Blizz is discouraging PuGs?

#0 - Sept. 20, 2010, 1:03 p.m.

From what blue posts and people from the beta have said, Cata dungeons will be more difficult and complicated than wotlk. In addition, guilds will be getting rewards for progression and various other things. It seems like more emphasis is being placed on playing with actual friends and people who you know vs. complete strangers. Of course, the option to randomly group will still be necessary, but it will be much more rewarding to do things with your guild, even more rewarding than it is now. If this is Blizzard's intention, I approve.

Bashiok

#52 - Sept. 20, 2010, 6:22 p.m.

Hrm. I don't know.

Remember when Magister's Terrace opened up? It was by far the hardest five person dungeon in the game, and the amount of complaints surrounding it were enormous. It was actually difficult! People couldn't jump in and steam roll it because 1. they didn't know the pulls and encounters, and 2. a lot of people were unprepared to face a challenge. That first week or two, it was near impossible to get in a pug group that could clear it let alone stick together until the end.

Same thing happened with the ICC 5's.

In any case, I think it's probably a combination of things but no, there's no intent to stop pugging and there won't be any stop to pugging. Keep in mind that beta is there for testing and tuning, so it's also possible it IS too hard. (I would guess probably not though.)

Bashiok

#111 - Sept. 20, 2010, 7:46 p.m.

Yeah, I think we've seen all of the base arguments we're going to see on this come to fruition in this thread. So I'm gonna lock it.

Let's continue to watch the beta, play it if we have access, and provide feedback appropriately on difficulty tuning.