I was fortunate enough to get a brood head first go for the 3rd AQ gate quest. And we have layers which is awesome for farming. If you had actual layers. I have one buddy helping me, everyone else can’t really dedicate the insane hours to farm. At least give us more layers. Or make the fragments not sellable in the auction house, and only tradeable inside your guild. i have farmed 27 stacks so far and 59 more to go. there is literally not enough hours in a day if the layers are so overpopulated. Can we have layers that don’t make it feel like we are stuffed in a chinese apartment complex.
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If you don’t have the time, then don’t bother with the grind?
Although I do think it’s fair not to be sellable on the AH.
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the intent behind the quest is for it to be a guild effort. not to be solo/duoable. and they’ve already accommodated you by halving the rep requirement and allowing you to purchase the fragments.
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at 5g per fragment? how in the world is that affordable unless i bought 60k gold? i just want to be able to farm without having to fight 700 other people in a tiny area. that isn’t that big of a request. it was literally one of the many QoL changes made through the years in retail so people didn’t just have to sit idle fighting over tags. i have zero problem farming it all out solo or with a small group of friends that can spare the time. but to take hours and hours from people’s lives so 1 person can get a mount is the unreasonable ask. If the gate wasn’t guaranteed to open on its own. it would be easier to get guilds involved since it would be ‘required’ to complete.
This 100% this! Maybe even put the scarab mount on the real vendor for 150 reals! Would solve everyone’s issue with the “rare” mount being to hard to farm ^.^ Hope you have a great day Seraphinn 
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People dismissing valid criticism of the current state of Scarab Lord are being unreasonable.
The Intent is that it be rare and a guild effort. That is true.
As it currently stands people can RMT and completely skip that.
This is a fact.
The majority of the people farming are doing so to sell the fragments for gold.
This influx of players farming and the issues with layers makes farming them much more difficult.
Why am I competing with countless players looking to line there pockets while they enable RMT.
Players that aren’t even involved in the questline.
So many opted out of this grind because they are uncertain of the future of SoD, or simply because this is the 4th iteration of Scarab lord. And traditionally, its been a very toxic event.
There has been no coordination with deputizing. People selling then en mass since day 1.
Asking for solutions to this issue is not unreasonable. It is not the same as asking for the mount to be put on the reals vendor, or a freebie.
I want to continue to farm this and honor a guildie.
Despite the changes made to the SoD gates. It is being pushed again towards mega guilds and RMT.
Shared tags would be an improvement for the smaller but dedicated guilds.
Increased layers at all times in the zone would be an improvement.
Groups not getting squeezed out of the farm, by farmers not even on the quest, Should be a priority.
Frankly I dont think The Fragments should be able to be sold on the auction house at a minimum. They should not be able to be traded to anyone not on the quest.
People would still sell them. But an effort made to reduce this behavior would certainly be a step in the right direction.
At 5g per frag, 105k gold spent. You will see this. RMT should be undermined at any cost.
Frankly I think the rep gains should again be doubled, halving the turn ins to about 50 (from 105) . This would severely devalue the price of the shards and reduce the traffic of those farming outside the quest. It would severely reduce the demand of gold we are about to see as well and eat at the RMTers bottom line.
Something needs to be done. Feels like I’m playing a game against bots, for bots.
The immersion, the camaraderie, the grind. Its all taking a back seat for the sake of the swipers.
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I agree 100% with this, and sadly, the only response you’ll get from other people on this forum is “it’s supposed to be rare” and “if you don’t like it, don’t do it”. Classic players have a mind virus and it’s sad that the playerbase is one of the biggest things holding the game back from being just a little bit better for everyone.
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Nevermind that back in the day, only 2 or 3 guilds per server usually got the broodlord head and went all in with the grind afterwards, compared to how in classic servers everyone and their grandmas can clear BWL easily and create a lot more competition in silithus than it ever had back in 2006.
At least from a PVE perspective, since PVP servers were a bloodbath back then and still are today since people will take every chance to gank you if they can.
It feels like not updating the questline grind to account for modern sensibilities is a massive mistake, since it creates problems that didnt exist in the 2006 version. It’s basically the same nonsense we saw when they kept Black Lotus spawn rates unchanged, and they were forced to change those since certain people were basically hoarding and camping every spawn spot, resulting in ridiculous prices for the herb.
They should’ve pulled a black lotus and made meaningful changes to address this crappy step of the questline. There’s also the fact a lot of people are now buying them on AH or worse, doing RMT to skip this step because farming it as it is leads to dozens of headaches and issues that, again, didn’t exist back in 2006.
I find it really hard to take a “no changes” stance seriously with the amount of issues exclusive to this version of wow popped up, coupled with the fact SoD saw drastic changes already to other content (like the revamps done to molten core and BWL so all classes are viable to bring). On top of that, Layers didnt exist in 2006 and they do nowadays, creating even more issues when you get thrown around layers like a pinball and disrupt your farming.
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This is the key takeaway. Even players who didn’t participate in the sweaty grind “back in the day” thought this would surely be fixed, and yet the devs who are in charge of the game did nothing.
I think a lot of the “no changes” crowd is shrinking, and realizing how silly it is. The new fresh realms will have instant mail for alts, dual spec and no buff/debuff limit, and I don’t think anyone is protesting this.
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Exactly.
Whenever i see the “its supposed to be hard” and “you just want a free black scarab huh”, what those people are actually saying to me its “you can get ****ed if you think the devs should do anything about the rampant competition with RMT and gold farmers even if you are just trying to help a guildie get the mount”.
So yeah, if you are saying this is okay, you are unintentionally telling me its okay to require RMT or tons of gold to do this. It’s not hard, its just annoying and incredibly dumb to not do any changes. And i’ts not like the rest of the questline isn’t long and grindy anyway (Looking at you, Blue shard questchain).
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its not an unreasonable ask. its by design. everyone is not entitled to the mount. the quest was originally designed in a way that without foreknowledge only maybe 3 people on an entire server would complete the entire chain and get the mount with the cooperation large amount of people also being necessary. the fragments are intended to be tradable that’s why the deputization is in the game. They’ve gave you a much easier grind with less rep required, player power creep, and a longer turn in window. you’ve also been given a soft advantage due to the temporary nature of sod in terms of access. on a normal server every guild would be out there claiming spawns…in essence you’d be trading people willing to sell you fragments for people who purposely wish to block you access. at the end of the day its a time sink, you knew that going in, your guildies knew that going in. if you aren’t willing to complete that timesink or can’t find the appropriate amount of help you simply do not deserve the rewards. sorry not sorry. like i had some sympathy for you in your other post how you got screwed over by guildies…but if you arent willing to put in the effort i recind it.
Dude, just stop. This is exactly what’s happening, but more than you didnt mention is also happening and is wrong.
Back in the day? Maybe 3 guilds tops were getting the head and farming bugs in silithus, making the step grindy but still sort of reasonable.
Now? Everyone and their grandmas can get the head of broodlord, and the devs did absolutely nothing to adjust this part at all. Halving the grind doesn’t fix the fact you are competing with thousands of players in a single layer vs when you had at most 80 other players to worry about in 2006. It’s much worse than in 2006 despite the shortened turn ins, and the layer issues deserves a mention.
Imagine logging to help a friend get their scarab, only to find out most spots are taken by gold farmers, other guilds and RMT folks. Note that RMT folks and gold farmers were not a thing back in 2006, so they weren’t a factor inflating the amount of competition back then.
And the layer issue means we are essentially getting phased constantly from empty layers to crowded ones, disrupting our gameplay and making the farm a consistent pain in the rear in a way that didn’t exist back in 2006, as layers were introduced in 2019.
This factors combined are making this part a complete misery for most of us trying for it, to the point that with your argument, you are unintentionally telling me that we should do RMT or have massive amounts of gold to buy the fragments, which is ridiculous.
Hell, there are entire discords where people are trading retail/cata classic gold in large bundles for SoD gold so they can afford the fragments. And reminder that you can buy gold in retail indirectly by buying a token and selling it, meaning its basically the Pay 2 Scarab now.
How the hell are you bringing this kind of argument with all of the above happening? just stop.
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“Deserve” is a pretty loaded word, especially when it comes to a game like WOW. Does a Rank 14 “deserve” their weapons? Does a person with full BiS and shadowflame weapon “deserve” it? Did they earn it or were they carried?
We’re on a video game forum, trying to give developers ideas to make the game more fun for more people so that we can continue to enjoy it and give them money to make the game more fun.
No one is trying to earn some kind of achievement in any of this…
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yes, if they went through motion to complete what was necessary in terms of mechanical ability, time and organizational investment, and contending with RNG they deserve the reward offered. If they did not do these things they don’t. Even if they were carried the ability to organize that kind of involvement from other people (with the exception of out of game means like RMT) is a skill itself worthy of reward if successful.
The design behind the quest was for it to specifically be an achievement rewarding investment by the player and their guild. the exclusivity is what they are after.
WHICH SKILL? Where’s the skill if you can just buy your way through it with gold or RMT?
What kind of asinine arguments are you spewing? Seriously.
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SoD is far more reasonable there will be far more then 3 people even with the general lack of interest.
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it was even hyper competitive back in the day. it was balk of the population of the server competing on 1 layer. and it was much more cutthroat then SoD with much more collusion between guilds and factions going on.
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i did just that. I’ve lived in a silithus hive farming fragments for somebody else (who begged and begged for me to pass on head i might add). on crusaderstike for that matter where alliance only has maybe 1 hive on all the layers some of the time. my guild mate literally gave up a couple hours ago. I lost 10s of hours of time. im fine with the outcome because i knew it was a possibility going in and i have zero sympathy for that guildmate because he decided he ultimately didnt want to put in the time. he doesnt deserve it and i have to live with the consequence of how i allotted my time.
As to the RMT and gold trade i completely agree that those players should be banned. yes, i know gold trade is technically within rules but ive advocated in the past for them not to be. In fact, my request would be for blizzard to audit where the gold came from on larger fragment purchasers and make the appropriate bans.
im bringing that argument in because it is absolutely valid advantage. there is an advantage to having excess sellers versus others looking to specifically squeeze you out. if RMT didnt exist you would be in worse shape farming wise. which if I really wanted to get into the niddy griddy about it i would rather see that outcome as i detest RMT with a passion to the point that i rather see you, me, and them punished rather than them getting what they want.
Nevermind that the fact only 1 player loots each bug in silithus, assuming you decided to do free-for-all loot to help the scarab user because otherwise you are consistently wasting bug spawns by having party members getting bug loot but not being deputized yet.
You had at worst around 80 other people to compete with. You are now competing with basically thousands of people in this zone, which gets better or worse depending on whatever layer the server wants to put you on.
Only 3 guilds per server at most got the head, and deputizing someone took 200 fragments. It wasn’t this many people compared to SoD, where every guild pretty much killed broodlord early on the week and kickstarted this to a even bigger degree than it could ever be in 2006.
Not really? on PVE servers anyway. You were just competing with 80 other people, and you had 3 massive hives so each guild could more or less farm one.
This argument is only true on PVP servers, which is true but its not what people are really criticizing. If you rolled on a pvp servers, you pretty much agreed to get your rear ganked nonstop.
That’s unfortunate, but it doesnt undermine the point
This is not as easy as it sounds, because getting those bans done in reasonable time is difficult, and by the time they do happen, the damage has been done and odds are, the guys in charge of botting or RMT already have backup toons to keep the ball rolling.
Simply redesigning this step of the grind or introducing the AQ Incursions (which are otherwise exclusive to the 10 hours War) earlier would’ve alleviated all of this issues by a large margin. At this point, its too late for major redesigns, so enabling the AQ Incursions would at least mitigate the amount of damage
literally read where i made an exception to RMT. those players should be perma banned.
the ability organize people to complete a goal that is hard to impossible to complete by yourself is a skill sir. One if you are successful at obtaining will bring you great benefit in almost every aspect of your life i might add.
I understand your point, i do. But its not realistic in a game where gold trading and RMT are as rampant as they are. You need to understand that sometimes you have to try mitigate this issues, and if this means changing certain step of the questline, then so be it.
Keeping it mostly unchanged with RMT and gold trading as rampant as it is only exacerbates the issue, and Blizz cannot issue bans fast enough before the damage is already done. You have to understand this part too.
RMT IS against ToS but bans takes a while to happen, and while RMT is illegal, Gold Trading ISN’T.
And when people can trade retail gold for SoD gold, the issue is just as bad as before.
Basically, if i have gold caps on retail, i could buy my way into the black scarab if i cared. It’s not as skill based as you think it is. It certainly was in 2006, but this is 2024.
And gold trading is, again, not illegal, so the same issue persists. The devs should’ve redesigned this step of the questline to try mitigate this issues at minimum. At this stage, they need to at least do some damage control by doing some changes because this turned into a farce already as it is.
Trying to enforce something to be skill-based without making the necessary changes to prevent or discourage RMT and gold trading is simply not going to happen, and the devs should’ve thought of this. Just taking the loss and making the step less tedious by introducing AQ incursions earlier than the 10 hours war or changing how the quest grind works is the best way to try to do some damage control.
set multiple raid groups based on the # head bearer + deputized players. set to master loot. spread your guild groups out at different spawns. the master looters run around and loot while everyone else kills. collude with other uninterested guilds to get more heads/deputes if need be.
where do you get 80 people from. every spawn was camped until the gong was rung.
no, only roughly 3 guilds completed the quest many guilds got the head.
and that would fundamentally take away from the original intent and achievement of the quest. the title and mount are a reward for doing the activity in the open world with a large support network.