I know there have been topics on whether the specific changes that SoM will have will be good or bad and how the meta didn’t really change at all. That’s all valid.
But as someone who played the entire length of Classic I just want to talk about real quick how many of the changes don’t make sense at all from a purely common sense standpoint.
Let’s first throw out that removing the debuff/buff limit and World buffs are equatable. They are not. Removing the debuff/buff limit is a pretty small buff for one or two classes (rdruid and lock), while removing World Buffs is a giant nerf for every single class. On top of this you are increasing boss health and not increasing drops in a truncated release schedule. This isn’t even mentioning that Naxxramas was specifically designed with Wbuffs in mind (google “Ion Hazzikostas Naxxramas” if you doubt me). We are talking about 3 massive nerfs to player power vs one almost minuscule buff.
Do people realize how grindy and long these raids are going to be? You could reach AQ with your DPS warriors and rogues still using pre-bis weapons. And because raids are going to be significantly longer, the days of doing an AQ40 one night and BWL/MC the next are just not going to happen for a large majority of the guilds. Are all guilds going to adopt 3 raid nights just so they can have the all the raid gear they can get to physically clear Naxx when it launches? Nothing about any of this is any harder, or takes any more skill. The raids just became more time consuming and grindier in a shorter time window. This thing isn’t going to last 12 months in this iteration. It will not be able to retain players for the grind that’s required to succeed. A large part of classic’s success can undoubtedly be contributed to the pandemic and the fact that the player base was largely stuck inside for the hardest and longest parts of the game, phases 3-6. That fingers crossed won’t happen again either.
And to those who say “if you don’t like the changes don’t play it,” don’t worry, I won’t be playing. but I was very much looking forward to Fresh and was almost certainly going to play and invest into it if it was a feasible iteration. These SoM changes aren’t that, this doesn’t pass the smell test.
It passes the smell test if you view it as Blizzard wanting to make raiding harder and more exclusive. I think the name even gives it away, “Season of Mastery”.
Whether or not you agree with that design is another thing altogether.
I kind of like the idea. Classic raiding was too easy. I think half the people speedrunning were simply doing it to avoid falling asleep. I don’t think it’ll draw in the absolute most players it could, but I also think it’s fine for it to be more a niche thing and I think it’ll have enough players to keep it going.
That’s how seasonal works they will experiment with it to see what pulls people in and pushes them away. so you will not like every season they come up with. I still think this first SoM with minor changes is a test to see how many players actually resub and want fresh. If it turns out a good outcome then they will really worry about adding noticeable changes
More grindy =/= harder. We are talking about Naxx being released and guilds having to do 3 raids a week of non-Naxx PREP so that they have 4 tanks that won’t immediately get one shot by Patchwerk without WBs. Again on a faster schedule. There’s nothing intrinsically hard about Patchwerk it’s “Did you farm enough gear or do you have world buffs.” It could be physically impossible for many guilds to down Patchwerk and Loetheb for the duration of SoM simply based on the gear RNG they’ve gotten.
Again missing the point, this isn’t a “harder” classic. it is one with an insane amount of grind required at max level that will alienate almost everyone. there are bosses that are going to be physically impossible to accomplish depending on your gear RNG. so instead of doing the current raid phase you’ll have to just keep spamming old raids for hours on end to even accomplish anything.
Yeah, I agree. Really I think there are two big issues that divide players.
The first is whether you think that all players should have access to all raid content. I personally don’t have a problem if I don’t make it to SoM naxx, and only more hardcore players do. I think that exclusivity adds something good to the game. Gear becomes much more meaningful. Players have more to strive for. The guy standing in town with full T3 is cool again rather than just another dude in a sea of players all dripped out in the same BIS.
The second issue is what we define as fun. Fun, for some, means more convenience and less grind. Fun, for others, means more grind and more difficulty. I personally have more fun when the game is harder and a bit more grindy. I personally don’t like most QoL changes that people ask for.
Once again, I don’t think I’m right and anyone else is wrong. It’s just a matter of taste. There’s always a tradeoff and no matter what Blizzard does some people will like it, and some people will hate it.
blizzard in-fact did. they insinuated that the debuff limit removal was a STRONGER buff to players than world buffs removal was nerf in the way their announcement was worded. To quote:
World buffs (like Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer and others) disabled in Raid instance.
No boss debuff limit (up from 16 debuffs in WoW Classic)
Increased health on bosses, to offset player buffs and the removed debuff limit
I played every single day of classic, I have a decent understanding of every encounter and the changes blizzard has decided upon. There is no way SoM has a playerbase a year from now if these changes are implemented as is. I wanted to play this game and won’t be, maybe that makes me selfish? But I am not playing because there will be 0 long-term health for this game, which affects everyone who is interested. In any case, some original mechanics to a very small amount of encounters is hardly how you describe “hard mode.” Adding boss health is not “hard mode” it’s long-mode.
Bosses in classic were easy with and without world buffs.
SoM bosses will be approached with less amount of gear ensuring that we will experience every mechanic of every boss phase. That’s not “oh it’s just longer spank and tank” it’s actual mechanics that increase the challenge and fun. If you can’t see that, just stop posting, and find a new game because this isn’t for you.
The thing is I do agree loot needs changes, I posted this in another thread:
Increase drop rates by a few %
Total number of items that drop per boss increased
Reduce raid lock out from 7 days to 3 days.
I love raiding so I prefer drop rates to stay the same, and be able to raid twice a week rather than once a week. I raided MC/BWL weekly on 3-4 characters in classic.
Seeing a mechanic 2-3 times instead of 1 is not an increase in technical difficulty. Again, you’re just extending fights not increasing the difficulty. Now will that cause certain people to wipe because they’re out of resources at the end? Sure, but that’s not a difficulty thing and often will come from a lack of gear that SoM is going to provide.
You’re failing to acknowledge the grind that comes with everything you’re suggesting and that SoM is. 99% of the player base is not going to want shortened lockouts and raiding every night. If you want a game that’s for the 1% of the player-base that’s wants an absolute raid grind-fest every night of the week just so that they can step foot in Naxx, that’s fine that’s your opinion. but you are in the super minority with that opinion.
Honestly I could be happy just doing MC and PvP the entire time, but hopefully SoM brings some more changes with it. Blizz should feel free to experiment.
sounds to me like you’re interested in the stupid action mechanics of retail, where “mythic raiding” is like, super hard bro. why don’t you make your way over there →
A large majority of the guilds didn’t do this in vanilla back in 2005 ish. My guild had just gotten MC on farm and only cleared BwL once before BC came out… But maybe that was back when we played games mostly for recreation… Those were fun times.
I can see how making things more accessible can be a good thing, but there is a fine line between doing that and making it all trivial, which can cause other issues. It also didn’t seem to matter as much back then…
You need to adjust your expectations then about wow, games in general. You’re not going to get a fresh, random, game mechanic to keep the challenge alive every single time.
again, adjust YOUR thinking, just because they’re available doesn’t mean you’re required to do them.
no, i don’t think so. Your mind set is distorted, for many, raiding is FUN. we like to raid, it’s not a requirement, it’s to hang out and kill dragons. More dragon killing for fun was always the goal, and we don’t view wow like you: mandatory raiding and see raiding as a grind.
if you see raiding as a grind, you’re doing it wrong.
I want to preface that I have very little faith in Blizzard but, even with that said, they are still listening for feedback in regards to SoM. Who knows? Maybe they’ll make some changes that’ll appeal to more people.
