In late TBC, the last phase, blizzard added some changes to dungeons which actually came from Season of Mastery. They did the following within dungeon instances:
- Mobs which are grey level to you will stun you indefinitely if they have been in combat and not killed within one minute of entering combat with them. This stun cannot be immuned or bubbled.
- Mobs which are grey to you, but appropriate level for others will grant basically no EXP if killed with the higher level in your party. This was an anti-boosting feature.
In regards to #1:
This was likely a change made to curb bots, which it did not. Bots have never been hurt by this. They can abuse the Z axis, forcing mobs to constantly run back and forth in just about every dungeon, as if you are jumping between two ramps and they need to path around to get to you. We have literally seen video of mage bots climbing in the air and dropping back down over and over as 100 mobs with increased speed ping pong around and eating living bomb and flamestrikes.
This hurts people who actually like to farm. This change doesn’t even exist in retail and comes from a vanilla seasonal server. There are still farms you can do of course, but this does limit it, and it’s really just a buzzkill and not something that happened in any real version of WoW. Farming old dungeons and doing giant pulls is actually fun. I’m on my 85 geared DK, farming ZF for some transmog, it is just wrong that a bunch of level 40 mobs have permanently stunned me until I die, completely inescapable. It is made worse because the mobs hit so for little but I can do nothing. I can get up and go to the bathroom and I’m not dead when I get back, but I will be in another minute or so. It’s also worth noting this change does not exist in Classic Era or Season of Discovery. It came from SoM and has persisted through late TBC until now.
In regards to #2:
it seems odd to stop boosting, which is part of the economy and actually does drive engagement, it’s literally a service. This is made worse by the fact the blizzard store sells multiple level boosts.
This one is more contentious as people don’t like level boosting, despite the fact blizzard has been selling it in their store since TBC classic. But if you have leveled any characters through RDF you may have noticed this hurt your experience at some point. It is entirely possible for someone who is higher level to be put into your dungeon, where some mobs may be grey level to them, and suddenly your full EXP kill is reduced to low double digits, at no fault of anyone there. (Example: you can queue RDF at level 60 and get Hellfire Ramparts, a level 68 or 69 can also be placed here through RDF, your exp will be hurt bad)
Previous discussion on the matter: Please remove the late TBC anti-dungeon farming changes in Cata Classic
7 Likes
Boosting removes player that would queue and makes leveling for other people worse. Personally for that single reason I dislike it. Moreover the Blizzard boost is not really meant as a good option as there is a high cost to it to discourage people from over-using it.
Yea it’s pretty bad with RDF to get in the same dungeon as someone way over-leveled and I don’t know why the game does this as someone that is leveling multiple alts right now. At least it can’t happen in cataclysm as the level difference is only 5.
As far as the cc stuff it’s strange because well new dungeons don’t really have that kind of stuff to stop you and people “abused” them a lot. Stuff like farming botanica or now Naxxramas trash is pretty easy. So it doesn’t make sense in term of continuity they should decide if content is meant to have those or not.
And well in term of bots I don’t know what’s the strategy but we’re seeing very high numbers of them. Someone in my guild reported like 20 bots fishing at the same place. I also saw a good amount farming Naxx.
In game boosting has a high gold cost, it isn’t free. It’s a service in an MMO, it facilitates trade and communication. It’s an rpg element on its own. Most people buy a paid boost from the shop, the price isn’t discouraging anyone, especially not when they’re on sale. To level 1-85 even with RDF is a commitment and RDF at low levels isn’t that popular to begin with. A game where players can’t help level other players as a service but you can skip every aspect of that, questing and RDF by just paying $$ is a sad state.
The CC stuff isn’t happening in Cata dungeons because players are not high enough level to make the mobs grey. If you go into a lower level Cata Dungeon like Blackrock Cavern at level 90, you will have mobs that are grey level to you, they will perma cc you after one minute of combat. This is a silly anti-player mechanic that has never existed in any version of WoW besides when they first implemented it in Season of Mastery and later near the end of TBC. I will just remind people that Season of Mastery essentially died an early death and was not popular at all with the playerbase.
3 Likes
Look we’re not gonna agree it’s not a matter if this allowed or not I personally dislike it.
No I don’t think the cost of a boost in shop is cheaper than what players would sell it for else they wouldn’t make sales. Sure some people might buy 1 boost but saying most will do it or do it multiple times I doubt. If we’re strictly talking about my opinion I would rather we have permanent joyous journey than have boosts in the shop.
I don’t see changes as a bad thing. Cata classic is still even as a “bad expansion” popular with the amount of changes they did compared to other versions of classic so I would disagree with the comparison with SoM.
It’s interesting to know that this is scaling as I didn’t know that part.
Yeah, I was indifferent to the changes at the time because I didn’t boost nor did I get other characters boosted as I honestly saw it as a waste of gold. Now in Cataclysm however and I might actually want to farm something from them whether that’s Runecloth from BRD or some transmog item I need to kill everything I aggro as I aggro them lest I be stunned and ever so slowly killed.
I’d imagine in MoP that you might literally not get killed at all on some classes and could act as a soft lock just getting infinitly stunned.
You’re right it did nothing to curb bots and honestly them making boosting unviable killed people getting alts up in TBC.
3 Likes
Yes remove it, i just wanna 1 pull the entire dungeon.
You can nerf boosting in other ways
1 Like
I don’t even farm old dungeons at all but I still think the perma stun thing is just absurd and unnecessary.
The fact that this is the only version of the game with such a change makes it even more absurd.
1 Like
This is the only version of Classic where Blizz sells their own boosts.
Do the math.
1 Like
I agree, this does not solve botting, and makes farming old content for transmogs a nightmare.
I don’t care about boosting, there are other ways to prevent boosting like lowering the difference between player levels so that a bostee gets less experience the higher the booster player is.
I want to be able to do what I did in retail, pull a full dungeon and kill all the trash to farm transmogs and be done in 5 minutes instead of 20 because of this ridiculous change.
5 Likes
Indeed, it’s weird that you have to worry about kill times in a level 40 dungeon at 85 (or even 90 come mop) We’re 4 expansions in by that point and 50 levels higher than mobs. We’re supposed to be that powerful. 99% of rpgs with linear scaling are this way.
there is literally no good reason for this to be in the game
remove it blizzard
1 Like
Happened to me today in BRD on a 85 warrior. Got the infinity stun going but my spec was out healing the damage. so i guess i would of had to wait for my gear to break then die? I was lucky enough to trinket/human racial and use 1 ability that killed 1/2 mobs then waited another 2 mins for racial to come back to do again lol…
The human racial doesn’t work on the stun they do. Neither does ice block, bubble, bop or blink.
Well it did long enough for me to use shockwave. or it interupted the way it was stunning me somehow.
yeah sometimes a gap between attacks, it depends how many you pull.