go all special snowflake over it though. These items are for YOU to buy with YOUR guild bank money. You won't see ungemmed, unenchanted DK's running around in Dungeon Finder doing less DPS than the tank buying these items!! Your Guild Bank will blow them out of the water, heck they can't even afford 200g for a bold inferno ruby.

Again, heroic mode raiders raid heroic modes to set themselves apart from everyone else. If you can get even some of the same rewards from just farming and playing the auction house, it loses a lot of its appeal. I'm fully aware that you won't get full best in slot gear sets without doing heroics, I just don't see why heroic mode gear needs to be available outside of heroic raids to begin with.

One could argue the typical "what other people do shouldn't affect you" line, but that's a completely unrealistic argument to make.

Who would you rather get the gold? The ninja-looting raid leader of a trash run? Or would you rather it went to Blizzard via Black Market AH for destruction to keep inflation down? What are the top guilds gonna do with all that surplus gold in their guild banks? Blizz just did you a favour and gave you something to spend it on for those times when you get unlucky - don't expect to be able to buy this gear on tap though, I bet it will be pretty rare and only a few top guilds will be bidding for it.

We'll probably spend it on repairs, gems, enchants, and consumables, like we always have. You're significantly underestimating how expensive that stuff is.

[Toypop]

Well fair points.

I just saw this as something aimed at Heroic raiders. As I don't see who else would buy it.

Suppose the question is this: do heroic raiders want to buy it?

I remember going into ICC equipped in full TOTGC gear apart from a 200 ilevel offhand... Wouldn't have minded buying one from the black market AH.

Do you view gear as a reward/carrot for progression or as a tool to enable progression?? If I am honest it was probably a bit of both for me. I wouldn't want to buy full sets but I'd have liked to have bought one or two items to compensate for RNG.

I could always justify that in my head due to my hatred of RNG. Owning nice gear that you "earned" can make you feel special but the fact that RNG plays a large part in that does take off the shine....enough for me to not worry about owning a couple of purchased items.

Maybe as someone that played the "gold game" even back when I raided I have underestimated how much players that stick solely to raiding have to withdraw from the GB. I think Blizzard might be assuming that most HC guilds cover repairs but gems/enchants are the raiders problem.

Maybe there is an issue here. Heroic raiders are compelled by their nature to do whatever is required to improve their performance - even if that involves running PVP for odd items. In that sense they are compelled to buy this BM AH gear and progression races become "pay to win".

On top of time spent raiding there is now additional time spent earning gold. Is that good or bad? What is the definition of "hardcore"?

[Nagassh]

I mean we don't know how much of this HC raid gear will be on there.

Provided that number is above zero, it's enough. The principal of it is just flat out terrible and goes against years of conditioning and stepping away from rewarding BIS gear for none raid content, they went as far as to remove any top-ilevel items from professions, but then offer it up on an auction?

I can see the argument being made for "It's for heroic raiders to fill out that last slot", but if RNG is such an issue (and I feel anyone who's raided more than one tier of content has come to terms with RNG being RNG, and it's not like it's enough to impact progression) then that is a problem that can be addressed in far better ways than BMAH, the VP system seems to be getting an overhaul to provide players with a means of upgrading lagging items, alternatively, don't make boss loot tables as terrible as DS.

Double Heroic is quickly becoming something I'd love to see in the game. A tier free from nerfs that provides BIS loot only received from that difficulty. I was under the impression that's what the heroic tier was supposed to be, so they could open normal mode raiding up to a wider audience, I could deal with that. But now we have LFR, normal mode and heroic being hit by rolling nerfs AND loot just appearing on an auction house, so evidently the heroic tier isn't enough.

[Toypop]

Out of interest...how would the timing play into this?

Lets say they released HC raid gear on the AH now at a time when 25% nerfs are in force and most top guilds are sat on the beach sipping cocktails.

Different type of buyer involved now and for different reasons. Maybe we are wrong to assume this stuff will exist on week one? Does it matter so much if it happens 3 months in?

That surely wouldn't demotivate HC raiders? Especially as they know that 5 months in there will be entire sets in T15 Raid Finder/Normal...

A few months in (excluding the Rag HC anomaly) the guys at Lores standard have most probably downed all the HC bosses. At that point it is just repetitive farm runs trying to gather missing items to help with the initial push into the next tier. Chances are the items on BM AH are the same as you already have equipped. You maybe only need a weapon from the last boss and BMAH only has the bracers from the first boss that you shard each week.

In terms of realism we would expect it to be a few months before such items made their way onto the black market anyway?

[Banhammer72]

If Blizzard wanted to introduce perma-death I think that would be quite interesting but only from a pve stand point. Before I stopped playing I managed to get to level 52 with a Tauren Paladin in the Iron Man Challange.

Perma-death mode would either have to be it's own server or a character selection at the creation screen pretty much like you do in Diablo 3, maybe for those bored with a certain character could be given the option to convert it and play "death wish" style and go out with a bang rather than a "delete".

It would never really work on a pvp server as, while it would encourage the much over rated "world pvp" it would result in to many people just trolling around looking to perma-kill solo/low level players.

On the subject of world pvp people seem to have this nostalgic view to how good it was, before battlegrounds there was a few world spot where a few running battles seemed to happen purely out of player enthusiasm for a fight, but it was never sustainable as there was no eventual goal or reason barring the fight.

When they actually introduced goal driven pvp in Burning Crusade (e.g. Halaar) it exposed another flaw in the idea of world pvp and that was unbalanced server populations. Both the pvp and pve servers I have played on both suffered from a heavy bias towards Alliance which meant the Horde rarely ever controlled this zones for long, especially during the day.

What world pvp did end up being was a series of ganking, camping of players but groups or higher level players and repeated killing of quest givers/vendors in quest hub zones. Which is pretty much just means world pvp is just away to ruin some ones levelling experience.

[Lore]

I'm actually planning on doing a weekly marmot to explain some of the economics behind the BMAH further to hopefully point out why it's as big of a deal as it is. I've got two to do next week, maybe I'll make that one of them (biggest factor at the moment is "what do I feel like talking about right now" -- I make better episodes when it's a topic that's fresh on my mind).

Short version: the amount of gold the items will cost is ultimately irrelevant, because they WILL sell. Someone gets the item no matter what. As time goes on, the prices will become lower and lower. Also consider that we'll be seeing new items every 2-3 days, compared to the 1 week lockout on a raid. I fully expect that by the end of a raid tier, someone who is spending effort on playing the auction house/farming to earn gold for the BMAH will be equally, if not better geared, than someone who is spending that time in a heroic raid instance. As long as they're doing LFR (which is an extremely minimal time investment), they'll almost definitely be better geared than someone who is doing normals.

[Lore]

Also, I generally hate slippery slope arguments, but this is a case in which I feel there is real evidence that we might be slipping down said slope. If I were to say that, say, Gladiator mounts will be available on the BMAH, you'd probably say "there's no way they'd do that." Thing is, two weeks ago, you'd probably have said the same thing about heroic raid gear. What they're already doing is so far out of what I'd expect that I can't make any sort of reasonable guess as to what they would or wouldn't put on the BMAH. It's a bit concerning.

[Primernova]

I didn't "threaten to rage quit the game." I said I wouldn't be as interested in raiding. I talked about that a little bit more later on -- they've been making a lot of changes to how raiding works in WoW and it's so very different nowadays from why I got into it to begin with that I'm honestly just not sure if I'm part of the target audience anymore.

I hear ya, after Ulduar I feel like the game is being designed around a buisness model and not for gamers. I put up with the early Cata changes that took away the ability of tanks and healers to carry a group, even in a pug but this is just getting silly. Their target audience is a creditcard owned by a person with a pulse, not gamers. Or as we are called now, elitists... Which could not be farther from the truth for most of the players that get this label anymore.

Fucking sad, my GF and I used to love WoW so much... Pardon my french.

As to the world PvP; ALL GUARDS need to be nerfed, not just on PvP realms. I never played on a PvP realm and in Vanilla-TBC, my PvE servers constantly had world PvP going on. Their is no need to add rewards, the reward was the fight and to punk attacking groups with better organization, numbers or gear. You could be the guy that got a group out of XR by crushing them or finding a some help in guild, or just spamming Org general chat and let the lowbies get back to leveling. PvE servers are to protect levelers from mindless ganking, you can flag up on any server, PvP servers in MMOs, are dionsaurs.

Player looting is also never going to happen, it's annoying. I once dueled a guy in EQ1 and took an item off him, as a joke. He flipped out so hard that he started throwing himself into lava (perma-death) as he shouted at god to, "PLEASE KILL ME NOW! OMGEEEEEEE!"... I gave it back of course but damn! The "Skyhook" thing is also a fail idea, if they want players on the ground, a simpler solution is to just let flying mounts be mountable/launchable, in quest-hubs and cities only. Once you land, you are stuck on a ground mount until you spend 45 seconds going to one of these places (which are everywhere) and that would be a much smoother solution than ripping players out of the sky, but still put them on the ground for PvP. Again, this should be for all servers, not just PvP.

Current players are badly spoiled by this current direction/model, but if it continues what will it mean for all MMOs, even Titan? Will Titan have the entire raid teir cleared on the first day, all gear dropped at a player's feet and no risk of dying anywhere? Is that a compelling model? Would vanilla WoW have taken off like it did if it was launched like current WoW? I sure don't think it would.

[Lrot]

I'd guess that anybody who'd be interested in buying heroic gear in the BMAH is most likely interested in it strictly for the look of the set. Heroic raiders would in all likelihood prefer to earn those pieces by raiding the content, and would look down their noses at any serious raider who did buy such gear, and rightly so. Would it be any easier to swallow if the BMAH simply offered skins for transmog? Just a suggestion.

However, I would like to be able to upgrade LFR gear in the same way normal gear can. In my case, I've recently joined a guild that's running heroic DS. I still have two pieces of LFR tier gear, which I can't upgrade, or even replace, as I need the normal tier first, which we aren't running. I have considered pugging normal modes, but that would keep me out of the guild runs until I get the replacement pieces I need, a less than ideal solution, but the only one available. I know people would scoff at the notion of LFR gear being upgradable to heroic gear, in effect skipping normal mode, but it would solve some issues, and should negate any perceived need for tier gear in the BMAH. I must be honest, if I could buy the normal mode gear to replace my LFR gear, given my conundrum, I'd at least consider it.

On the subject of heroic pieces in the BMAH, I agree, they must be rewards from raiding at the highest levels, and only attainable by that means.

[Primernova]

Oh this too, I would rather see a RMAH over the insanity of that BMAH.

BMAH = Encourage buying gold to win and get "hacked"... Seriously Blizz?

RMAH = Encourage farming and let players make a few bucks for their efforts while not being able to buy insane stuff like nodrop raid gear.

[Toypop]

Looking forward to the Marmot on this BMAH topic. No doubt it will get a lot of site traffic.

I think there are key questions that have to be asked/answered though before we can have a serious debate on it:

1, When will the items be available? E.g. Week 1 or week 12 of patch.

2, At what frequency will items appear? E.g. 2 to 3 days or 2 to 3 weeks.

3, What range of items will appear e.g. an item for every class/spec, for every slot, item for one slot only, weapons or just early boss junk that usually gets sharded.

4, Who are they aimed at and why? What is Blizzard hoping to achieve?

That debate needs to be free of conspiracy theories and pointless conjecture/arguments regarding "Hardcore v Casual" etc. We need to be careful to not over-blow this issue or base arguments on worse case scenarios & scaremongering.

Also as Lore pointed out, prices of these items will eventually fall such that the "average Joe" might consider getting them but by then the HC raiders may not actually care - by definition if prices have fallen that much then they clearly do no longer care.

Btw @Primernova: BMAH is actually better than the existing BOE/Crafted/Mount/Pet items in terms of the impact on gold buying. Both encourage gold buying but at least the former destroys the gold.

I think it is a red herring to link gold buying to this issue. I believe account theft and botting (done mostly by players on their own accounts and not "chinese" farmers) is something that should be tackled seperately.

[Fetzie]

However, I would like to be able to upgrade LFR gear in the same way normal gear can. In my case, I've recently joined a guild that's running heroic DS. I still have two pieces of LFR tier gear, which I can't upgrade, or even replace, as I need the normal tier first, which we aren't running.

No you don't. You don't "upgrade" an item. You do not need the 397 item to trade in for the 410 item, just like you do not need the 384 item to trade in for the 397 item. You can take your "Chest of the Corrupted Conqueror/Protector/Vanquisher (heroic)" and buy the heroic tier chest, regardless of which items you currently own.

[Lrot]

No you don't. You don't "upgrade" an item. You do not need the 397 item to trade in for the 410 item, just like you do not need the 384 item to trade in for the 397 item. You can take your "Chest of the Corrupted Conqueror/Protector/Vanquisher (heroic)" and buy the heroic tier chest, regardless of which items you currently own.

My mistake. I was under the assumption that the heroic token required the normal item to be upgraded, as in previous tiers.
Thanks for the correction.

Edit: I wish they'd pick a standard and stick with it.

[Yggdrasil]

I know how Lore is feeling. Back when I raided for real (casual 'haha' raiding now even though that gets you 8/8HM these days) and put a lot of quality time into it.. damn right I would be upset to see someone that spent 100 bucks on gold to get BiS items that I hadn't gotten yet after 20 kills simply because the 'supportive' RNG dropped the same 4 items yet again. Heroic is optional, you do it because you like the challenge and thus enjoy the rewards it provides. So it's rewards should be kept to itself. Just like you shouldn't be able to buy a gladiator mount off the AH -- it was a reward for effort, time, and skill put into it.

With all that said though it doesn't upset me anymore. Mostly because I have gotten over the competitive part of playing WoW and just focus on my enjoyment instead of standing up my enjoyment next to other players enjoyment to see who is better and why. Honestly the difference and highlights to players died a long time ago because everyone looks like they have a tier set if they don't have it already. Not like when BWL came out and you saw that first warrior decked out in Wrath -- and you knew instantly. Gladiators are sitting in the same gear as people that casually pvp enough to get mildly easy to get rating. The same goes for hardcore raiders and casual raiders. Sure some stats and colors change but that isn't something you always see and requires an inspect. An inspect that doesn't honestly happen that often anymore not to mention I don't get off on how much agility I have next to someone else for example.

In the end I do feel it is going to far. But its obvious that it's going to happen. I think in the end the prices and rarity of items up on the BMAH is going to keep it roughly in balance. It might also get some people with way to much gold to sink some away.