Is WoW The Game It Used To Be?

Or it the players who’ve changed?

I never reached the level cap playing vanilla WoW so missed old-school raiding, but managed to raid everything in TBC up to Felmyst in Sunwell.  However, the changes to raiding that Wrath has brought us seem to have changed the raiding experience considerably for a large number of people, myself included, and not necessarily for the better.

Last night our guild was faced with the possibility that a large number of the raiders (including several officers) are so unsatisfied with the quality of our raiding (and the lack of recruitable players on the server) that they’re facing either stopping working on 25-man hard modes (which are pretty much the only remaining measure of progression raiding) or transferring to another server with a more mature raider population in order to continue progression raiding.

Several factors have lead up to this, ranging from experienced players getting burnt-out and leaving the game, to raiders server-transferring to more progressed guilds elsewhere, to unreliable raiding performance of current raiders (myself included) and general dissatisfaction with the progression-raiding model.  While some people are afraid that we may end up disbanding or at least retiring from 25-man raiding, the officers are working on one last recruiting push to try and get enough capable raiders and see if we can still push hard-modes.

Personally I’m beginning to think that if I’m not careful, this might be the feather that broke this particular camel’s back.  WoW (and the people I play it with) is a big part of my life, but the game doesn’t have the thrill that it used to.  Raiding especially has changed, with the challenge level going from “Challenging” in TBC for everything (well, with the exception of Sunwell), to either “Faceroll” for normal fights or “Impossible” for hardmodes in the current raiding tiers.

Apparently (hearsay FTW!) Blizzard’s goal with hard-modes is that only the top 1% of players are skilled enough to complete them.  I reckon this is raising serious issues with raiding guilds, who at a rough guess comprise 5%* of the total player base, but due to the binary nature of current raid difficulty the majority of them will end up either wiping in growing frustration or possibly dropping hardmodes entirely due to their very small reward-to-effort ratio.

* – Numbers may have been completely fabricated in order to support my rant.  Take with a large grain of angry salt.

Gear no longer has any meaning more than being the (occasionally aesthetically pleasing) vessel for your various stat bonuses – some of my guildmates still keep their T6 sets in the bank, because of how much completing the set meant.  However, when they replace their T7 with T8, or T8 with T9, the set it’s replacing will get vendored without a second thought because of how little the old items mean in this age of disposable gear.

The leveling game isn’t all that bad (once you get past the archaic 1-60 grind), and Outland is still quite beautiful (well, apart from Hellfire Peninsula).  But once you hit 80, the remaining game (either self-goals like collecting pets/mounts/reputations/achievements or group goals like raiding) just isn’t that exciting anymore.  Even raiding has gone from feeling elation at having defeated boss X (so you can move onto the next boss), to feeling relief that boss Y is dead (until next week).

I suspect I’m just getting burnt out by the same-ness of the endgame (and the necessity of a month of jousting to open up the latest group of dailies is just salt in an open wound).  To be blunt, I’m running out of things to do.

So it’s time for a change.

I’m going to try something new on my priest; I’ve changed raiding spec from shadow to discipline, and that means trying something very new.  I’ve spend a metric bucket-load of gold picking up some new disc-friendly gear (including the Etched Signet of the Kirin Tor – thank you Inscription), and my talent build has passed the healing officer’s once-over, so now I just need a lot of experience (which I suspect I’ll be getting in short order).

Here’s hoping we’re able to pull the guild back together, and reclaim our place as A Guild That Doesn’t Suck.

/wave

My Own Worst Enemy

I’m sitting in vent as I write this, listening to my guild wiping progressing on the 2nd encounter in 25-man Trial of the Crusader (the not-really-PvP one).  It’s amusing to consider that last week I was grinding my teeth in silent fury because I had to wipe with them, and this week I’m sitting out and grinding my teeth in much the same way.

Welcome to Planet Irrational: Population, Me.

It’s actually quite silly when I stop and try to look rationally at my reaction; the phrase “Dog in the manger” seems quite appropriate.  But the discontent does feel quite real, for all it’s for a pretty foolish reason.  (I think dropping vent and doing something else for a few minutes while I got the worst of it out of my system was probably a good idea – I’d rather not say something on vent that would leave me guildless)

At it’s root, I think, is the thought that I’m missing out on the chance to upgrade my already pretty good gear – this is despite the fact that I haven’t been rolling on gear lately, while I try work through growing discontent with shadow-priest raiding.  (Like I said, I’m Mr. Irrrational)

(Actually, it’s probably because I complained to the caster officer about how –insert expletive here- angry the faux-PvP encounter left me, and that I never, ever, EVER want to do that fight again.  It’s embarrassing when you vent, and people actually listen to you…)

Anyway, a recent series of posts by Gevlon have been food for thought, in regards my gear-fetish and lack-lustre performance.  (This one, then this one and the latest on the theme here)  I think I’m going to try continuing to raid in my current gear (well, maybe other than my weapon, which I need to replace with a non-hit-rating one so I can juggle the rest of my gear a bit better) and pass on loot for the time being.  The reasoning for this is because I need to improve my ability, instead of just relying on gear upgrades to pull me through.

That means not just getting a better grasp on my character’s abilities, but also putting some work (and thought) into my UI and keybindings.  It also means challenging myself to do better, and not just relying on macros and panicked key-mashing.

And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get something more out of this challenge than I would out of /rolling on ToC25 loot.

/wave

(Amended edit:  maybe I’ll try discipline healing instead – I’ll see what the healing officer says…)

I Want Patience And I Want It Now

Like many others, I’ve been following the announcements at Blizzcon about what to expect with both Cataclysm and the much closer Icecrown patch.  All I can say is summed up in the title of this post.

Bearing in mind that what was announced was (in the case of the expansion) very much open to change between now and release (the closest they’ve come to a date has been “targeted for a 2010 release date” (as mentioned here), there’s not really anything they’ve said that I’m not interested in seeing.  Between the class changes (yay, more Dwarves!), leveling in the new old Azeroth, the new profession and Paths of the Titans, guild experience and leveling, and ranked battlegrounds, there' will not only be plenty for level 80s to do when the expansion launches but there will also be a lot of appeal to level new characters from scratch.

But that’s a long way off – and patience was never a strong suit for me.

The Icecrown information looks interesting, though, but the downside for me is having to endure the Coliseum raid for a couple more months – I’m seriously not looking forward to the hard-modes.

Icecrown Citadel – Raid

• The dungeon will have 4 different floors.
• There will be 12 "Epic" boss encounters.
• There will be an epic cinematic for defeating the Lich King.
• Waypoints from Ulduar are being used in this instance.
• Sindragosa, the ultimate Frost Wyrm is one boss in Icecrown.
• The Spire with the frozen throne on top runs through the entire instance.
• At one point you will board an airship with your faction leader, and race the opposing faction to the top of icecrown.
• There are cannons and rocketpacks and catapults to aid you in your battle with the opposing faction.
• The 3rd floor has 3 wings.
• Parts of the platform on the 4th floor with the Lich King will break apart and fall during the encounter.

Icecrown Citadel – Dungeon

• There are three different wings in this dungeon.
• You must progress through the wings linearly.
• An "epic" quest series unlocks the wings.
• 8 bosses in total

On a more personal note, I think I’ll stop with my glyph sales reports after this week’s one; I’ve proven to my satisfaction that not only is Inscription profitable, it’s consistently so.  And to be quite honest, it’s almost turning into bragging, so I think it’s time is done.

For the seven days from 17th August – 23rd August:
Total glyphs sold: 1882
Average price per glyph: 10.37g
Average sales per day: 2787.71g
Total income from the AH: 19,514g

Let’s compare that with my first report:

For the seven days from 21st June – 28th June:
Total glyphs sold: 622
Average price per glyph: 9.74g
Average sales per day: 865.86g
Total income from the AH: 6061g

I have to say, I love being fiscally self-sufficient, and the process has become a lot easier to manage compared to when I first started.  And, if I can do it, there’s little to stop anyone else from doing so.  (Other than the ability to come up with a system, to manage their time effectively, and to pony up with the gold to get stock to start with.)

Moving on, I’m looking at the possibility of un-retiring paladin Bingle from bank-alt services, and getting her to 80.  I’m also looking at the possibility of giving a Death Knight another try.  The biggest issue I’m finding is that I’m running out of character slots – 10 sounds like lots, but if you’re as serious about high-level alts as I am, they disappear pretty quickly.

I currently have 6 level 80s, one 70 bank-alt, and the 35 druid bank-alt – Snowfall, my Blood Elf hunter, has been removed from my roster in order to free up her slot, as the BE aesthetic was just too unappealing to level her any further (that darned matchstick).  That leaves 2 free slots on this server, and while I’ll have the Dwarven shaman and mage to make space for, that’s quite possibly a year off.  For now I’ve rolled my DK (I’m sure I’ll introduce you to Ninglethouse, eventually), and my current plan is to level her to 70, then decide who to take to 80 first between her and Bingle.

But errands await, and I think it’s time to put off making today’s glyphs in order to get some more PvP time on Pringle.  (I’ll probably put together a Rogue’s starter PvP gear post sometime soon)

/wave

Sometimes Self-Challenges Don’t Go As Intended

I tend to specialise with my assorted characters.  This goes from Mingle, who has the Loremaster achievement, to having one with each alchemy specialisation, to tentative plans to collect mounts on another character, and last of all to collecting pets on Ringle.

 

The pet idea came to me while I was farming the Deviate Hatchling in Wailing Chasm on Dingle.  I sent the single hatchling I found (from five partial runs) to Ringle, and the next day I logged onto Ringle and added both the Deviate hatchling and an Obsidian hatchling to her collection.  When added to the Northrend orphan she picked up the previous day, there was an immediate achievement ding and she had the achievement completed for collecting 50 pets.

Oddly enough, I was left feeling cheated for some reason, at how quickly she stumbled through that achievement (sure, it’s an illogical reaction, but logic is not really a trait I’m known for all that often), and my enthusiasm to start work on the next achievement tier has waned just a little.  I will probably get back to it at some stage (after all, with the 50-pet achievement reward pet, Ringle only needs 24 more pets to complete the 75 pet achievement), but that was an occasion when accidentally completing an achievement too quickly kind of took the fun out of it.

/wave

On Cataclysm, Commenters, And Lore Changes (Oh, And Gold)

I’ve been perusing the various comment threads of people’s posts regarding the rumours about the Cataclysm expansion, and a couple of things have come to my attention.

There seem to be a few categories* into most of the commenters seem to fit (although some manage to fit into more than one), and here’s what they look like from my perspective.  (Consider my tongue planted ever so slightly in cheek while you read this)

• The Lore Lawyers – These people are very much fixated on what currently exists in-game (and sometimes in previous games such as Warcraft 3), and refuse to entertain the possibility of anything that hasn’t been seen already.  They can use their knowledge to both support and refute any rumoured changes (sometimes simultaneously).  Can end world hunger if they use their powers for good.
• The Druid Denialists – A sub-category of Lore Lawyers, they may be much more open-minded about most things, with the exception of non-Night Elf and non-Tauren druids, which Blizzard would obviously never do.
• The True Believers – If it’s on the internet, it must be true.  They take the rumours as gospel, and have a lot of posts containing “ZOMG!!ZOMG!!”
• The Imagineers – A sub-category of True Believers, they love what they’ve read, and then they take the ball and run with it.  Posts which expand on the rumours with a lot of wild speculation (sometimes reading like a fan-boy’s wish-list) can usually be traced back to them.
• The Pessimists – Another sub-category of True Believers, they can usually be recognised by their “-Change X- sounds awesome, but Blizz will ruin it like everything else they do” posts.  Firm believers that every silver lining has a cloud.
• The Skeptics – They may admit that the rumours look interesting, but they don’t believe anything until it’s confirmed officially.  Possibly the most boring to read (Kidding! I’m kidding!), but they help keep the True Believers grounded.
• The Denialists – A sub-category of the Skeptics.  While they may say the rumours look interesting, they don’t believe Blizzard would ever make changes so sweeping to a game as established as WoW.  If the rumoured changes are confirmed, may still not believe them until they’re actually playing the expansion.
• The Logisticians – A sub-category of Denialists (which makes them a sub-sub-category of the Skeptics, I guess), they believe the reason Blizzard would never make the rumoured changes is due to technical issues.  (“Instance full”, anyone?)
• The Politely Hopeful – With no visible sign of hyperbole, they just say “It sounds good, and I can’t wait for official information at Blizzcon.”  (Probably your favourite category if you’re an over-worked forum moderator)

I’m sure any number of my more literary readers could add more categories (and probably more amusingly).

Personally, I’m somewhere between a True Believer (my inner fanboy is going “ZOMG! Dwarf Shamans and Mages!”) and Politely Hopeful (a new, old Azeroth sounds verrrry interesting).

One thing that I think gets missed by a lot of the people who’re saying Blizzard would never do “X” because of existing lore, is that it’s Blizzard’s sandbox and they can do anything they want with it.  If they disagree, I’d suggest taking a good look at the Draenei, pre- and post-TBC.  Ret-con much?

Do they want Space Goats arriving on Azeroth to bring Shamanism to the Alliance?  Done.  Elves joining the Horde, giving them Paladins?  Done.  Compared to that, are Troll Druids and Gnome Priests really all that outlandish?

Anyway, on a completely unrelated matter, as it’s the start of a new week it’s time to gloat over sum up my glyph sales for the week just finished.

For the seven days from 10rd August – 16th August:
Total glyphs sold: 2073
Average price per glyph: 8.84g
Average sales per day: 2616g
Total income from the AH: 18,312g

The irritating undercutter who was listing glyphs at a flat 3g/ea has been and gone, and been replaced by another merchant who sits in the AH and undercuts almost immediately upon my posting.  I have a contingency plan for this situation, but time will tell if it’s actually needed.

Needless to say, I’m kind of overwhelmed by the sheer volume of gold that’s passing through my hands currently (even after taking into account the expense of restocking).  The only down-side is the amount of time it takes to mill herbs and make inks – thank heavens for updates to Skillet and Panda.

I invested a few thousand in retraining Bingle in the noble arts of Transmutation-Specialised Alchemy last night – about 3.5k in mats and training to 450, and 1k for a Tome of Cold Weather Flight so she could get to Dalaran for the epic-gem transmute quest.  I don’t think I’ll be making the training costs back from transmutes any time soon, but on the positive side it gives me an additional transmute cooldown to play with (and completes the trio of specialists, with Elixir-specced Kringle and Potion-specced Fingle).

As I mentioned in my previous post, Pringle is now a happy little level 80 rogue (and is still nursing a hangover of world-shaking dimensions, but Dwarves are used to that – it’s the reason they’re stereotypically so dour).  I’m looking at gearing him up for PvP, and in the crafted gear he’s wearing so far, my experience is that rogues are ridiculously squishy.  Seriously. you’d think he was wearing cloth.  Or possibly was naked.  Rogue PvP is nothing like the fun of disc priest PvP, at least in his beginner-gear.

Also, in the mail today (the RL mail, not in-game) my Authenticators arrived.  Yes, I’m practicing an additional layer of account-protection (and it was pretty painless to setup).  I’ve taped it to the keyboard, as it’s not something you want to lose.

Well, my chores await (not least of which is milling my fingers to the bone), so it’s time to go fake productivity.

/wave

* – There are two types of people in the world.  Those who divide the people of the world into two types, and those who do not.

I Can Has More Dwarves?

I’m hoping the leaked information on MMO-Champion regarding the next expansion is accurate…  Goblins and Worgen are nifty and all, but I’m hanging on for the dwarf shamans and mages!  Yes!  More Dwarf classes!  (WTB more character slots – 10 might not be enough…)

And speaking of characters, meet my newest level 80.

Celebrating as Dwarves celebrate everything, with a mug in hand.

/wave

Raid v3.2, or The Trial Of Wake Me When It’s Over

I think it’s kind of telling that I opted to sit out from our first 25-man kill of Lord Jaraxxus, the boss in the Trial of the Crusader who was unlocked this week, in favour of leveling skinning on an alt (yay for guides).

I was underwhelmed by the first encounter (the Northrend Beasts), and the second encounter left me equally unenthused after completing the 10-man version this afternoon.  It might just be me, but it feels like I’m being served the raiding equivalent of baked beans on toast when you really wanted a three-course meal.

Perhaps it’s the single-room thing (and it’s the same room we do the 5-man in, so we’re seeing way too often), or the difficulty (I think the more advanced raiders are expected to still be expending most of our time and effort completing Ulduar hard modes until we get access to the Trial hard modes), or maybe I’m just tired of doing the same old thing (Shadow DPS isn’t exactly rocket science, which may be why I’m beginning to lose interest).

I spent a bit of time today on Kringle with a view to replacing his Herbalism with Skinning, the one gathering profession I don’t have on a character at the moment.  He’s currently sitting in Feralas with around 230 skinning – he picked up a new pet, the rare wolf Snarler, while he was working his way around the east of Camp Mojache, out of curiousity about wolves and their hunter-buff.  (It’s pretty nifty so far – I can see the appeal for non-BM hunters)

It looks like one of my glyph competitors (the one who posted everything for 3g) has dropped out of the race, and prices have taken a leap upwards as a result.  The downside is my remaining competitors live in the AH, and undercut me pretty quickly.  But what I’m losing in sales I’m making up for with a higher mark-up, so I’m not too worried at this stage.

I’ve yet to experience the new dailies due to one little oversight on my part: you only have access to them on a character who has the Crusader title, and the only of my characters I’ve bothered to finish that particular grind with is Dingle.  Mingle is onto her third valiant faction, and I’ve forgotten which one Fingle is up to…  The problem is, the grind just isn’t fun.

Seriously, after going through it once I have zero interest in repeating it (especially now the two irritating jousting quests for commanders and their friends have lost their common elements, which combines more jousting with the added irritation of spawn-hunting to try find the commanders you need to kill).  So there is however many new dailies that I don’t have access to because I don’t want to subject myself to 25 days more jousting per character, and to be honest, I don’t really care.  I’m spending more time doing incidental things (playing the AH mostly, with the occasional heroic) than dailies, and it’s getting harder to find things to occupy myself with.

Incidentally, one of the reasons I’ve been finding excuses to not take tank Dingle back into Ulduar 10-man has been referenced by Ghostcrawler quite recently:

We aren't trying to make the fights easy necessarily, but we are trying to challenge the tanks and the raid in ways other than just pounding the tank as hard as we can such that cooldowns (from the healers even) and big heals become the only things that matter. Those are fine for some fights, just as having a tank and spank once in awhile is fine. The problem with Ulduar is that too many of the fights came down to these huge hits such that other parts of tanking (and healing) became pushed to the side. For example, nobody is as worried about being a mana sponge these days because mana isn't generally limiting and tanks can generally be destroyed in two hits.

One of the things I’ve disliked most about Ulduar has been the reliance upon healers being able to keep the bosses from 2-shotting your tank, and that doing so requires almost perfectly-timed use of cooldowns (often both on the part of tank and healers).  Sure, a good tank is required in order to get anywhere in Ulduar (thinking of encounters like the corridor trash before Thorim, or the initial trash pickup with Auriaya, or tanking the first phase of Mimiron, as opposed to the easier bosses before XT) but there’s not much wiggle-room if things fall apart: when any boss kill can turn into a wipe because of a single mis-timed cooldown, it gets a bit less '”fun” (at least, from my perspective).

If they can make Icecrown a place where you’re not reliant on cooldowns to keep the raid alive, I think it’ll be an improvement over the Ulduar model.  Admittedly it’s a fine line to draw between “the ability to recover from mishaps” and “insert faceroll here,” especially for more competent guilds, but I’d like to think Blizz can tune things a bit better in future.

I’ve also just come across the news that we’re going to get to go back to a level-adjusted version of Onyxia with patch 3.2.2 (posted here).  I think this could be quite entertaining (and it’s very much in keeping with Blizz’s apparent love of single-room boss fights of late), and it’s a pretty nifty way to celebrate WoW’s 5th anniversary.  It’ll be interesting to see what the 310% mount looks like, and the fact it’ll be a permanent upgrade to the instance is a nice touch.

Also, WoW.com apparently has insider information that confirms the rumour of Worgen and Goblins being playable races with the expansion, which makes me a happy pandaran.  It’s a pity Goblins are horde-only; my dream of a goblin bank alt will have to remain unfulfilled for now.  (sigh)

Last of all, I’ve finally gotten around to purchasing an authenticator for my account.  It’s probably a couple of weeks away from delivery, but it should add an extra layer of security to my account when it’s all set up (which will add some piece of mind, as my online assets continue to grow).

Oh, and speaking of assets, I’ve received another fan letter, I’m guessing from a competitor in the AH who fails to appreciate just how much fun I’m having.

I love the way I’m berated for farming too much (something I don’t bother with) and for making too much gold.  (It’d also have a little more gravity if I could believe he was concerning about my well-being, and wasn’t just complaining because I’m cutting into his AH sales)

Well, it’s time to get back to being too rich and wasting my life.  (Seriously, I’m so amused right now)

/wave