Some suggestions regarding raiding

#0 - Dec. 7, 2008, 3:07 p.m.

1) Raid difficulty. I know you've addressed this a lot recently, but I think what many of us are concerned about is the creation of challenge through arbitrary achievements and making the baseline encounter undertuned. Now i'm all for introductory content for the masses, but I think many of us are looking for a balance between accessible normal mode content for the masses versus a genuine challenge. And by challenge, I don't think anyone really cares about 20 man / timed kill achievements. Please don't rely solely on the achievement system for challenge.

2) "Hardmode" rewards. Currently the rewards for hardmode sarth doesn't seem to be in line, I think more / better items for such encounters in the future would be great. Consider that there are probably 27 reskins of the same mount, thats neither interesting or unique. Make the rewards better, make the mounts more interesting and unique. Also, increasing the number of higher item level rewards for hardmode encounters. I think what you did with zul'aman was great, better items and a unique mount.

3) Dual specs. Nothing is announced on these yet, but most of the playerbase is expecting a talent/glyph switch with a minimal cooldown. Please, please include glyphs for dual specs, obviously its not fun having to waste money for every reglyph to switch between pve and pvp spec.

Just some suggestions I thought i'd pass along, cheers.

Ghostcrawler

#2 - Dec. 7, 2008, 6:22 p.m.

Please don't bump threads, especially your own. We don't want some kind of arms race to see who can keep their post up the highest.

I have discussed the dungeon difficulty issue before, so I will just bulletize it here:

Naxx is an entry-level raid.
Many players have seen the encounters before.
Players were allowed to learn the encounters on beta.

On the topic of hard modes:

I think a lot of players do enjoy the challenges, especially when some kind of badge of honor is involved.
We do realize that vanity items like titles and mounts can only motivate people so far and we do have plans to offer better loot for such accomplishments.
We aren't likely to spend several months of development time on content that less than 5% of players will ever see.
We do understand that groups like a challenge though. Ulduar will be more difficult.

On dual spec:

The idea is to let you swap glyphs and action bars along with your talents.
It will be trivial to do in town.
You will also be able to do it out of towns, but not as trivially.
We hope to have this done for the next major content patch, but it's a big feature and takes some time.