One could say that there are three worlds (of warcraft?) in this amazing game we play: solo-ing, group PvE, and PvP. These three areas have an interesting parallel between them: they each have two categories of content, one of which is a gateway of sorts for the other, the other of which provides better loot. For group PvE, those two categories are heroics and raiding. For PvP, they're battlegrounds and arenas (though battlegrounds will provide gear as good as that provided in arenas once Cataclysm hits). For solo-ing, they're, quite simply, content done before the level cap and content done at the level cap. Considering the parallel structure between these three areas of the game, I think it's worth it to look at each area, examine their similarities and differences, and see what that says about the game itself.
It seems that my readership is comprised more of solo-ers than of raiders or PvP-ers, but I'll look at the group PvE scene first--I want to save soloing for last, for I suspect that is where the most interesting conclusions will come from. From the beginning of Burning Crusade, when heroics were first implemented, they were designed to be an entryway into the raiding scene: they gave loot that allowed one to enter the first tier of raiding, and they provided a challenge to those who had just reached the level cap, while still being less of a challenge than raids (and thus rewarding comparably worse loot).
It seems, however, that Blizzard has acknowledged the popularity of heroics (a full 14% of my readership seems to spend most of their time in heroics), for they have added four since Wrath was released, all of which were designed to be harder than regular heroics and to be comparable to raids in terms of their difficulty, and thus reward better gear. All heroics received another upgrade when Blizzard changed the emblem system so that the daily heroic would reward the best emblem in the game, while the bosses themselves would drop the second best emblems. While this meant that heroics did allow players to get better gear, they were still firmly in the position of a stepping stone into raids; if anything, the new heroics themselves were just added to give people who can't raid but can run heroics a place to use that new gear, and to give those looking to get into the newest tier of content another avenue to get raid-worthy gear. Thus heroics still seem to exist as little more than the step before raids; the change in the emblem system only improved that functionality, since people likely don't want to run old raids to help alts and new players gear up, so the emblem system makes it so they don't have to.
And as for battlegrounds and arena? Well, they share a similar structure; battlegrounds are available to players before arenas are, and they allow players to gear up in second-rate (compared to arenas) gear, gear which can allow them to move into arenas, where they will get the best gear. Thus the best gear is only available to those who participate in arena, while gear that was once exclusive to arena players becomes easier to get for players who only participate in battlegroung PvP.
The way gear is obtained in battlegrounds and arenas shows an interesting parallel to the way gear is obtained in heroics and raids: the latter provides better gear than the former, but gear that was once exclusive to players who participate in the latter becomes available to those who participate in the former as the expansion wears on. This can allow us to conclude that Blizzard wants players who decided to enter the arena scene a bit later than others to have a chance at getting geared up for it with relative ease. It certainly takes longer than it may have at the beginning of the expansion, but it is still easier for them to do so than if they had to use the same starter gear as people had to use during the first season of the expansion.
More disturbing, though, is the implication of this parallel that Blizzard sees arena as the PvP counterpart to raiding, and thus they see battlegrounds as the PvP counterpart to heroics, i.e., inferior content. Now, Blizzard has said that they want as many people who PvE to raid as possible, and they have certainly designed the game to make that happen. Can we thus conclude that Blizzard sees arena as the end-goal of all PvP, just as raiding is the end-goal of all PvE? It's an interesting prospect, but it might not be the case. After all, Rob Pardo, Blizzard's VP of game design, has gone on record as saying that arenas were the biggest mistake in WoW's history, and I doubt Blizzard would want to encourage players to participate in something they saw as a mistake. One could see rated battlegrounds as Blizzard's way of admitting that arena should not be the end-goal of PvP, since rated battlegrounds will allow people who play only in battlegrounds to get the same gear as people who play only in arenas. This means that battlegrounds and arenas will no longer relate to each other the way they do now, with the latter being awarding superior gear and thus being implied as being superior to the former.
Still, if Blizzard was so unhappy with the way arenas were implemented, why did they try so hard to promote them over battlegrounds? And why did they still try to do this when arena participation dropped dramatically after rating requirements were added to gear, showing that many players simply weren't interesting in arena for the experience of it? And most importantly, why did they stick with this dying part of the game in spite of the balancing nightmare it created for them? The best guess I have is that they simply didn't know what a nightmare arenas would create; Pardo himself said that if they did know what a nightmare it would be to balance the classes in arenas and PvE, they probably wouldn't have implemented the arena system. I guess their best excuse is the classic excuse: it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I wanted to make sure I had enough time to explore this topic as much as needed, so I will have to postpone looking at the parallels between leveling and cooperative PvE for my next philosophy post, which may or may not be posted next Wednesday (considering the sporadic nature with which the ideas for these blog posts come to me, I can't make any promises). Stay tuned!
Edit: As I suspected might happen, the follow-up to this post will be posted on Friday.
Showing posts with label arenas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arenas. Show all posts
Friday, June 18, 2010
Friday, November 13, 2009
The case for solo raid instances
Back when I started playing WoW and began to understand what raiding was, I came to grips with the fact that I would never be able raid seriously. I just don't have the time to dedicate to it, and as much as I would love to be able to see the new content that Blizzard puts so much time into making, I probably never will. It's a shame, because the vast majority of Blizzard's development time for patches is spent developing raid content, and yet so many players like me will never be able to see it. Then the idea hit me: what if each raid dungeon had a version where all of the trash and bosses were non-elite, regular level 80-something enemies? That way, players who don't have the time to raid with others could still experience the same content and do so on their own time.
I know many people's knee-jerk reaction to that suggestion will be that it is a bad idea, but maybe the details of my idea will placate them a bit. Let me start by explaining the lore behind my idea. The gnomes and goblins are known for their engineering marvels, so they would make virtual reality machines to match the raid experience, though toned down to make it accessible to single adventurers. Their practical reason for doing so would be to allow the adventurers of the world to be more prepared when they enter a raid instance. However, because these engineers would need to gather information from people who actually enter the raid in order to make their simulations accurate, each solo raid would not become available until some time after the actual raid has been implemented. Perhaps they would have weekly quests that would ask players to finish the actual raid itself and report back with their findings. When enough people have completed these weekly quests, the solo raid would be unlocked.
Because these solo raids would be virtual reality, they would not award any money, gear, or tangible rewards of any kind. Let me reiterate that, since I feel it is one of my most important points: there would be no real reward for running these raids, so people would still be motivated to run actual raids. The solo raids would probably not cause any durability damage to gear either, since the player won't be taking any actual damage. The trash enemies would range from level 79 to 82, depending on how tough they are in the actual raid. The bosses themselves would range from level 81 to 83, with earlier bosses being 81 and later ones being 83, in order to make them suitably challenging for players. Obviously, some boss fights would loose much of their challenge due to the fact that the player is alone, but perhaps the engineers running the simulation would chime in with quips about how being in a raid would affect the boss fight.
I'm sure one of the first objections people will have against this idea is that it would remove one motivating factor that keeps people raiding: seeing the content. If solo raids were implemented in the way I am suggesting then players will still definitely want to run regular raids, for if a player didn't go into actual raids, he'd be forced to see the content later than everyone else (I think a one to two month delay is sufficient), he wouldn't get any gear to show for his efforts, and his only reward would be seeing the lore behind these instances, meaning people probably wouldn't take advantage of them more than once. If players need even more motivation to run actual raids in lieu of running these replications, we could add durability damage to them, meaning the player would actually lose money by running them. Still, I don't think we need to revert to such drastic measures.
Some may also say that they would rather Blizzard spend their time balancing the actual raid content than spend any of it balancing some bootleg solo content, but how long would it really take to balance the solo content? Even if, in their first iteration, the raids were too difficult or just unbalanced, the fact that players are going in on their own means that problems with the fights would become apparent very quickly and fixes could be implemented just as quickly. Because players will be fighting alone, Blizzard will know that any problems players have will not be due to lack of raid synergy or raids not bringing the right combination of classes. If 1v1 arenas were possible, it would bring the state of PvP class balance into sharp focus. Why? Because so few people are involved. Thus, if you only have one person involved in a situation, any balancing issues with the solo raids should be clear as day and easy to fix, thus won't take up much of the developers' time.
Considering how much time Blizzard spends on developing raid content and how much they have been catering to the casuals recently, I find it surprising that they haven't mentioned any ideas like this yet. I hope they do implement something like this, for I am just as eager to see the end of the Lich King storyline when patch 3.3 comes out as everyone else is. If you have any other objections to my idea that I haven't brought up, leave them in the comment section and I'll give you my response.
I know many people's knee-jerk reaction to that suggestion will be that it is a bad idea, but maybe the details of my idea will placate them a bit. Let me start by explaining the lore behind my idea. The gnomes and goblins are known for their engineering marvels, so they would make virtual reality machines to match the raid experience, though toned down to make it accessible to single adventurers. Their practical reason for doing so would be to allow the adventurers of the world to be more prepared when they enter a raid instance. However, because these engineers would need to gather information from people who actually enter the raid in order to make their simulations accurate, each solo raid would not become available until some time after the actual raid has been implemented. Perhaps they would have weekly quests that would ask players to finish the actual raid itself and report back with their findings. When enough people have completed these weekly quests, the solo raid would be unlocked.
Because these solo raids would be virtual reality, they would not award any money, gear, or tangible rewards of any kind. Let me reiterate that, since I feel it is one of my most important points: there would be no real reward for running these raids, so people would still be motivated to run actual raids. The solo raids would probably not cause any durability damage to gear either, since the player won't be taking any actual damage. The trash enemies would range from level 79 to 82, depending on how tough they are in the actual raid. The bosses themselves would range from level 81 to 83, with earlier bosses being 81 and later ones being 83, in order to make them suitably challenging for players. Obviously, some boss fights would loose much of their challenge due to the fact that the player is alone, but perhaps the engineers running the simulation would chime in with quips about how being in a raid would affect the boss fight.
I'm sure one of the first objections people will have against this idea is that it would remove one motivating factor that keeps people raiding: seeing the content. If solo raids were implemented in the way I am suggesting then players will still definitely want to run regular raids, for if a player didn't go into actual raids, he'd be forced to see the content later than everyone else (I think a one to two month delay is sufficient), he wouldn't get any gear to show for his efforts, and his only reward would be seeing the lore behind these instances, meaning people probably wouldn't take advantage of them more than once. If players need even more motivation to run actual raids in lieu of running these replications, we could add durability damage to them, meaning the player would actually lose money by running them. Still, I don't think we need to revert to such drastic measures.
Some may also say that they would rather Blizzard spend their time balancing the actual raid content than spend any of it balancing some bootleg solo content, but how long would it really take to balance the solo content? Even if, in their first iteration, the raids were too difficult or just unbalanced, the fact that players are going in on their own means that problems with the fights would become apparent very quickly and fixes could be implemented just as quickly. Because players will be fighting alone, Blizzard will know that any problems players have will not be due to lack of raid synergy or raids not bringing the right combination of classes. If 1v1 arenas were possible, it would bring the state of PvP class balance into sharp focus. Why? Because so few people are involved. Thus, if you only have one person involved in a situation, any balancing issues with the solo raids should be clear as day and easy to fix, thus won't take up much of the developers' time.
Considering how much time Blizzard spends on developing raid content and how much they have been catering to the casuals recently, I find it surprising that they haven't mentioned any ideas like this yet. I hope they do implement something like this, for I am just as eager to see the end of the Lich King storyline when patch 3.3 comes out as everyone else is. If you have any other objections to my idea that I haven't brought up, leave them in the comment section and I'll give you my response.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
How to pick a side hobby
WoW is a big game. There is a lot to do in this game, and though you should experience all of it in some respect, it's good to have one activity to fall back on when you just want to pass some time. Raiding, battlegrounds, and arenas are nice focuses for your game, but when you have a few hours before your guild's Ulduar run is scheduled to start or your full arena team isn't on yet, it's nice to have something to do on your own. That's what this post is concerned with; side hobbies. Here I will discuss various side activities and whether or not you will find them fun. I will also link the associated meta-achievement or max achievement.
Pet Collecting
Non-combat pets are those little companions that follow you around wherever you go. They are quite nice as a flavor item, and as a pet-collector myself, I can tell you that collecting them is an enjoyable pastime. In the days of pre-Wrath, when pets took up space in our inventory, pet-collecting was not a very lucrative hobby. Each pet you had took up one space in your bank or bags, thus making them rather cumbersome. With the new pets interface, that has changed for the better, and you can now have as many pets as you like without running out of bag space.
One of the nice things about collecting pets is the variety of activities involved in pet collecting. Some are gained through reputations, while others must simply be ground for. (I think that's the past tense version of grind. Edit: Confirmed) Many holiday events also give you a pet of some kind, which gives you even more motivation to participate in them. It you want a more focused activity with a more tangible reward, then you may not like pet collecting. Then again, most of these activities won't have tangible rewards. If you want to do something with valuable rewards, run some 5-mans or do some dailies. Also, pet collecting isn't something that you can really brag about, so if you want a hobby that will bring you fame and glory, look elsewhere. It's a shame that you can't display more than one pet at a time, but it is still nice to have many to choose from, especially when a pet showoff session happens in your raid. In the end, if you like varied activities with frequent rewards, pet collecting is a good choice for you. A good database for the dozens of pets available in the game is WarcraftPets.com.
Mount Collecting
Mounts are an important part of the game. They get you from point A to point B faster than hoofing it on foot will, and some even allow you to fly. Thus, collecting them can become a fun pastime. Since mounts are a good deal larger than pets, it's easier to show off your rare mounts than your rare pets. Like pets, mounts once took up space in your bags, which means you wouldn't want to have more than two; one for the ground and one for flight. The new pets interface also has a pane for mounts, which makes collecting them even easier.
Unlike pets, mounts often take more effort to get but come in groups. For example, many mounts require long reputation grinds, but once you finish those grinds, you get six or eight mounts that you can buy. Some mounts are also rare dungeon drops and take even longer to farm than rare pets. Of course, this means that getting one of those mounts can be a real status symbol. If you want something that requires more effort than pets but has more impressive rewards, mount collecting could be for you. Warcraftmounts.com is a good database for mount collectors.
Completing Old-world Quests
There is a lot of lore to be found in WoW, and most of it is found in the quests. Some give you engrossing storylines that also motivate you to go through those old-world dungeons that you missed, while others are just plain fun. Of course, some will make you pull your hair out with their low drop rates, but overall, old-world quests are worth doing. They give you reputation to help you get your crusader title, and though the money you make with them may not off-set the repair bills you build up, it's still worth seeing what you missed if you decided to grind through your levels like I did.
It can be difficult to remember which zones you cleared out in terms of quests, as well as which quests you did that were started by a zone drop. This can lead to long hours spent searching zones for quests you already did or grinding for items you already got. Still, doing old-world quests is really it's own reward. These quests were put in the game for you, so you may as well try them out. Although I don't know of any resources that allow you to see which quests you have already done, I know that wowhead is a great resource for finding quests that you may not have known about.
Exploration
Filling out your in-game map is a simple task that lets you see parts of the world you may not have seen otherwise. You will probably complete some of the exploration-related achievements by doing all of the old-world quests, but exploring for its own sake can also be rewarding. Aside from the title and tabard, you also get to see all of the effort the art team put into this game. Although, to be honest, aside from Jenkins, The Explorer is one of the most unimpressive titles in the game. Just saying...
Fishing
Although I did list the meta fishing achievement, fishing in general is a fun activity. You get to catch fish which can be turned in valuable food for raids, as well as some other interesting things. It's a relaxing activity that I myself enjoy a lot. In the olden days, fishing was less rewarding than it is now and was only a source of food. You may have been lucky enough to win the Stranglethorn Fishing Contest or fish up the 1 Ring, but aside from that, fishing was rather one-dimensional. These days, not only is fishing a source of some fantastic buff food, but you can also strike at rich with the dailies involved in fishing.
One of the nice things about fishing is that it's low key and peaceful (for the most part), and thus won't incur any repair bills. It's also possible to fish while waiting for other things. You can fish on a dock while waiting for a boat or fish next to a dungeon while waiting for your group to get there. Fishing is one of the few activities that you can do almost anywhere, making it quite a versatile hobby. If you seek something more action oriented, then fishing isn't for you. Also, though there are a variety of locations you can fish in and things you can catch, the basic motions are still the same. Still is you want something relaxing to do that you can do almost anywhere, you'll like fishing. A fantastic resource for fishing is El's Extreme Anglin', which has information on anything and everything fishing related.
Reputations
This is probably the most time-consuming hobby in the list. Many people grind reputation to some extent, but some are obsessive about it. Some get try to get exalted with as many factions in the game as they can. The rewards of reputation grinds aren't as great as they used to be, but back in the old days, you could acquire many things by being liked by the right people. There are also some reputations that don't really have great rewards, but people still grind them just so they can have another "Exalted" on their reputation tab. Those of you with no life could also go for Insane in the Membrane, if you really think it's worth it.
Although the ways you gain reputation with different factions vary quite a bit, they all have one thing in common: they take a long time. Grinding reputations as a hobby is not for those who play casually. This is an activity for those who really have nothing else to do and who just want to do something that takes a long time. Again, I don't know of any resources specifically for grinding reputations, but wowhead can probably help you. WoWWiki also has some good guides on effectively grinding various reputations.
It's worth noting that some of these hobbies bleed into one another. For example, pet collectors trying to get the Mechanical Chicken will need to do the old-world Distress Beacon quests, and as I mentioned, doing old-world quests will fill out a large portion of your map. You can also gain some of the rarest pets in the game by fishing. And, of course, many factions gives pets and mounts, so you will probably need to grind some reputations for those two hobbies.
So there you have it! Whatever your hobby may be, just remember to enjoy it. There's no point in playing WoW if you aren't having fun.
Pet Collecting
Non-combat pets are those little companions that follow you around wherever you go. They are quite nice as a flavor item, and as a pet-collector myself, I can tell you that collecting them is an enjoyable pastime. In the days of pre-Wrath, when pets took up space in our inventory, pet-collecting was not a very lucrative hobby. Each pet you had took up one space in your bank or bags, thus making them rather cumbersome. With the new pets interface, that has changed for the better, and you can now have as many pets as you like without running out of bag space.
One of the nice things about collecting pets is the variety of activities involved in pet collecting. Some are gained through reputations, while others must simply be ground for. (I think that's the past tense version of grind. Edit: Confirmed) Many holiday events also give you a pet of some kind, which gives you even more motivation to participate in them. It you want a more focused activity with a more tangible reward, then you may not like pet collecting. Then again, most of these activities won't have tangible rewards. If you want to do something with valuable rewards, run some 5-mans or do some dailies. Also, pet collecting isn't something that you can really brag about, so if you want a hobby that will bring you fame and glory, look elsewhere. It's a shame that you can't display more than one pet at a time, but it is still nice to have many to choose from, especially when a pet showoff session happens in your raid. In the end, if you like varied activities with frequent rewards, pet collecting is a good choice for you. A good database for the dozens of pets available in the game is WarcraftPets.com.
Mount Collecting
Mounts are an important part of the game. They get you from point A to point B faster than hoofing it on foot will, and some even allow you to fly. Thus, collecting them can become a fun pastime. Since mounts are a good deal larger than pets, it's easier to show off your rare mounts than your rare pets. Like pets, mounts once took up space in your bags, which means you wouldn't want to have more than two; one for the ground and one for flight. The new pets interface also has a pane for mounts, which makes collecting them even easier.
Unlike pets, mounts often take more effort to get but come in groups. For example, many mounts require long reputation grinds, but once you finish those grinds, you get six or eight mounts that you can buy. Some mounts are also rare dungeon drops and take even longer to farm than rare pets. Of course, this means that getting one of those mounts can be a real status symbol. If you want something that requires more effort than pets but has more impressive rewards, mount collecting could be for you. Warcraftmounts.com is a good database for mount collectors.
Completing Old-world Quests
There is a lot of lore to be found in WoW, and most of it is found in the quests. Some give you engrossing storylines that also motivate you to go through those old-world dungeons that you missed, while others are just plain fun. Of course, some will make you pull your hair out with their low drop rates, but overall, old-world quests are worth doing. They give you reputation to help you get your crusader title, and though the money you make with them may not off-set the repair bills you build up, it's still worth seeing what you missed if you decided to grind through your levels like I did.
It can be difficult to remember which zones you cleared out in terms of quests, as well as which quests you did that were started by a zone drop. This can lead to long hours spent searching zones for quests you already did or grinding for items you already got. Still, doing old-world quests is really it's own reward. These quests were put in the game for you, so you may as well try them out. Although I don't know of any resources that allow you to see which quests you have already done, I know that wowhead is a great resource for finding quests that you may not have known about.
Exploration
Filling out your in-game map is a simple task that lets you see parts of the world you may not have seen otherwise. You will probably complete some of the exploration-related achievements by doing all of the old-world quests, but exploring for its own sake can also be rewarding. Aside from the title and tabard, you also get to see all of the effort the art team put into this game. Although, to be honest, aside from Jenkins, The Explorer is one of the most unimpressive titles in the game. Just saying...
Fishing
Although I did list the meta fishing achievement, fishing in general is a fun activity. You get to catch fish which can be turned in valuable food for raids, as well as some other interesting things. It's a relaxing activity that I myself enjoy a lot. In the olden days, fishing was less rewarding than it is now and was only a source of food. You may have been lucky enough to win the Stranglethorn Fishing Contest or fish up the 1 Ring, but aside from that, fishing was rather one-dimensional. These days, not only is fishing a source of some fantastic buff food, but you can also strike at rich with the dailies involved in fishing.
One of the nice things about fishing is that it's low key and peaceful (for the most part), and thus won't incur any repair bills. It's also possible to fish while waiting for other things. You can fish on a dock while waiting for a boat or fish next to a dungeon while waiting for your group to get there. Fishing is one of the few activities that you can do almost anywhere, making it quite a versatile hobby. If you seek something more action oriented, then fishing isn't for you. Also, though there are a variety of locations you can fish in and things you can catch, the basic motions are still the same. Still is you want something relaxing to do that you can do almost anywhere, you'll like fishing. A fantastic resource for fishing is El's Extreme Anglin', which has information on anything and everything fishing related.
Reputations
This is probably the most time-consuming hobby in the list. Many people grind reputation to some extent, but some are obsessive about it. Some get try to get exalted with as many factions in the game as they can. The rewards of reputation grinds aren't as great as they used to be, but back in the old days, you could acquire many things by being liked by the right people. There are also some reputations that don't really have great rewards, but people still grind them just so they can have another "Exalted" on their reputation tab. Those of you with no life could also go for Insane in the Membrane, if you really think it's worth it.
Although the ways you gain reputation with different factions vary quite a bit, they all have one thing in common: they take a long time. Grinding reputations as a hobby is not for those who play casually. This is an activity for those who really have nothing else to do and who just want to do something that takes a long time. Again, I don't know of any resources specifically for grinding reputations, but wowhead can probably help you. WoWWiki also has some good guides on effectively grinding various reputations.
It's worth noting that some of these hobbies bleed into one another. For example, pet collectors trying to get the Mechanical Chicken will need to do the old-world Distress Beacon quests, and as I mentioned, doing old-world quests will fill out a large portion of your map. You can also gain some of the rarest pets in the game by fishing. And, of course, many factions gives pets and mounts, so you will probably need to grind some reputations for those two hobbies.
So there you have it! Whatever your hobby may be, just remember to enjoy it. There's no point in playing WoW if you aren't having fun.
Friday, July 31, 2009
On the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content
If Burning Crusade was Blizzard's attempt to homogenize World of Warcraft in some way, Wrath of the Lich King was their success. We could see the beginnings of homogenization in BC: all elemental items were now primal [element], which were obtained by combining motes; starter gear could be obtained from badges of justice, gotten from any heroic instance; and many reputation grinds were done in instances, not by grinding various mobs. (There were exceptions, of course.) We also saw the advent of dailies, a reliable, albeit repetitive way to make money. Class balance was brought into sharper focus and actually attempted by Blizzard, and most classes had something unique to bring to the raid. Profession balance also become a concern, and Blizzard tried to give every profession something special to make it different from the rest and worth taking.
The problem with Blizzard's design philosophy during BC was that it was near impossible to keep all these things balanced. Some reputation grinds were immensely harder than others with worse rewards, some classes were more useless than others in raids (although, as I discussed here, I think that was a mistaken assumption), and some professions were much more useful to the crafter than others. Despite their best intentions, Blizzard wasn't able to balance everything in BC, but it was certainly a start.
Wrath of the Lich King changed all that. "Bring the player, not the class" became Blizzard's new design philosophy. Their goal was to make each class equally viable so that raids would choose to bring people based on the player's skills, not their class and spec. It was a noble pursuit, and for the most part, it was successful. Frost mages still fall behind in DPS and ret paladins were overpowered for some time, but most classes were on equal footing. Not only were the classes now performing more or less equally, but they were also given new abilities that had been exclusive to other classes for the longest time. For example, Leader of the Pack was one of the main draws of bringing a feral druid to raids. With the release of Wrath, however, warriors were given the same ability. This was one of many examples of class exclusive buffs being given to other classes. With these new buffs was added a new buff mechanic: identical buffs no longer stack. If you bring a feral druid with LotP and a fury warrior with Rampage, your raid members will only get a 5% bonus to their melee crit chance, not a 10% chance. Since buffs like these were also made raid-wide, there was no longer a benefit to bring multiple members of the same class to give the same buffs to different groups in your raid. Thus many classes lost the unique things they had previously brought to raids, and these buffs became viewed as mandatory, rather than a nice bonus to bringing along an atypical DPS'er to your raids.
Blizzard wasn't done there, though. They made reputation grinds more similar as well. Most factions now have their own dailies which grant rep, and for some you can also don their tabard and gain rep from any heroic or level 80 instances you enter. Compared to the old days where only certain instances gave rep with certain factions, this gives players much more flexibility in how they gain rep. I have bad memories of grinding Steamvaults to get rep for my Earthwarden. It was not a fun instance, and the only thing that kept in bearable was the fact that it dropped two pieces of the hunter dungeon set, as well as two pieces of the mage set, so I had a constant supply of DPS. With the advent of Warth, you can now run any instance you like and gain rep, allowing you to choose to run easy ones or ones which drop gear you want. All these changes makes grinding reputation easier, and as a result, the rewards from reputation grinds are less remarkable. Still pretty good, but not as remarkable.
It was worth it, though.
Speaking of dailies, they became a lot more prevalent in Wrath. Once the exclusive right of those with flying mounts, these repeatable quests were revered for the amount of money you could make with them. (120g was a lot back in those days) With patch 2.4, new dailies were added with the Isle of Quel'Danas, as well as the cooking, fishing, and PvP dailies, all of which did not require a flying mount. There were now dailies for everyone, but they were still a distinct, separate part of the game.
Nowadays, dailies are everywhere. Almost every faction has daily quests now, and most of what you do at level 80 that doesn't involve a group involves daily quests. Trouble is, there are only really two rewards from daily quests: rep and money. Once you have gotten your rep as high as you can with the various factions, the only reason to do dailies is for the money. (With the exception of the Argent Tournament dailies, that is, which also reward Champion's Seals, but those are incredibly boring. Patch 3.2 can't come soon enough.) The problem with this is that the different sets of dailies award vastly different amounts of money, so unless you have a lot of time to spend on them, you're only going to spend your time doing the ones that reward the most money. Thus you spend your time doing the same dailies over and over and over again, and unfortunately, they haven't got any more fun since Burning Crusade. Since there weren't as many dailies in Burning Crusade, they didn't need to be as fun and varied, and yet Blizzard still put in the effort to make them interesting. Now we have more dailies than we could ever have dreamed of, and yet Blizzard hasn't tried too many new things with them. I'd even go as far as saying they are less fun than they were before. Perhaps I just have rose-tinted glasses, but I miss the days of Bomb Them Again! and Disrupt the Greengill Coast. The only daily that really compares is Thrusting Hodir's Spear, though it is a pretty awesome quest.
Burning Crusade also brought a lot of changes to professions that made them more viable and useful. However, this caused a lot of players to take professions only for their own self benefit and drop them when they were no longer useful. (Case in point: tailoring and leatherwoking had good starter armor for raiding that only the crafter could equip, but this armor was quickly made obsolete by raid drops.) When Wrath was released, the crafter only benefits were radically changed. There was no more starter-set BoP crafter armor and many of the old exclusive benefits were removed or made less useful (Example: with the advent of potion sickness, which prevents people from using more than one potion per battle, the Alchemist's Stone and its upgrades lost much of their appeal.) New items were added to most of the professions that gave stat bonuses that were exclusive to the crafter. They weren't that exclusive, though, in that with the exception of tailoring and engineering, they all give more or less the same stat benefits. The only thing that differs is how those benefits are conferred; enchanters get exclusive ring enchantments, leatherworkers get bracer enchantments that are better than the equivalent enchantments, jewelcrafters get gems which are better than the gems they can give to everyone else, alchemists gain improved effects from their elixirs and flasks, blacksmiths get to add extra gems to their gear, and inscribers get shoulder enchantments that are better than their Sons of Hodir counterparts. And unlike in the days of BC, these effects no longer apply to you if you drop the profession, so you can't level up each profession and then drop them to get all of their buffs on your gear, which most min-max'ers did back in the day.
What this means is that, with the exception of tailoring's cloak enchants and all of the engineering benefits being added in 3.2, professions are now less about what they give you and more about what you can give others. The unfortunate part of this is that some professions just aren't as useful as others. Alchemy sees a lot more use than leatherworking, and ditto for enchanting compared with tailoring. More importantly, the professions are all much more similar now. That's really the point I am getting at with this post: everything is much more similar in Wrath of the Lich King. Everything has been streamlined, simplified, and almost dumbed down.
How you acquire your profession's recipes is a perfect example of this change. With rare exception, all recipes for all of the professions are either obtained from a trainer or obtained from another NPC by trading for them with some sort of token or material you usually use. New research mechanics have also been added, but these are guaranteed to give you a new recipe, unlike the days of BC when you could discover a new recipe every time you made something. Gone are the days of checking wowhead to see which vendors strewn over the land sell recipes or plans that you need to buy. Factions also play less of a role in our professions. Maybe I feel that more than others because I am an enchanter and we get no recipes from faction quartermasters, but I find it a bit disappointing that getting all of our recipes is so simple and... well, boring.
That's really my main problem with the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King. Everything is more boring now. I still find raiding and instances to be fun, but all of the nuances of solo-ing have been lost. I find this especially ironic since this expansion was supposed to be the one for the casuals. From all of the changes made, I'd wager that Blizzard's intention was really to get casuals into instances as soon as possible, rather than improve their old stomping grounds. After all, the sooner we start raiding, the less time we spend on our own, and the less time Bizzard needs to spend on developing solo content.
In fact, all of these changes can really be traced back to Blizzard trying to get people to raid more. All classes were made raid viable, so no players can blame their class for not raiding. Reputations were made easier to get exalted with, so players can spend less time getting their raid starter gear and get into raids sooner. Dailies became more prevalent so that we would always have something to do to make a bit of money for the repair bills. Professions were homogenized so that players could pick a profession they liked rather than one that would have a positive impact on their raiding. It seems to me that all of these changes were made for the raiders, and not us solo-ers.
I see a parallel between these changes and the arena fiasco. When arenas were released, they brought class balance into sharper focus. Previously, the classes' individual strengths and weaknesses in PvP were glossed over by the fact that battlegrounds were so huge that players' individual contribution or lack thereof weren't easily perceivable. With arenas, however, classes were pitted against each other in a very direct way, and the sad state of class balance was brought into sharp focus. Because of this, Blizzard began to balance classes around their performance in arenas. This became a problem as classes that were perfectly balanced for raids were nerfed because they were doing too well in arenas (such as resto druids). This also applied to battlegrounds, where the battles are more objective based and longer, and thus emphasize survival rather than rapid killing. Because of this difference, some classes lost effectiveness in battlegrounds because they were too good in arenas.
This kind of thing still goes on, and what makes the situation ironic is that arenas are the part of the game with lowest player participation. There are even many die-hard battleground fans who hate them. Arenas used to be more popular when they were a source of easy epics, but now that all arena gear requires good ratings, those days are gone.
In the same way that PvP was balanced around arenas, I think that PvE content has been balanced around raiders. While this could be seen as a good thing for players who want to get into raids as soon as possible, those of us who don't are left more or less in the dust. Don't get me wrong; I do enjoy raiding, but some people just don't have the time for it, and it is those people who suffer the most from these changes to PvE. Solo end-game is dying. I would like to think that the new Argent Tournament dailies we are getting in patch 3.2 will change that, but even if they do, it's such a shame that they will only be available to people with the Crusader title, which will force players to play inferior content in order to get to good content. If these new dailies disappoint like the last ones did, we solo players will just have to go back to levelling alts; there's just nothing fun left to do.
Edit: Patch 3.2 has been released, and I have to say, I am pretty disappointed with the new dailies. With the exception of Get Kraken!, they are all typical, predictable, and boring. Come on, Blizz! Challenge your quest designers. Give us something new!
The problem with Blizzard's design philosophy during BC was that it was near impossible to keep all these things balanced. Some reputation grinds were immensely harder than others with worse rewards, some classes were more useless than others in raids (although, as I discussed here, I think that was a mistaken assumption), and some professions were much more useful to the crafter than others. Despite their best intentions, Blizzard wasn't able to balance everything in BC, but it was certainly a start.
Wrath of the Lich King changed all that. "Bring the player, not the class" became Blizzard's new design philosophy. Their goal was to make each class equally viable so that raids would choose to bring people based on the player's skills, not their class and spec. It was a noble pursuit, and for the most part, it was successful. Frost mages still fall behind in DPS and ret paladins were overpowered for some time, but most classes were on equal footing. Not only were the classes now performing more or less equally, but they were also given new abilities that had been exclusive to other classes for the longest time. For example, Leader of the Pack was one of the main draws of bringing a feral druid to raids. With the release of Wrath, however, warriors were given the same ability. This was one of many examples of class exclusive buffs being given to other classes. With these new buffs was added a new buff mechanic: identical buffs no longer stack. If you bring a feral druid with LotP and a fury warrior with Rampage, your raid members will only get a 5% bonus to their melee crit chance, not a 10% chance. Since buffs like these were also made raid-wide, there was no longer a benefit to bring multiple members of the same class to give the same buffs to different groups in your raid. Thus many classes lost the unique things they had previously brought to raids, and these buffs became viewed as mandatory, rather than a nice bonus to bringing along an atypical DPS'er to your raids.
Blizzard wasn't done there, though. They made reputation grinds more similar as well. Most factions now have their own dailies which grant rep, and for some you can also don their tabard and gain rep from any heroic or level 80 instances you enter. Compared to the old days where only certain instances gave rep with certain factions, this gives players much more flexibility in how they gain rep. I have bad memories of grinding Steamvaults to get rep for my Earthwarden. It was not a fun instance, and the only thing that kept in bearable was the fact that it dropped two pieces of the hunter dungeon set, as well as two pieces of the mage set, so I had a constant supply of DPS. With the advent of Warth, you can now run any instance you like and gain rep, allowing you to choose to run easy ones or ones which drop gear you want. All these changes makes grinding reputation easier, and as a result, the rewards from reputation grinds are less remarkable. Still pretty good, but not as remarkable.
It was worth it, though.Speaking of dailies, they became a lot more prevalent in Wrath. Once the exclusive right of those with flying mounts, these repeatable quests were revered for the amount of money you could make with them. (120g was a lot back in those days) With patch 2.4, new dailies were added with the Isle of Quel'Danas, as well as the cooking, fishing, and PvP dailies, all of which did not require a flying mount. There were now dailies for everyone, but they were still a distinct, separate part of the game.
Nowadays, dailies are everywhere. Almost every faction has daily quests now, and most of what you do at level 80 that doesn't involve a group involves daily quests. Trouble is, there are only really two rewards from daily quests: rep and money. Once you have gotten your rep as high as you can with the various factions, the only reason to do dailies is for the money. (With the exception of the Argent Tournament dailies, that is, which also reward Champion's Seals, but those are incredibly boring. Patch 3.2 can't come soon enough.) The problem with this is that the different sets of dailies award vastly different amounts of money, so unless you have a lot of time to spend on them, you're only going to spend your time doing the ones that reward the most money. Thus you spend your time doing the same dailies over and over and over again, and unfortunately, they haven't got any more fun since Burning Crusade. Since there weren't as many dailies in Burning Crusade, they didn't need to be as fun and varied, and yet Blizzard still put in the effort to make them interesting. Now we have more dailies than we could ever have dreamed of, and yet Blizzard hasn't tried too many new things with them. I'd even go as far as saying they are less fun than they were before. Perhaps I just have rose-tinted glasses, but I miss the days of Bomb Them Again! and Disrupt the Greengill Coast. The only daily that really compares is Thrusting Hodir's Spear, though it is a pretty awesome quest.
Yes, that dwarf is in the dragon's mouth. This quest is a far better reward for getting honored with the Sons of Hodir than those shoulder enchantments are.
Burning Crusade also brought a lot of changes to professions that made them more viable and useful. However, this caused a lot of players to take professions only for their own self benefit and drop them when they were no longer useful. (Case in point: tailoring and leatherwoking had good starter armor for raiding that only the crafter could equip, but this armor was quickly made obsolete by raid drops.) When Wrath was released, the crafter only benefits were radically changed. There was no more starter-set BoP crafter armor and many of the old exclusive benefits were removed or made less useful (Example: with the advent of potion sickness, which prevents people from using more than one potion per battle, the Alchemist's Stone and its upgrades lost much of their appeal.) New items were added to most of the professions that gave stat bonuses that were exclusive to the crafter. They weren't that exclusive, though, in that with the exception of tailoring and engineering, they all give more or less the same stat benefits. The only thing that differs is how those benefits are conferred; enchanters get exclusive ring enchantments, leatherworkers get bracer enchantments that are better than the equivalent enchantments, jewelcrafters get gems which are better than the gems they can give to everyone else, alchemists gain improved effects from their elixirs and flasks, blacksmiths get to add extra gems to their gear, and inscribers get shoulder enchantments that are better than their Sons of Hodir counterparts. And unlike in the days of BC, these effects no longer apply to you if you drop the profession, so you can't level up each profession and then drop them to get all of their buffs on your gear, which most min-max'ers did back in the day.
What this means is that, with the exception of tailoring's cloak enchants and all of the engineering benefits being added in 3.2, professions are now less about what they give you and more about what you can give others. The unfortunate part of this is that some professions just aren't as useful as others. Alchemy sees a lot more use than leatherworking, and ditto for enchanting compared with tailoring. More importantly, the professions are all much more similar now. That's really the point I am getting at with this post: everything is much more similar in Wrath of the Lich King. Everything has been streamlined, simplified, and almost dumbed down.
How you acquire your profession's recipes is a perfect example of this change. With rare exception, all recipes for all of the professions are either obtained from a trainer or obtained from another NPC by trading for them with some sort of token or material you usually use. New research mechanics have also been added, but these are guaranteed to give you a new recipe, unlike the days of BC when you could discover a new recipe every time you made something. Gone are the days of checking wowhead to see which vendors strewn over the land sell recipes or plans that you need to buy. Factions also play less of a role in our professions. Maybe I feel that more than others because I am an enchanter and we get no recipes from faction quartermasters, but I find it a bit disappointing that getting all of our recipes is so simple and... well, boring.
That's really my main problem with the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King. Everything is more boring now. I still find raiding and instances to be fun, but all of the nuances of solo-ing have been lost. I find this especially ironic since this expansion was supposed to be the one for the casuals. From all of the changes made, I'd wager that Blizzard's intention was really to get casuals into instances as soon as possible, rather than improve their old stomping grounds. After all, the sooner we start raiding, the less time we spend on our own, and the less time Bizzard needs to spend on developing solo content.
In fact, all of these changes can really be traced back to Blizzard trying to get people to raid more. All classes were made raid viable, so no players can blame their class for not raiding. Reputations were made easier to get exalted with, so players can spend less time getting their raid starter gear and get into raids sooner. Dailies became more prevalent so that we would always have something to do to make a bit of money for the repair bills. Professions were homogenized so that players could pick a profession they liked rather than one that would have a positive impact on their raiding. It seems to me that all of these changes were made for the raiders, and not us solo-ers.
I see a parallel between these changes and the arena fiasco. When arenas were released, they brought class balance into sharper focus. Previously, the classes' individual strengths and weaknesses in PvP were glossed over by the fact that battlegrounds were so huge that players' individual contribution or lack thereof weren't easily perceivable. With arenas, however, classes were pitted against each other in a very direct way, and the sad state of class balance was brought into sharp focus. Because of this, Blizzard began to balance classes around their performance in arenas. This became a problem as classes that were perfectly balanced for raids were nerfed because they were doing too well in arenas (such as resto druids). This also applied to battlegrounds, where the battles are more objective based and longer, and thus emphasize survival rather than rapid killing. Because of this difference, some classes lost effectiveness in battlegrounds because they were too good in arenas.
This kind of thing still goes on, and what makes the situation ironic is that arenas are the part of the game with lowest player participation. There are even many die-hard battleground fans who hate them. Arenas used to be more popular when they were a source of easy epics, but now that all arena gear requires good ratings, those days are gone.
In the same way that PvP was balanced around arenas, I think that PvE content has been balanced around raiders. While this could be seen as a good thing for players who want to get into raids as soon as possible, those of us who don't are left more or less in the dust. Don't get me wrong; I do enjoy raiding, but some people just don't have the time for it, and it is those people who suffer the most from these changes to PvE. Solo end-game is dying. I would like to think that the new Argent Tournament dailies we are getting in patch 3.2 will change that, but even if they do, it's such a shame that they will only be available to people with the Crusader title, which will force players to play inferior content in order to get to good content. If these new dailies disappoint like the last ones did, we solo players will just have to go back to levelling alts; there's just nothing fun left to do.
Edit: Patch 3.2 has been released, and I have to say, I am pretty disappointed with the new dailies. With the exception of Get Kraken!, they are all typical, predictable, and boring. Come on, Blizz! Challenge your quest designers. Give us something new!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
