Historically, T0.5 (Dungeon Set 2) was released shortly after the AQ raid content patch. It gave a lot of additional content for people who played wow that could not or lacked interest in raiding. This included new 5/10 man dungeon bosses, and a very demanding quest line that was even a step above the Ony attunement quest.
However, because it was released so late into Vanilla’s content timeline, it was totally neglected by everyone . Too demanding for the more casual players, yet absolutely not rewarding enough for the players who were already geared or had the gold to drop on the quest line. A side effect or just being created too late.
It was not meant to be a “catch-up” mechanic for gear, because it wasn’t made for raiding. Much of it was just good general purpose gear for a mix of pvp and pve playstyles of the people it was intended for. A long term “end game” type goal for non-raiders. Stat wise it was much weaker than T1, and its stat spread didn’t min max it for pure pvp (high stamina, high crit like pvp sets) or pve (high hit%, spell damage, etc). It was a middle of the road good niche set for those who eventually dedicated the gold, resources, time and unique challenges of the quest line.
My proposal is that the quest line for T0.5 be made available to players when BWL is introduced. An argument can be made that the subsequent boss drops and gear would act like a second Dire Maul situation (despite DM being available from the get go in Blizzard’s proposed content schedule) that it would make initial raids like MC and Ony too easy – and I agree with the fact that pvp rewards and sets will also not be including initially. It makes sense to just have the “bare bones” type gear only available at first.
However, come that big BWL/ZG/PVP patch, I propose that the T0.5 quest line and gear be made available. If released with AQ, it will be totally ignored and neglected again. If released around the time of BWL (the golden era of WoW imo), then it serves as great end game goal for non-raiders. There is no real reason to have to make this subset group of players wait likely +2 years for this type of content be unlocked.
some of those items were better than what you’d find in MC, ZG, and AQ20
it was totally a catch-up mechanic, but alot of people presumably didn’t know what gear was good back then, since alot of people were still new to raiding back then
I’d rather that they be introduced after AQ, but I’d tolerate it being released after or even with BWL too
I don’t know why they wouldn’t be available at release powerwise. They fell between MC gear and dungeons sets and took quite a bit of work. As such they primarily only appeal to people who aren’t raiding or don’t need the gear anyways because they are raiding and are just doing it for fun.
Yeah but a whole heap of gear across the board was better than raid items in alot of cases. But lets not ignore the fact that some of the T0 gear were complete lemons and wouldn’t be touched aside from triggering set bonii.
Because silithus is a complete wasteland and you need to be able to summon the elemental lord thingy via twilight cultist clothes which arn’t in the game files till AQ patch.
I wouldn’t mind the tier 0 being in the game, I wouldn’t bother with it though.
Those sets where intended to be the top tier gear for non raiders at the end point of the vanilla era after Blizzard finally caved to entitled casual players who steadfastly refused to raid, but still demanded to be given epics.
They are not intended in any way whatsoever to fit into the gear progression scale for anyone who raided.
Absolutely opposed to releasing them early, Classic is already shaping up with enough non authentic casualization garbage.
Except very few non-raiders would ever finish upgrading the set thanks to how brutal some of the requirements were at the time.
Alot of the gear is complete garbage, if someone wants to sink the time and gold into a sub-par set of gear then let them. Most of it isn’t even spec specific and the set bonii in alot of cases is complete garbage.
Very few raiders finished Naxxramas. Very few pvpers got HWL. It’s intended to be hard because it’s intended to be the ultimate thing a non raider can strive for.
And no one is stopping them going after those sets… when they are intended to be released, which was late in vanilla’s life cycle, relative to the raid tiers.
I will note too, that there’s already apparently a massive casual player handout in not time gating servers (which isn’t officially confirmed, but at least seems very likely given some of the language used in Dev interviews)… Meaning that quite unlike real vanilla, you are probably capable of progressing well past the ~2 year mark in raids, and for content like the tier 0.5… So you likely already have way more time than you should be given, within which to attain that gear if you want it.
Like what? I mean, really? Did they add heroics? Can we run a heroic a day for frost badges that we can then turn in for tier gear, without setting foot in a raid? Or LFR? Like LFR Nefarian with no class calls and he just spams cleave, tail lash and shadowflame and that’s too hard anyway. That kind of stuff?
1.12 talents, debuff limits, itemization, and threat generation from warrior tanks without any raid reevaluating /rebalancing for starters, trivializes the first two raid tiers into effectively being lfr difficulty, where Ragnaros ends up on or near his death bed by the first sons phase, despite half the raids rocking leveling greens. Meanwhile threat management barely matters for dps.
That’s a raid /boss that drops weapons on par ilvl wise with HWL weapons, and it’s speed clear puggable under such conditions. The end result that people who wouldn’t normally be able to handle the content suddenly can, and also get access to far better weapons than they should have access to.
Then on the other side of the coin is the apparent permanence the servers. You give people unlimited time within which to progress, and progressing becomes easier as a result. It’s like giving Mario in the OG Super Mario Brothers unlimited lives from the beginning, rather than the three he has. Or for a wow specific example, the boss patchwork in Naxx has an engage timer. It’s a core mechanic of the fight, you only get so much time within which to kill the boss, or he goes super saijin on your raid and you wipe. Now take away the enrage mechanic, and the entire challenge and appeal of the fight breaks down. Each era of WoW is much the same way. You only get so much time per era (roughly 2 years) within which to progress. That time constraint is what drives the impetus to succeed. All that removing the time constraint does is again give a massive handout to people that wouldn’t otherwise be capable of progressing within the time limit, resulting in a stagnant and top heavy server.
Those things are massive handouts to more casual players, and entirely not authentic to what vanilla was.
Hello Slippery Slope. And that’s the problem, it’s not a bad idea, it adds more content and things for non-raiders to do. Which is how we’ve come to Retail today and why people are hysterical over #nochanges for classic.
So you’re saying that since the server is apparently coming out under the same conditions as a Nostalrius/Elysium/Light’s Hope-type private server makes it “casualized”. I really kind of disagree with that under two points:
While I agree with you about the dangers of the first two raid tiers being trivialized, we don’t know what Blizzard’s numbers are going to be compared to what the devs of Nost came up with. It may be that it’s all not quite as trivial.
The main people who take advantage of the trivialization of the early content tend to be the hardcore speed clear crowd rather than true casuals who just like to level alts, do some dungeons and maybe some BGs once in a while. Unless you’re really annoyed at the speed clear bunch-- which I can see.
This is another point that I understand but the thing is, this project was always intended as a kind of living museum, so it is what it is.
Now, I don’t know if you paid attention to the fact that the devs all left things open for future ideas, so I personally think that the idea of a real time-limited progression server is an excellent one. Better than the ideas about making up new storylines or other ideas people have come up with.
I know you don’t consider me a real raider so my opinion likely doesn’t matter to you, but I have done some raiding in the past-- just no cutting edge. I’d love to raid on the Classic server as well.
Except servers will be time gated, whether those gates will be 3,6,9 or 12 till full content release only the dev team knows.
It’s not a “massive handout” if the gear is complete dog crap. The only people who will be doing dungeon 0.5 “progression” will be those that actually need the gear and they won’t be the sort of people dropping 5-600g on most of the matts for the upgrade chain. They won’t be the ones with a high likelyhood of succeeding the 45 min baron run or even killing the final boss of the chain.
You keep ignoring the fact that dungeon set gear is HORRIBLY itemised and aside from a few outliers is completely useless or severely subpar for raiding/pvping.
Handing someone a dog turd sandwich is not doing them a favor.
Lets look at some of the sets.
Warrior set has a mix of def,hit and crit making it garbage for tanks and dps.
Mage set has a bucketload of spirit and very little hit.
Rogue set has very little hit on it.
Lock set has very little hit on it.
Druid set has every spell power on it and some Mp5, it has no hit, no crit and a metric boatload of str and agi which is useless for casters and doesn’t have the stat budget for feral as it has a boatload of spirit and int.
If people are willing to put in a buttload of time and gold into a town set then let them, they’re literally paying for the priviledge of gimping themselves.The only time some of these sets have any real use is for offspec farming or when you use a set from another class (which can’t be upgraded)
Waiting for raiders to get geared up before releasing it for non-raiders is just going to cheapen the experience. Why should quests like the Baron run be trivialized because it was held off for raiders to be geared up?
There is zero reason to time gate it, as the collection of D1, the monetary aspect, and the difficulty of the quests are gate enough.
And those items were gated behind a huge quest line and a very much challenging Baron run. Arguably more difficult to get than standing in a raid. Besides, the non raid content should not be trivialized by allowing raiders to get over-geared for it.
The fact that you attributed the word “casual” to the D2 set displays your abject ignorance as to what went into actually obtaining it.
Tier .5 required a ton of effort and gold to obtain. I’m fine with it being introduced earlier. If it’s a catch-up mechanic, it’s an incredibly vanilla catch-up mechanic because it conforms to the vanilla philosophy of not being handed free loot, but instead earning your rewards. But I agree that we need item progression, because starting with 1.12 items is like launching the game with catch-up gear already given freely to the player base.
Except, all the D2 gear and quests existed only within Vanilla, and even got purged only after an expansion or two.
Since moving around content is already in the scope of Classic (per the Classic content release proposal precedent) it would not be considered a change to shift the content release sooner.
Uh. So you’re one for those that thinks that it’s World of Raids, not World of Warcraft. I mean, let’s be honest here, majority of people in classic didn’t care about raids or not enough to go for the hi-end tier. It won’t be different in Classic.