You realize that pvp realm populations vastly outnumber those of pve servers, right?
Edit- Actually looking at ironforge I’m surprised that it’s not that much higher on Cata realms, though moreso on Eu servers. That’s interesting. In the Vanilla-based realms it’s way more skewed to pvp realms.
I also notice it seems like Cata overall has dropped quite a bit. It’s not that much more than Anniversary realms. Guess we see why that raid nerf went in. Blizz wants players to stick around and probably get to MoP quicker.
End game raiding is getting to the point that only the best can succeed, like retail. Guilds are bleeding average players and dad gamers left and right, and leaders are having to recruit full time to keep up. All the recruits coming from the remnants of other dead or dying guilds
The classic Andy’s are moving back to vanilla in anniversary and I believe this will accelerate with TBC anniversary.
Personally I feel the game is the best when the endgame can be completed on the first few weeks with only a night or two per week dedicated to raiding with average performance as long as everyone reads up on the fights and is knowledgeable. Then everyone just competes for speed or parses and jokes and good times.
There is a reason many players came back to wow when classic was first announced and it wasn’t because of cutting edge raiding.
Cataclysm classic, despite all it’s catch up mechanisms just can’t hold onto casual players. Firelands was a huge slogfest with bosses that took too long to kill for no reason and it’s more of the same in DS.
The players left want to experience cata raiding for their first time, or love the xpac. There are no more tourists or new players coming in for Cata.
Saying it this way is implying Cataclysm is losing players to SoD and Anniversary… when it has been static in its population for more or less 4 months.
I left retail at end of Dragon sole so never seen a delve but I am sure mythic raid item lvl gear still comes from M+ . In wrath I never had to do the heroic + 5 mans same with CATA , But when they added heroic ++ you had to run them or fall so far behind you lose raid spot . I thought I needed a payed acc to post guess not .
Sorry mate but I disagree with pretty much all of this.
If they were to make any changes to MoP it should only be to 1.) fix problems that have appeared due to the modern playerbase (such as one-sided mega “PvP” servers) and 2.) to add content that does not interfere with existing content (such as mythic+ styled scaling/leaderboards on Challenge Modes and Raids like done on other servers).
I’d also accept modernized systems such as cross-realm groups/auction house, lockout systems, UI features, HD graphics, transmog collection rules, etc.
and you know the entire legendary cloak quest line in MoP requiring you to get drops from the raid, including boss specific drops from Sha of Fear and Lei Shen. LFR was used to help alts get the cloak, or people returning/those who swapped mains.
Yea I simply throwed the idea but I think a lot of people wouldn’t like challenge mode to be used for this as timed content is pretty sensitive. They will however in WoD even if less people know reward better gear than heroic dungeons in the first patch until they decided to add by the end m0.
Even in wotlk or cata to get valor/badges you had to do some dungeons, I think M+ really push a lot more than current H+ design which doesn’t need you to really do them for more than 2-3 weeks generally. It is more used for alt catchup while M+ is used as a seasonal endgame goal and moreover it is timed and scale way higher in term of difficulty. Random pugs from the queue have been able to clear twilight dungeons the same way people clear heroics so I don’t think it is bad design at this point personally.
Personally I feel LFR is way worse in term of reward or design. I think it’s great for people that want to experience the raid with a pug without having to form a group or have a schedule but I’m not sure I would say it’s really great content. I’m not saying to not have LFR but there are reasons why over time dungeons became a way to skip it because a lot of players do not enjoy it. I think also having LFR tier be more accessible without weekly lockout makes normal/heroic raiding way more accessible.
The problem with the black prince rep on classic is you need to grind mobs in the world, considering that servers are more stacked and that people are even asking for more merge I don’t think this kind of activity will be great or fun. Which is why I think adding the rep to dungeons would make more sense. I don’t feel it’s an experience that needs to be replicated when it will be much worse.
Are you simply for “no changes” or do you disagree with all of this piece by piece? Because I feel stuff like pet battles if you know what I am talking was pretty bad and really can only be a positive.
You don’t need myth track gear in retail to start raiding though lol. Champion track (normal) with a mix of hero track (heroic) is more than enough to start raiding heroic. Easy to get just running delves, m0s and vault each week.
Heroic+ isn’t really comparable, it’s just the normal heroic dungeons tuned up slightly. They were annoying at first but most groups are geared now.
I agree about LFR and personal loot in general. It works great in retail because retail has many different ways to acquire gear. When you are limited to only LFR, and you’ve gone two weeks without a decent upgrade, you’re going to be missing Heroic+
I would rather farm dungeons repetitively with targeted upgrades that I can choose.
Blizzard secured my monthly subscription for the past 18 months due to dungeons. If it weren’t for RDF and the various innovations, I would’ve long since quit after the initial leveling nostalgia wore off. I don’t raid. Wow I enjoy playing WoW.
I’m definitely not #nochanges however it is important to think about the unintended consequences that changes may have.
Dungeons are inherently easier, faster, and more reliable than LFR. LFR gear dropping from dungeons (even challenge modes) simply makes LFR irrelevant especially for more dedicated players. As a result, LFR queue times not only increase but the success rate of these raids decrease. With the increased struggles, fewer casual players queue for LFR. End result: LFR queue times are drastically increased, it becomes a more frustrating experience, fewer players are likely to bother with LFR let alone break out of it and into real raiding.
Account-bound legendary cloaks/gems also contributes to the above points. Fewer (or even zero) alts running LFR = longer queues = fewer players queueing = fewer potential raiders. I don’t recall the specific mechanics of the black prince rep so I will not comment on it.
There are a lot of overpowered mechanics in MoP. So we nerf troll. Pandaren is the next best, so let’s nerf that too. But Rocket Jump is invaluable on some fights, so let’s increase the cooldown on Goblin racials. Disc Priests and Resto Shamans are the indisputable main characters of MoP healing, so they need to be knocked down. Don’t forget about Affliction Locks scaling to do 25%+ more DPS than every other class. Where is the line for what is “OP” vs “OK”? What is even the benefit of changing it?
Buffs should probably be cleared when a boss is pulled to curb some particularly degenerate prepull behavior that apparently exists.
Battle pets are a legitimate form of content that require both time investment and game knowledge to progress in. This was also an avenue of making gold, as lv25 battle pets were highly valuable to players who didn’t have a desire to level the pets themselves. Nowadays, pet levels may as well not exist.
I agree with your quoted points of Cross-Realm PvP and PvP server faction imbalance.
Examples of changes I would support:
Raid bosses (of all difficulties) drop currency that can be used as a form of bad luck protection for raid loot. Basically Obsidian Fragments but from raid bosses instead of dungeons.
I wholeheartedly support expanding personal loot from LFR to all raiding difficulties (in fact I would like this in every version of the game, from vanilla to TWW). Pretty sure it’s a wildly unpopular take, but just an example of a more dramatic change.
Adding the alt-friendly reputation commendations at launch instead of with whatever phase correlates to 5.1.
A different form of legendary cloak questline catchup than its typical introduction in 5.4. It should work similarly to how valor does in Cata, i.e. the number of sigils you are eligible to loot increases with the number of weeks the content has been available. So if you get your alt to 90 on week 3 of raids being out, you could run LFR 3 times in a row and get sigils all three times, catching up to the “cap” without reducing LFR participation.
Anything to help queued PvP. I’m not as active in Cata currently so some of these may exist, but things like mercenary mode or cross-faction queueing, cross-server queueing, a separate solo-queue 3v3 arena queue (not solo shuffle), modified reward structures, etc.
Mythic+ style scalable content. For example you could run Challenge Mode ToJS on +4 which increases enemy health/damage and rewards a higher leaderboard score. Or Heroic ToT +3 that gives a recolored mount or achievement. Just building on top of the content that is there for fun/prestige and not player power.
At launch: either flex mode difficulty or backporting flex tech from WoD.
These aren’t cleanly laid out or fully thought through but it’s what immediately came to mind.
Yea on the LFR part I think we’re gonna have a split many people prefer the current concept and I don’t think pushing people in LFR is a good idea even if it’s for the sake of faster queues they can add satchels to that queue if needed. Same as for the legendary for me this is a punishment and makes it less easy to get into normal/heroic raiding and I prefer to funnel people in that experience not LFR even if it means LFR has a longer queue.
As far as troll I think beastslayer is situationally a bit too strong, prob don’t need to change anything else.
So I guess we don’t disagree on everything^^
I think that would probably be very controversial
That would probably require a lot of work, but also to note the hardest difficulty has never been flex so there’s that.
Yea it’s just that’s asking basically for new content as they would need to adjust manually all fights. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea just it’s a bit more heavy than some to me.
