Runes, bad design, mistakes?

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

Im just going to use hunter : aspect of the lion as an example. Im sure there are others, but this is what in confused with…

Bad design, forethought, or just plain stupidity on blizzard devs / design team.
you created all these runes so that as you play the zones thoroughly (while leveling up) that you can get runes… cool. but … why would you place aspect of the lion rune in a alliance cave and no horde version?

lazy, stupid, didn’t realize it… There are no quests, no chains, nothing that would lead a horde player to this cave…

Did you underestimate the laziness of the human populous that plays your game? As soon as someone finds it (most likely alliance first, more people play alliance. I haven’t seen the numbers but please correct me if im wrong) everyone will just flock to that area and get that instead of explore on the horde side.

No maybe you created the mob but forgot to implement the loot on said character? Hirzek is a new mob that roams in southern barrens with an elemental pet. 25 elite. I remember killing it with a friend at 22-23. didn’t drop anything except a grey item. So I had others kill it, specifically different classes… NOTHING… you wouldn’t forget to turn something on would you? ahem… layering at launch…

If there is a horde version of this ability, you really should make the alliance version not lootable by the horde faction, to keep the “discovery” aspect of the game. It was nice when I got ahead of the curve and found out how to get a pridewing pet and the goblin npc in ratchet to get lonewolf.

and now that we are on those 2 runes… those make sense if they are shared by alli/horde. There are quests in those zones for both factions. it makes sense that this can happen. But wetlands? what quest or npc is for the horde there? I could be wrong, but even if there is… there is very very very little for a horde hunter to venture there.

Now. items you purchase for quests… again, lack of foresight, an oooopsie? you choose.

The spear in ratchet from the goblin fisherman. On the description it lists HUNTER;WARRIOR. cool. if im a priest, im not purchase the expensive item right? cause
my class isn’t listed.
However the bomb you purchase off the goblin in hillsbrad… there is no class specification. I purchased it for 5g ran around trying to find what I thought would be the case… durnholde keep. get to the back of it, up to the left, in a broken tower, rubble covering the entrance way… Seems like a good place! I click the bomb, it casts it. NADA… zip, nothing!

Either a) make it so you can’t click a 5g item unless you are in the spot to use it…
b) list the classes that it is used for… I mean you did it with the spear. I was told later that it is for warlock only so I didn’t try to “DISCOVER” what it was used for as it was EXPENSIVE… to say the least. terrible design!

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maybe horde just hasnt FOUND the horde version yet…it’s only been a couple days. Serpent spread was literally only discovered yesterday afternoon. I mean this is literally called the season of Discovery, and you’re whining about having to take risks and discover things…I’ll be you went on WoWhead day one and researched every single discovery huh?

4 Likes
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did read eh?

I said i wanted to keep the discovery active. but the majority of people (horde in this case) will just go over to kill the bird in the cave to get the aspect of the lion. I proposed to make it not lootable for horde so we can continue on trying to figure it out…

Please read more carefully!

You literally didn’t read anything. Every comment you make is addressed in my post :confused: I purchased the 5g bomb, went around trying to find what I thought, and used it. And then I offered suggestions to make it not so punishing. I mentioned the spear in ratchet vs the bomb in terms of design flaws…

Please read more carefully

4

I find the rune hunt to be…sort of unfun. It isn’t because I don’t like easter egg hunts, but more because of the importance of the rune sets themselves.

The runes are rotation building/changing and are key components to make other runes synergize correctly. Locking them behind weird {unrelated} mini quests, reputation grinds, and highly contested mobs doesn’t feel very “discovery” to me, it feels jarring and disconnecting.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with those mini quests, reputation grinds, or even contested mobs, but the fact its tethered to new skills and core feature changes of classes is what is irritating. If those same things rewarded a unique or powerful item or utility consumable (not skill), that would not only be really cool, but also not feel so punishing that it funnels all players seeking viability into the area.

Runes should be out of the way, but not with such a degree of complexity and ambiguity that it negates the draw of experimenting in the mode to begin with. I would’ve been oblivious to a lot of the runes if not for guides, simply because of how they’re tucked away with what parameters are needed prior to completing things to get to them.

And like I said, not all runes suffer from this, but a lot of the core ones do. Its sad because the premise seems like fun. The execution feels like a tedious chore rather than a happy romp through a fun era of WoW.

2 Likes
5

Yeah this is my main critique

The actual Easter egg thing themselves isn’t really bad. But like you said, the fact that KEY components behind them makes it super meh.

Some sort of item or consumable behind them sure. But the requirement of having to do some of these super annnoying and out of the way tasks doesn’t feel good.

6

You forgot PEBKAC.

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How long have people been farming Gnomer for the pummeler?

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Straw man.

Pummelers are not a class ability. They’re a niche item people have been able to make big use of.

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Not really a straw man. Classic players proved they’d do stupid stuff to follow a meta.

Runes only need to be found once, right?

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Not everybody farms pummelers and bear tanks do fine without it.

Speed runners and min maxers farm pummelers as an extra in order to perform at the top.

This isn’t the same as a core class ability.

It’s a straw man

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I find it so strange how people make the false equivalency of rune skills and class items being interchangeable. Yes, some players did really crazy grinds and geared out for raids, but skills are a completely different aspect.

I have played WoW since OG vanilla, and in fact, I played a different game called EQ long before WoW even existed (where some of the designs for WoW came from… by fixing those mistakes). One of those mistakes? EQ would have spells (skills) drop randomly from monsters, and then those spells (skills) were an item you could turn in for even better spells (skills) with an RNG chance to an NPC. EQ didn’t have skill trainers like WoW does.

It fractured a lot of the community and created the have/have nots. When WoW introduced skill trainers, a lot of the fresher players of EQ and those who were RNG unlucky migrated to a game that made progression feel feasible and direct and not punishing.

I find it ironic how WoW is slipping into design mistakes that killed previous MMO iterations.

3 Likes
12

Yup. Why tease new archetypes when for instance something like tank rogue is not viable without completing a grueling rep grind?

If I were to go back and revise this idea, I feel like we would have benefited from Major / Minor runes. Major Runes would be complete game changers or super powerful abilities and be on more “main track” type stuff and minor runes would be less potent/utility type stuff and be found more off the beaten path.

I’m not sure though. Some of the jank does give off very strong “Classic/Vanilla” vibes though. While some Classic Andies would argue otherwise, I feel that most of this content feels authentic to the original spirit.

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Just curious but what gives off vanilla vibes?

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I like to correlate this rep grind to being an optional/leisure farm that isn’t required but has somehow been made to be required.

The farm itself is not an issue. It being required is.

Farming timbermaw for medicinal pouch isn’t required but people do it when they want to/feel like it for the item

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I think its a great design. I love what they did with the Rogue runes. Making pickpocketing important for finding the runes was literally what i was hoping for.