In every expansion you watch the same thing. Blizzard starts the content one way… they add an extensively long grind. As the expansion closes down… they ease the grind and at the very last moment…. they make it a non issue.
What bothers me most is the nay sayers… Look.. I’m a casual player. This expansion is for me. Yes… I play a lot, but I’m an altohlic with focus issues. It doesn’t dumb down what I did or eliminate your effort… so quit your bitching… The damned patch isn’t even out yet.
The Sky Is Falling
As shocking as this might be, Blizzard isn’t out to screw you personally…. I know.. its a huge shock, but Blizzard’s more concerned with making a game for the masses rather than personally bending you over. I know… but… they nerfed you… they nerfed the content… they…. they… they….
Emblems of Conquest will be dropping. I get that its a huge problem for some people. I understand they feel the content is dumbed down. But what about the player who just started the game late. What about the person who just started playing this expansion and now wants to participate in the end game? What about the players that were completely pissed because they are doing Ulduar 10 man and they get badges for gear that they likely don’t need and will be inferior to the crap they’ll be getting in Ulduar? Wow… so they should feel sorry they’ll finally have access to the gear they should have from the beginning?
Ah I see… we should lock them out. The game isn’t for them. They diminish your play experience… we shouldn’t allow them to play in your pool. Ok… so thats the problem…. they devalue you.
The Catch Up Path
Almost every expansion raiding guilds run into one huge problem… At some point that rock steady guy/girl who showed up to every single damned raid decides they need a life… or they get in trouble with their parents… or their Internet connection decides to take a crap…. or their PC dies, and someone is left holding the bag. Then two people decide to quit and suddenly… suddenly.. you’re left with hole in your roster.
The new method of dropping Emblems of Conquest from damned near everything means that you can put those people who are there to fill in your roster on a mission. They have a way to keep pace when they can’t attend raids. They can be working on their gear too. When you have someone who’s a solid raider, but wants to have a backup toon, they can work on that backup character without affecting the main runs. Its a method for people who would have no possible way of playing catch up after Ulduar to catch up.
So you have more options of players. You have more options for people to participate. People who possibly couldn’t keep up due to time constraints have a method to keep up now.
Devaluation of Progress
I’ve heard people bitch about it devaluing what they did. Guess what.. I don’t look down on the people who cleared Naxx before it was in Northrend. Those people did great things. They were on the ragged edge beating down content that 1% of people ever got to see.
For those people who got the world firsts or server firsts… look I can’t take that away from you. If you did it while it was hard.. guess what you have a time and date stamp on your achievement that says… you busted your ass… it shows without a doubt that you worked your butt off.
Changes like these give people a way to play and have fun with you… it doesn’t take away the effort you logged. Its not like they are handing out free epics.
Free Epics
Look at the cost of stuff in Badges. The shits expensive. Anyone who wants to play catch up is going to have to bust their ever loving ass. They are going to have to do some obscenely large amount of heroic runs or Naxx runs to even come close to catching up. Oh… and at the end of the day.. guess what? They can’t fill every slot. They can’t get the best of everything. That drops in Ulduar.
I’d like nothing better than to have the Druid trinkets that drop in 25 man Ulduar. Guess what? They aren’t on the menu. I’m a level 80 Druid using a level 70 Idol.. Its my 0nly choice.
Skills to Pay the Bills
So now that we’re raining epics down on the world, remember the effort those people have to put in is massive. Oh.. but you say… its going to make the bosses keel over dead? Look how many of us ever successfully stepped into Sunwell. They gave us a chance in Burning Crusade to get some near Sunwell gear at the end. We had to grind for WEEKS to get the shit. And guess what? We couldn’t clear Sunwell. We didn’t have the skills that the best raiders did.
Blizzard isn’t taking the skill factor out of the game. They are giving people a way to even up the field without providing them the skills they need. People aren’t going to get Tier 8.5 gear and suddenly POOF!!! They are end game raiders. The skills required take a lot of practice that those who show up late won’t have. They will struggle… they will get frustrated. Half or better of them will give up.
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Amen brother
If only this kind of sense could be seen on the EU general forum.
Also, I do wish all the people who whine “I WILL QUIT IF BLIZZ DO THIS!!!!!11!!!!1!” actually *would*.
From one raid leader to another….thank you for saying this.
I agree whole-heartedly. I’m one of the ‘catch-up’ people, my first toon hit 70 last July/August, I was finally starting to feel like I wasn’t just being pulled along on runs when the x-pac dropped, and for a variety of reasons, I didn’t get that till Christmas, and it took me a little while to get leveled in NR. So there I was, way behind the curve again, and it’s taken quite a bit of work to get back up to speed again.
Speaking from experience, it’s very easy to just sort of get left behind, and then you’re stuck trying to PuG runs which isn’t so much of an issue for me now, but up until a couple months ago, I was (and I’m sure many others are as well) very nervous/shy about running things with non-guild members. I agree that to a certain extent it makes allot of the work some people have put in seem like it was semi-wasted effort, however not doing it risks alienating a large portion of the paying customers that Blizz needs to keep the game moving forward as it has been.
“What about the players that were completely pissed because they are doing Ulduar 10 man and they get badges for gear that they likely don’t need and will be inferior to the crap they’ll be getting in Ulduar? Wow… so they should feel sorry they’ll finally have access to the gear they should have from the beginning?”
They will feel sorry when they buy all that EoC gear, enter U10 and find it easy and boring and… completely unrewarding in terms of gear. So it will be U25 pugs/raids, only much worse than N25 ’cause of even narrower margin of error. So a lot of people will find themselves swimming in useless gear which doesn’t help them beat the content they don’t have skills for.
Rock::: Blizzard ::: Hard Place
I can appreciate both arguments, and anyone could easily twist either argument to make the other look like selfish morons. I think you hit it right on the head though Star. The folks that did it when it was hard …no one can take that away from you, but we shouldn’t punish those that could not. The folks that are upset are those that don’t just want the achievement, but they want to hold it over someone else. Those people are by far the minority in WoW, but the majority in forums. Blizzard in the end is a business, and a very successful one at that. They are going to please the most people possible.
WoW already has an enormous barrier of entry to surmount for new clientel. I seriously doubt anyone just sees the box on the shelf and starts up these days. I think everyone who starts a new account at least knows one person in RL who has convinced them to try.
I am currently trying to level my wife and help her to appreciate all the wonders of WoW. You take a fresh off the boat, never played an MMO or RPG, and toss them into the “Cadillac” of MMORPGs, and you could very easily appreciate how little gear has to do with anything! She is in the best of best, with every slot filled with BoA items and the best blues I can find on the AH, and we still wipe regularily just trying to quest, much less instance or raid.
My only concern about easily accessible raid level gear is that it makes the innevitable PUG filler harder to qualify without a personal reference. So from a Raid Lead stand point, yes, shinney purples have weighted my decision to invite or pass on a player in the LFG, but for the most part I look at the “Emblems Earned” section of “Wow-heroes” instead of the gear rankings. So if they have a pile of EoC’s, I don’t really care if they have run 100 Heroics or 10 raids, the same basic principals apply. WoW is about working together and following directions of the folks that do know what they are doing. Even the most remedial player with no experience can easily succeed given the opportunity, and willingness to learn. So I salute the efforts of Blizzard for opening content to casuals and endgame raiders.
Hooray for you! Those elitist endgame snobs can kiss my lily white socks!