Random Cataclysm discussion

[aurik]

Northrend questing is faster than instance grinding. I find outland less onerous than northrend because you really only have to do 60-68 (and 60-63 or so has very low XP needs); northrend is a soul-crushing 12 levels. That said, it still only takes ~1.5 hours per level if you know your way around.

80-85 isn't that bad either, honestly. With heirlooms, rested bonus, and the guild perks I took a little under 4h for 84-85, 2h for 83-84, and under 2h for each of 81, 82, and 83.

[BadKarma]

Northrend quests fucking suck dick.

[Meresgi]

Blizzard: Guys we want to update the graphix on dis mmo like hardcore and make it awesome looking

Playerbase: So...do it?

Blizzard: no guy, you dont understand, we'd have to make new hair and animations too! Would be a TON of work

Playerbase: Have you...have you started working on it at least?

Blizzard: Hmm? What's that? Here have Darkmoon Faire.

Spoiler: show

Back in 2010, World of Warcraft hit a high of 12 million subscribers. But the company's most recent stats showed that the game has since lost 600,000 gamers. With so many free-to-play games on the rise, some have wondered if WoW's best days are behind it.

Blizzard begs to differ.

Speaking to MCV, Blizzard's VP of International Michael Ryder said the newly raised free-to-play limit and global expansion leaves lots of opportunities for growth. "There's a lot of great things happening with Warcraft. We are launching in Brazil this year and we have great expectations for that. The numbers you might be looking at from the end of the last quarter, that was before Cataclysm launched in China. That is a big part of our business going forward.

He added, "We also changed the trial mechanism for World of Warcraft, so people trying it can now play in an unlimited way up to level 20. In the past it was time-based. Our data shows when people get to level 20 they're more likely to stay on, as they have got over that initial learning curve. That will help us build and sustain our player base."

"ONLY" 600,000.. that's just a minor hiccup.

[Hyan]

So, is this Blizzard's higher budget WotG?

[Kaylia]

So, is this Blizzard's higher budget WotG?

Not really, people just got tired of repeating the same stuff for 7 years and try too hard to find a culprit.


Cataclysm didn't rehash that much material. They redesigned a lot of stuff with new layout, models and everything. WoTG on the other hand had very little to it

[FailureMidgard]

Northrend questing is faster than instance grinding. I find outland less onerous than northrend because you really only have to do 60-68 (and 60-63 or so has very low XP needs); northrend is a soul-crushing 12 levels. That said, it still only takes ~1.5 hours per level if you know your way around.

80-85 isn't that bad either, honestly. With heirlooms, rested bonus, and the guild perks I took a little under 4h for 84-85, 2h for 83-84, and under 2h for each of 81, 82, and 83.

I agree with most all this. Except I generally do 77-80 in BGs with Cata greens. It's fun, and it's rewarding, as 77-80 is just about enough to get you head+shoulders pvp gear right when you hit 85, and 2 pc 371 pvp gear is really better than the 353 troll alternative. So it cuts the grind to 9 lvls, gives you 2 nice epics to lvl into at 85 (with a high ilvl+main stat bonus making em better than any other pre-raid or even VP alternative if you buy those slots), and is kinda fun running around with 3x the HP of people.

[Diamicles]

Honestly, with full Heirlooms and the guild bonus, 71-80 does NOT take an overly amount of time. I am sorry, but running dungeons back to back is not the most efficient way of leveling through content unless you are a tank and having instant queues or are leveling with a group. I realize the game has gone from an enjoyable game to play, to a game where anything but the end is "worthless" and unentertaining, but with heirlooms, 1-80 is about 7-10 "casual" days work and 80-85 is doable in a day hardcore, or 2-3 casual. Making this quicker obviously will happen with 4.3 according to blue posts, but people need to understand that the leveling process is part of the game just as much as spamming heroics til you are bored to tears is.

Well, heirlooms are right out, I bought heirlooms to level a druid and it turned out my new guild (which is still fresh, we just hit level 3 last week I think) needed a paladin more than a DK (which was my main at 85) or another druid so that's the direction I went. So, no JP to buy another set of heirlooms for this character unless I want to farm them up on my DK which could take a while, time that could be spent leveling on Paladin anyway. Not a big deal since I leveled my DK without them, but this time around seems much longer than before cataclysm came out. took me about 1 months to go from 55 to 80 with full tier 9 on my DK (which was way behind since that was just before Cata came out), that was and I was a lot slower then since it was my first push to 85.

I'm still running quests and such in between dungeons, I'm not just sitting in town waiting. If 7-10 days from 1-80 is casual to you, then you have a lot more free time and experience in this game than I do! I still really enjoy doing both quests and dungeons, but the tedium of this leveling process is annoying, maybe because it's the second time through?

[CoronA1979]

I seem to facepalm around the wrath questing line as well. Even with full heirlooms and a lvl 25 guild, lol.

[Katlan]

Wow at them pre-maturely making FL faceroll starting next week... And double wow at them nerfing HM content this time

[Correction]

Wow at them pre-maturely making FL faceroll starting next week... And double wow at them nerfing HM content this time

It does seem fast. The 4.1 nerfs to T11 were 6 months into its existence. The hotfix nerfs to t12 content come a little after 3 months into its existence.

Still, the 4.1 nerfs to T11 content hardly made them faceroll, just less likely to fuck you up on the RNG (No more back-to-back feuds on Chimaeron, lag less of an issue for interrupting Searing Flames, less Flash Freeze on tanks). The -20% damage/health modifiers weren't put into place until 4.2 launched (launch +8 months). I'll be very surprised if they don't follow a similar pattern of easing off the gib factor on FL bosses. 3 months to make FL more pug friendly, 6 to herp status. Patch 4.3 by end of Jan 2012 confirmed, which jibes with the leaked product schedule putting xpac #4 in Q2 2012 (6 months of Deathwing) and Titan 15 months after that (3 content patches after expansion #4 comes out).

[Guitarman]

I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO happy about this. I personally am someone that could handle HM rag as is, but my raid group isn't, so this lets me get a bit further. Super stoked.

[aurik]

It does seem fast. The 4.1 nerfs to T11 were 6 months into its existence. The hotfix nerfs to t12 content come a little after 3 months into its existence.

Still, the 4.1 nerfs to T11 content hardly made them faceroll, just less likely to fuck you up on the RNG (No more back-to-back feuds on Chimaeron, lag less of an issue for interrupting Searing Flames, less Flash Freeze on tanks). The -20% damage/health modifiers weren't put into place until 4.2 launched (launch +8 months). I'll be very surprised if they don't follow a similar pattern of easing off the gib factor on FL bosses. 3 months to make FL more pug friendly, 6 to herp status. Patch 4.3 by end of Jan 2012 confirmed, which jibes with the leaked product schedule putting xpac #4 in Q2 2012 (6 months of Deathwing) and Titan 15 months after that (3 content patches after expansion #4 comes out).

The T11 Normal mode nerfs make those bosses very much faceroll. They're only marginally harder than heroic 5-mans. They generally didn't nerf the heroic modes.

That said, if they institute a 20% heroic nerf before 4.3 comes out...wow...HM guilds will have nothing to do for the next 3 months.

Edit: oh, the 4.1 nerfs. Yeah they didn't really change the bosses that much.

[Katlan]

4.1 nerfs came out after 4.2. Nerfing 4.2 at least 2 months before 4.3 is out (and nerfing HM content which they didnt do for 4.1) is pretty significant

[Correction]

4.1 nerfs came out after 4.2.

What?

Nerfing 4.2 at least 2 months before 4.3 is out (and nerfing HM content which they didnt do for 4.1) is pretty significant

Not arguing this, I'm mostly pointing out the staggered nerfs to t11 content represent the precedent Blizzard is likely to follow from here on out.

It's a headscratcher that the nerfs apply to the HMs as well but I guess Blizz took a look at the fact that only 1% of HM-content guilds have killed h.rag and said 'fuck it it's overtuned, thx for play next patch gg no re.' Lazy is all I can really say to that now. Of course without seeing the list of changes predictions of faceroll at that level of difficulty is extremely premature. I doubt Baleroc/Alysrazor/Ryofuckyouiturnwheniwantlith HMs are trivialized just because one move does less damage or happens less frequently.

[Arvin]

I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO happy about this. I personally am someone that could handle HM rag as is, but my raid group isn't, so this lets me get a bit further. Super stoked.

I dunno man, it takes a lot out of a person to do Hm rag. I wouldn't get your hopes up, even with a nerf.

I say this with no insult intended, its more than just good dps. It's the most coordination ever required for a fight. Ever

[Guitarman]

Oh i understand. I just meant some nights it feels like i'm the only one that equates fire=bad. After the 50th wipe to someone standing in lava waves (on normal, ffs), my eyes cant roll hard enough. My hope is the nerfs are enough i can see more of the content now. I don't expect to ever see the last half of the HMs in firelands, even with the nerfs.

[CoronA1979]

If they institute a 20% heroic nerf before 4.3 comes out...wow...HM guilds will have nothing to do for the next 3 months.

Legendary Farm GO!

[Nikko]

Hope they nerf it hard so we can one shot everything every week on heroic in our alt raid for more legendary materials.

[Cri]

We have 6/7 Heroic on farm for the past couple weeks now and its already starting to feel pretty face roll... Last weeks lockout was 6/7 heroic and normal rag all done within 4hours. I really hope heroic content isn't getting nerfed and its just the normals.

[The Stig]

I like this. Our guild is pretty much falling apart now due to absences and 2 main healers needing to raid less due to RL stuff (work and study). It's been a hell of a time to pug healers and tanks, or DPS that won't get off bad stuff.

Our co-raid leader, who apparently used to be in an extremely hardcore vanilla wow guild (but didn't complete naxx40; apparently it was really hard back then?) will be extremely unhappy that we can only clear the end bosses (in 4.0/4.1's case, Neferian) after nerf. I guess in this case it'll be Ragnoros and Majorhomo.

I don't mind, less stress afterall. I accepted the fact I probably will never raid much heroic content.