Cataclysm, The WoW killer.

#0 - April 27, 2010, 6:39 p.m.

Okay, I know these are just ideas, but some of these changes are really killing WoW.

1) No more 25s? Like what was the idea behind this. Same loot; same lockout period. Even same difficulty. If this is the new idea, 25s have to drop WAY more items than 10 man. Right now 10mans drop like 2-3 pieces of gear (including tier tokens). 25mans drop only 3 pieces of actully gear if that, and maybe another 2 tier tokens. Do the math; 10man to 25man is a 150% increase. 25s would have to drop atlest 5 pieces of actull gear to even make the switch worth it. 25s are going to be the new 40mans aka they dont exsist anymore. Also Lich King 10 and 25 share the same size; if 10man and 25man are going to be the same fights. Make the 25mans have more room. DEFILE

2) Some of these new so called "class changes" sound more like nurfs. Warriors got Nurf; Resto druids got straight owned (which i am one). We own at raid healing, but since 25mans are really no longer in the picture it doesnt matter; because there is no real raid to heal. Anyway druids have not and will never be as good as a pally healing a tank. Getting rid of Tree of Life was a terrible mistake. Most PvP resto druids DONT even spec into tree of life so they CAN dps in PvP. What am i going to do now, throw moonfire when people arent taking any damage. PS most classes have a dps rotation that is really boring. press 4 buttons, do 14k dps.( 2 if your a acrane mage). Change the rotation please.

3) It seems like since the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King Blizzard has stop caring about WoW completely. Gear looks the same; boss fights are a tank and spank (unless in Heroic 25). VoA gives players tier 10 now just for being able to run a simple rotation. Make bosses hard again like in Orginal WoW, or make Pre BC servers. When epics actully ment something.

4) WoW is just a game, but with any sort of game. We as players want to be entertained. Adding flying to Azeroth IS AWESOME, but knowing all the people lvling in PvP servers are going to QQ and players wont be able to kill anyone under lvl 30.The game hasn't came out with any new ground baking ideas. Phasing was an awesome idea, but the game needs a new soical outlook. Like Guild homes, or Player Houses that other players can ranskack or destory (Ultima Online). Bring back world PvP.

5) With like I was saying with the gear and how it looks the same, but why not have the player be able to color their own gear. Make their own tabard; instead of the ones that WoW lets you have. Let us actully learn other langauges. There is a tab for under the skill list. It would be awesome to speak in other faction langauages. Small things like that can really make or break a game.

6) PvP is fun, but i think have a Guild VS Guild type of battle would be interesting, or even a Realm VS Realm.

7) It just seems to me that Blizzard has started to become sell outs. Atlest when it comes to World of Warcraft. Casual Players seem to be what Blizzard is foucsing on now; not so much the hardcore player. Making 10mans the new 25mans is all the proof that shows the casual WoW player is their focus. 25mans SHOULD be harder than 10. ITS 25 PEOPLE. They should never make 10man on the same scale of 25man and drop the same loot.

It just seems like Blizzard is more foucused on StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3, or whatever else they are working on. If that is case then I am sure that once SC2 comes out; WoW is going to lose alot of members. Many people that I play WoW with either really like this expasion or hate it. Hopefully these are just ideas and only ideas that Blizzard is just throwing out to see how the general players react to it. Some of these new concepts have really broken me away from WoW and now im stuck waiting for SC2, and D3.

Zarhym

#13 - April 27, 2010, 8:17 p.m.

Q u o t e:
1) No more 25s? Like what was the idea behind this. Same loot; same lockout period. Even same difficulty. If this is the new idea, 25s have to drop WAY more items than 10 man. Right now 10mans drop like 2-3 pieces of gear (including tier tokens). 25mans drop only 3 pieces of actully gear if that, and maybe another 2 tier tokens. Do the math; 10man to 25man is a 150% increase. 25s would have to drop atlest 5 pieces of actull gear to even make the switch worth it. 25s are going to be the new 40mans aka they dont exsist anymore. Also Lich King 10 and 25 share the same size; if 10man and 25man are going to be the same fights. Make the 25mans have more room. DEFILE

The idea is not to kill 25-player raiding, directly or indirectly. As we stated when we announced the planned changes, we don't have all of the details locked in yet. We also may need to reevaluate the system after the first tier of raiding if it's not working the way we hope it will. You're working with broad brush strokes of information, then inserting your own numbers and assumptions, asking others to do the math. There's no real math to do at this point. Speculation is fine. We just want it to be known that the idea behind the change is not to kill 25-player raiding. You may think it's going to, but there's only so much you can predict about raiding trends in Cataclysm without seeing all of our systems changes solidified and put into practice.

Q u o t e:
2) Some of these new so called "class changes" sound more like nurfs. Warriors got Nurf; Resto druids got straight owned (which i am one). We own at raid healing, but since 25mans are really no longer in the picture it doesnt matter; because there is no real raid to heal. Anyway druids have not and will never be as good as a pally healing a tank. Getting rid of Tree of Life was a terrible mistake. Most PvP resto druids DONT even spec into tree of life so they CAN dps in PvP. What am i going to do now, throw moonfire when people arent taking any damage. PS most classes have a dps rotation that is really boring. press 4 buttons, do 14k dps.( 2 if your a acrane mage). Change the rotation please.

Again, aside from the Tree of Life change you're mostly inserting numbers and details that simply aren't there yet. We laid forth our ideas for class evolution in Cataclysm and will be refining our vision for each class over the course of the testing period.

Q u o t e:
3) It seems like since the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King Blizzard has stop caring about WoW completely. Gear looks the same; boss fights are a tank and spank (unless in Heroic 25). VoA gives players tier 10 now just for being able to run a simple rotation. Make bosses hard again like in Orginal WoW, or make Pre BC servers. When epics actully ment something.

It's all perspective. You may not agree with our philosophy of making the game as fun as possible for as many people as possible, including giving the majority of players better opportunities to see our raid content, but it's unfair to say it means we don't care. We made far more unique art in the Wrath of the Lich King end game than we did with the original level 60 end game, but we don't expect that to be transparent to everyone. The boss fights in Wrath of the Lich King raids are far more complex and better tuned than level 60 raid fights were, but the better access we've provided players to such content seems to bother you.

We have no plans of making pre-TBC realms. This goes against the very nature of an MMO and would be a logistical nightmare. There's no switch to flip on the realms to roll back years of patches and changes, and we don't intend to invent one so that a very small minority of players can play what we feel would be an inferior cousin of the World of Warcraft of today.

Q u o t e:
5) With like I was saying with the gear and how it looks the same, but why not have the player be able to color their own gear. Make their own tabard; instead of the ones that WoW lets you have. Let us actully learn other langauges. There is a tab for under the skill list. It would be awesome to speak in other faction langauages. Small things like that can really make or break a game.

6) PvP is fun, but i think have a Guild VS Guild type of battle would be interesting, or even a Realm VS Realm.

You're welcome to leave your feedback on our Suggestions forum. I'd rather not discuss these suggestions point-by-point. In a sense, you're asking for a different game when we're using all of our resources to improve the one we have.

Q u o t e:
7) It just seems to me that Blizzard has started to become sell outs. Atlest when it comes to World of Warcraft. Casual Players seem to be what Blizzard is foucsing on now; not so much the hardcore player. Making 10mans the new 25mans is all the proof that shows the casual WoW player is their focus. 25mans SHOULD be harder than 10. ITS 25 PEOPLE. They should never make 10man on the same scale of 25man and drop the same loot.

Again, you can only assume so much until you actually see the theories in practice. I don't like the term "casual" though, nor do we have meetings to determine what we can do to cater to the casual player. We look at how we can appeal to the biggest market possible to expand the MMO genre to a more broad playerbase. It makes great business sense and there's no reason we have to sacrifice compelling gameplay or lore to do this.

Q u o t e:
It just seems like Blizzard is more foucused on StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3, or whatever else they are working on. If that is case then I am sure that once SC2 comes out; WoW is going to lose alot of members. Many people that I play WoW with either really like this expasion or hate it. Hopefully these are just ideas and only ideas that Blizzard is just throwing out to see how the general players react to it. Some of these new concepts have really broken me away from WoW and now im stuck waiting for SC2, and D3.

Each game has its own development team. I don't have specific numbers, but I would wager the World of Warcraft development team is as large as our other three teams combined. Blizzard Entertainment is an expanding global company. We don't have tunnel vision when it comes to developing products and games.

Q u o t e:
Cataclysm, The WoW killer.

I understand you wanted an attention-grabbing title and it's probably my fault for choosing to give you attention. I do think it's worth responding to your points, though you can express your concerns in a more constructive way than this. I've seen a lot of what our developers are working on for Cataclysm and I've never been so excited for an expansion before. It's not going to kill the game and I guarantee you'll find countless hours of entertainment to be had upon its release. :)

Zarhym

#82 - April 27, 2010, 9:24 p.m.

Q u o t e:

Out of a sea of idiotic threads, does it really matters which one he picks?

Not in terms of the level of grief I'll receive for choosing to respond to any thread on the forums. It seems that no matter what thread I respond to, for some people it's always the wrong one.

Zarhym

#204 - April 28, 2010, 1:21 a.m.

Q u o t e:

So you mean...Cataclysm won't fix it?

But seriously, just hearing that we will be stuck in "guinea pig" mode when it comes to your raid design philosophy is very, very telling.

=(

I'm not talking about a sweeping overhaul of the raiding game in patch 4.1. I'm saying, as with all aspects of gameplay, we may need to make adjustments after this change is officially put into play based on an evaluation of how it's working. That said, we know very well that this change may impact some guilds, as did the removal of 40-player raids and addition of 10- and 25-player versions. Just as there isn't a lack of feedback on these forums about the proposed changes, there isn't a lack of internal discussion about how to make this system work so that it doesn't hurt the 25-player raid game.

Zarhym

#215 - April 28, 2010, 2:03 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Gotta say, this is something that tends to really bother me... People on the forums like to pretend that they're the first people to ever think of an idea. When they don't realize is that much of the discussion that ensues on the forums has already happened within the development team, and a decision was made based on that discussion. I can't imagine that all of the developers always agree on everything. I would also assume that the developers have friends within the larger player community, and I wouldn't be surprised if they bounce some of the ideas off veteran players. So the way I try to look at it, if the team has reached a decision, then most likely much of the dissenting opinion has already been taken into account.

That isn't to invalidate the points people make on the forums. The arguments should be made. But I think it's healthy to realize that by the time something like the raiding change is announced, there has already been a very substantial discussion on the topic that we've never seen. It could very well be that the arguments against said change have already been considered by the WoW team and rejected.

And it's certainly flying off the handle to assume that the developers somehow don't care... That also assumes that all of the people involved in making WoW somehow march in lockstep, which I highly doubt. Yes, all we hear is the final decision, and we can only imagine how the team reaches that decision. But clearly there's a process there, one that seems to me to be a very thorough one.

What you say is very accurate. The internal discussions that take place on any given topic can get quite heated. We all push strongly for what we feel is best for the game, but ultimately try to listen to dissenting opinions. Eventually a decision is made, but that's not before a good number of people with very different play styles get together, fight, and then hug it out. ;p

Feedback from the community has been great so far. We expected a certain amount of backlash to the raid progression refinements announcement we made yesterday, but not only does that send a clear signal to us in what areas we need to tread very carefully, it allows us to further assess the way we provide additional information going forward. We've heard a great deal from the community about the raid changes coming in Cataclysm. Now our goal is to provide updates and additional details as soon as possible, and then further refine the design so it's best suited for most players. We're never going to make everybody happy when we change things, just as not everyone is happy with the current raid system. But we know we can make a better 10- and 25-player progression system than we currently have which will satisfy the majority of raiders, regardless of the many different reasons why an individual chooses to focus on raiding.

Zarhym

#218 - April 28, 2010, 2:14 a.m.

Q u o t e:

I'm sure there's plenty of internal discussion. But clearly the result of that discussion was "we're fine with the death of 25 man raiding".

Hyperbole. This gives me the opportunity to address another post though, so maybe it's not all in vain:

Q u o t e:
It's the beaurocratic double speak that upsets me. He says that he knew this would be controversial, but seems offended that people are responding appropriately to controversial announcements.

He says that other it's unfair to judge this without knowing all of the "systems changes," but how else are we supposed to evaluate this news without information on these othes mysterious changes. What's Blizzard's mysterious carrot for 25s? More weekly gold via the new guild system? Faster alt leveling? Honestly I just don't see this deus ex machina.

First off, I'm not offended. We do welcome negative feedback. Now read the post I quoted above yours though. Do you think this to be an appropriate response to a controversial announcement? Does it serve a useful purpose, or is it just a spiteful remark made out of anger?

I know one thing for sure. When discussing feedback with our developers, I'm not going to approach them and ask why they ultimately decided they needed to kill 25-player raids. I'm not going to get the response I want because I'm inserting an unfair, hyperbolic insinuation into my question. Perhaps instead I would ask them if they're concerned that we're diminishing the incentive to run 25-player content too much.

I hope you see the distinction between an appropriate response based upon a concern versus a waste of bandwidth.

Zarhym

#235 - April 28, 2010, 2:44 a.m.

Q u o t e:

Alright. Are you concerned that you are diminishing the incentive to run 25-player content too much? Just because 'most' people do not run it does not mean that there is not a very dedicated core of players that like high-end style content. Are you concerned about keeping them satisfied with your game at all?

PVP gear not requiring rating. Same questions.

Absolutely. To that end, we will carefully consider these concerns when implementing this change. Likewise, we'll do our best to address these concerns through a continued dialog with the playerbase as more details get fleshed out in the coming weeks.

Zarhym

#276 - April 28, 2010, 5:02 a.m.

Q u o t e:
For the love of god ....can you please let us know if there is going to be anything uniquely gained from 25 man raiding that will benefit the group as a whole? All i see so far is questions being dodged ....by saying wait for more details to be fleshed out....quite frankly I am pretty sure you have most if not all of the details fleshed out ...you just are with holding the info so that everyone won't rage all at once.

We don't have all of the details fleshed out. This is why we're previewing information well in advance of any changes actually being implemented. We want to share our design goals with you and get feedback. One thing we do understand though is that players are going to go wherever they get the most bang for their buck. If no clear advantages are to be gained from 25-player raids over 10-player raids, most players will not do them. So while we don't have more details to share with you, it's important to note that we are aware of this.

Zarhym

#285 - April 28, 2010, 5:10 a.m.

Q u o t e:

That's cool. Somebody heard the hullabloo, so I guess we can all get along now?

Sure. <3