Exactly why Community council members are a joke
How do you NOT ask about RDF lol
Exactly why Community council members are a joke
How do you NOT ask about RDF lol
Thanks for posting these notes and commentary, Vay, Cleavis and Mispeled. Was really great talking with you and the rest of the classic community council folks yesterday.
I wanted to chime in and talk about the “ilvl squish” in ToC/ICC a bit more, and provide even more context for anyone who is reading this who may have some questions about this idea (and I do want to stress, it’s currently just an idea)
There’s actually several goals, here, with two being the primary:
Give Ulduar time to breathe
Going to start with a little history recap here; In original Wrath of the Lich King, Ulduar occupied an interesting design space as even the normal modes for many of the bosses were a pretty large cut above Naxxramas 10/25 in terms of difficulty. For many people just joining World of Warcraft during at the start of Wrath of the Lich King, Naxx was potentially their first raid and as Naxx was so accessible, it had huge participation. Ulduar however, had much lower participation and many groups that were successfully clearing Naxx and the other Tier 7 raids suddenly found themselves struggling.
Overall a few different things were tried including some nerfs to Ulduar as well as trying to get a new raid out to players to bridge the gap between Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel. This raid was released around 3 1/2 months after Ulduar, and was released with gear equivalent to another full tier up from Tier 8 gear, with the addition of heroic mode which provided an even larger ilvl jump over normal mode than rewards for defeating hard mode encounters in Ulduar were. By early World of Warcraft raid tier standards, Ulduar had a relatively short run before being effectively replaced and outclassed by significantly better rewards from a much more accessible raid in Trial of the Crusader.
As years have passed, we think its safe to say that Ulduar is now regarded as one of the best and most unique raid experiences in WoW, and those that enjoyed it undoubtedly felt like it was cut quite short. We want to make sure that Ulduar is front and center during its time in Wrath Classic, and still has healthy amount of time to breathe before Trial of the Crusader is released, and by extension, Season 7 for Arena is introduced. This bridges to the next major goal for this change…
Don’t Cut Arena Season 7 Short
Early on in discussions to plan Wrath of the Lich King Classic, we knew we wanted Ulduar to have a good long run, and the first Idea we considered was simply making the Trial of the Crusader tier (Tier 9) much shorter, potentially up to half as long as Ulduar (Tier 8). However, the major problem with that plan is that we’d then need to either start Arena Season 7 right in the middle of Tier 8 and create a situation where PvP gear would be in many cases BiS to PvE raiders for multiple months, or start Season 7 late and have it be a very short, truncated season.
Arena seasons need a certain amount of time to breathe as well and this idea of a truncated season did not sit well with us at all. By going ahead and releasing Trial of the Crusader at a time that makes sense to line up with Arena Season 7, that feels much better for PvP-focused players.
In addition to the goals above, we also had 3 other main secondary goals:
Encourage Older Raids to remain Relevant and worth doing for Alts and PUGs.
One thing we really like in Classic and Burning Crusade is that older tiers of raiding continue to see participation even when that content is no longer current. This means that there’s a large variety of things to do for your alts or on off-nights, and due to the overall flatter nature of gear and ilvl progression in those earlier versions of wow, this makes these older raids more appealing to continue to run. By lowering the ilvl of ToC slightly, this makes running Ulduar hard modes appealing and a worthwhile investment for longer than it otherwise might be. As mentioned above, Normal ToC gear is so much better than even Ulduar hard mode gear, that most guilds would very likely drop Ulduar completely, and it would be less appealing to alts much faster.
Allow us to increase difficulty slightly in later tiers without changing bosses or the mechanics themselves.
We have a ton of reference and respect for the encounters in Wrath of the Lich King Classic and wanted to make as few adjustments here as possible. Slightly lowering overall player power going into a raid like ICC allows our modern, more savvy Classic players to have a bit more of a challenge in that raid without needing to make risky changes to the encounters themselves. And with the progressive raid buff system that comes in later in ICC, we still feel like this raid will be accessible to raid groups of varying skill levels after some time passes.
Curb a bit of the wild scaling that occurs with such massive iLvl jumps between tiers
Kris Zierhut was one of the designers responsible for planning itemization during original Wrath of the Lich King, and he’s back on our team now working on the Classic version. He often times says that a stated goal of gearing and scaling in original Wrath was to avoid the situation we got into at the end of The Burning Crusade where certain classes and roles scaled so well that they had to make major systemic adjustments to Sunwell Plateau to compensate for this. The most notable example of this is “Sunwell Radiance” which effectively reduced the avoidance of all tanks by a flat, massive amount. While effective, this debuff never felt great because it meant that the progression of your character meant little when you got to Sunwell, as there was a global debuff that negated the benefits you got from your hard-won gear across the board.
As alluded to above, Trial of the Crusader’s injection into the overall design of raid progression in Wrath of the Lich King conflicted with those original goals and intent, and ultimately led to the same type of scaling problems that were faced late in The Burning Crusade. We feel that an adjustment here could help with this concern when we get to ICC, and add up to a more interesting experience overall.
We totally understand that at face value “nerfing” gear is a scary prospect, but we are committed to taking extreme care to not make too many waves, and ensure that in relative terms, classes and roles that excelled later in the expansion will continue to feel powerful as they progress.
Thank you for reading if you got this far, and apologies for the length of this, but floating a change like this really needs a thorough explanation and reasoning for context. We wanted to start this with a focused group of community council members, and we’d love to get feedback on this in the coming weeks. We still have time to make further adjustments to this idea.
Thanks!
Posted here for the rest of us.
You mean 3.3.5?
The thread that had the posts concerning only one server being released was responded to by a blue within a few hours because it blew up almost instantly.
You don’t see that with RDF. No matter how committed they are for it, there just isn’t enough interest in it.
But why? This tbh honest and I try to not be insulting, sounds over the top to be polite or at least how it was put from what I read with lvl squishing the gear. Why not just make heroic gear almost as good or as good instead of squishing gear that affects progression into the next phase.
But Tbh honest defeats the literal basic rpg purpose of moving forward in a game, actually makes it more boring… There’s plenty of awesome items in plenty of rpg games and mmo’s i’ve played that are hard to get. But I got to move on even though that boss was harder than the one later. Naxx 40 was way harder than tk and ssc tbh. I don’t want that gear to be comparable as that makes no sense.
Or to be closer with the times. there’s bosses in tk I thought that were harder than hyjal bosses. Again the gear doesn’t need to be better or equal. If you reallllllyyyy want that then the easier solution that might not have as big of consequences is just raising ilvl of
heroic gear instead of dropping gears level from the next tier that is supposed to help with progression going into the next tier and into that heroic or even for that guild to go into normal ICC… Like I see this doing more bad than good especially sense people want to make bosses harder. Again if I understood the other post and the blizzard comment right. This makes even less sense and making heroic gear better makes more than dropping ilvl.
You know what ill give a irl example. I make 20 dollars an hour and you make 17 ( or vice versa in the wow instance.) instead of asking for a raise I ask them to decrease your salary for your job because I thought you were making to much. I now impoversh you ruining connections and your ability to put food on the table even possibly making the community more toxic towards individuals in that job when all I had to do was ask for a raise that would be more beneficial than hurting someone else. Idk just how I see it.
Give Ulduar time to breathe
Don’t release new content so quickly. Problem solved.
Don’t Cut Arena Season 7 Short
See previous.
Encourage Older Raids to remain Relevant and worth doing for Alts and PUGs.
Titles and legendaries do this.
Allow us to increase difficulty slightly in later tiers without changing bosses or the mechanics themselves.
You’re doing that by altering the numbers on players as opposed to doing it to the bosses. This is very much looking like ill-disguised balance changes masquerading as “make gear relevant” because there are far less disruptive ways to accomplish what you claim to be trying to do.
Curb a bit of the wild scaling that occurs with such massive iLvl jumps between tiers
This was part of Wrath. Stop acting like you know better. Seeing Retail, you clearly do not. We do not want your “balance changes” here.
We totally understand that at face value “nerfing” gear is a scary prospect
It’s not “scary”, don’t insult us by comparing us to something akin to a child alone in the dark. We can comprehend what you’re doing just fine. We don’t need the condescension.
and we’d love to get feedback on this in the coming weeks.
Here’s my feedback.
No.
You know what ill give a irl example. I make 20 dollars an hour and you make 17 ( or vice versa in the wow instance.) instead of asking for a raise I ask them to decrease your salary for your job because I thought you were making to much. I now impoversh you ruining connections and your ability to put food on the table even possibly making the community more toxic towards individuals in that job when all I had to do was ask for a raise that would be more beneficial than hurting someone else. Idk just how I see it.
That’s Socialism you’re thinking of, totally different ball of wax, and not what the stat squish is about. They want to reduce the impact of TOC gear and make Ulduar gear more impactful in terms of progression and gearing. Previously you could basically skip ulduar and just run TOC and get the gear needed to get into ICC. They want things to be more linear and make upgrades more meaningful.
Now keep in mind this is their intent. That does not mean this is the result we will get.
I unfortunately wasn’t able to participate in the live chat, but I’ve thought about this a little bit. Personally the way I see it, as others have pointed out since this was announced is that it can have significant repercussions. In PvP for...
At least one of them has a sense of scope it seems.
That’s Socialism you’re thinking of
he didn’t describe socialism at all
In order:
Thank you for the update. Please do not let the toxicity around here discourage you from continue doing this, people will be negative and entitled but they are not the majority.
Regarding changes involving gearing:
Please don’t. I’d rather re-experience wrath as it was, not with retuning to make it “better.”
Better is subjective in game design, and whatever is changed risks ruining the game for as many people as it improves it for.
That’s exactly what he described.
I’ll not pursue a battle of wits with someone who is unarmed.
I read the blue response to you regarsing arena gear rating, and im sorry, but the answer you got was appalling. The Dev doesnt understand a word youre saying and confirms they dont play or monitor their game.
That’s exactly what he described.
I’ll not pursue a battle of wits with someone who is unarmed.
LoL says the legless man in an but kicking contest.
Just to clarify one thing, the format of the chat was more akin to Blizzard bouncing potential ideas off of the WCC, akin to a focus group.
It was not a town hall or open forum.
Then just tell them their ideas are bad, and to leave wrath alone. There is no need to change it.
This is comedic gold 10/10 would read again
It’s funny because its true lol.
It’s just getting ridiculous. Literally every feature except RDF that was included in all stages of Wrath is in Wrath classic at launch. They’re even making stuff up do add to the launch.
They might as well add the Crusaders Colosseum because it’s the only thing left they haven’t added yet.
The Dance Studio
For the love of the bloody earth mother.
NO MORE CHANGES.
ZIP ZILCH NONE
Blizzards already screwed this up so badly the expansions barely recognizable anymore.
If you want to pass on the bloody opinions of the community, then tell them to stop changing things, stop trying to push their own dirty miserably inept fingers into a perfectly good product just to try to get their names on something.
Also tell them as long as the changes stand, they have no right to call this Wrath Classic, they need to change the title to Wrath: Reforged, so people whom don’t follow along with every update aren’t going to be blindsided and think they are actually making a faithful recreation of Wrath, but a train wreck just like their Warcraft 3 franchise.
I should point out that an easy fix instead of squishing the toc and icc gear which would be disastrous, would be to just increase the Ilvl of gear from ulduar. This would cause the change they are seeking in making ulduar realavent longer while not causing all the disastrous effects such as affecting dps and tank rankings. Personally if they reduce the ilvl for icc gear I will most likely quit since my fondness for playing the classic stemmed from my memories of wrath and how badly blizzard messed up warrior going into cataclysm.
Taking things away never feels like the best option and recuding Ilvl is taking away character power. You want to make ulduar feel relavent longer just increase the ilvl of some the items that drop in there.
RDF