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[C.Dark.DN]

If it's 1-20 there will be a lot of familiarity. All the changes that effect 1-20 will be logical and straight forward. Stormwind and Org will be a shock.

A negative thing that will stick out like a sore thumb is that you're gonna get ganked in battlegrounds. Heirloom (bind on account gear that scales from level 1-80) gear (weapons, helm, chest, shouldes, cloak, trinkets) enable them to one shot you despite the highest level player being only 4 level higher.

 

[ch0mp]

Ugh this game has been really boring lately.

I have no desire to start heroics and wipe all night, so clearing everything on regular 2-3 nights out of the week, and then standing around with absolutely nothing to do after really sucks.

Last week my guild got our first nef killl, (10m normal) so we decided to move onto heroics. Halfus took 6 attempts, really wasn't as hard as we expected. Just do your homework

 

[Hixx]

Who the hell designs the armor for World of Warcraft?

All the higher level gear I'm finding for my rogue makes him look like a bulky eyesore with shoulder pads ten times as big as his head with flames coming out of them.

When I think stealth classes, I was expecting something a lil more light and less "hit me, I'm right here and can barely move in this damn thing".

Since vanilla its been less about what fits the class, more what looks big and spangly.

 

[Alex]

Halfus is a bit of an anomaly, he's extremely easy compared to most of the others, not a good yardstick for Heroic Raiding difficulty.

Just don't do Chimeraon next, I don't really see why anyone says Chimeraon is the second easiest, he's ridiculously unforgiving and RNG heavy. Magmaw, Atramedes, Maloriak heck even Valiona are all better choices, IMO.

 

[TheYanger]

Chimaeron has 0 rng and is incredibly easy on everyone but your healers...it's barely any different than normal mode. I think the generally accepted easy->Hard rankings at this point would be:
Halfus
Chimaeron
Atramedes
Magmaw
Maloriak
Omnotron
V&T
Nefarian
Conclave
Cho'gall
Sinestra
Al'akir
Council

The last 4 are a bit nebulous, Cho/Sin/Alakir are probably very similar these days, and nerfs to health and damage on all 3 fights along with higher dps from 4.1 has made them all much easier. Council is the same as it always was, bumping it up relatively. I wouldn't be surprised for decent guilds to get almost any fight their first night working on it at this point as long as they're prepared ahead of time (nor would I say taking longer is 'bad'..don't take it that way).

As far as "I'm bored, nothing to do, BUT I DONT WANT TO DO HARD MODES" that's fucking ridiculous frankly. If you don't want to do it that's fine, but to then say you're annoyed that you only play 2 days a week because there's nothing to do is a bit silly. Of course you wipe doing hard things, if you didn't wipe it would only take 4 hours to do everything in a given week.

 

[Alex]

Eh, there is def some somewhat annoying RNG. Feuds are at complete random still even after the "fix" among other things. It's unforgiving in that if any healer so much goes to scratch their nose someone dies.

I don't think there's any truly accepted norm because I still see hate threads for heroic chimeron on a daily basis :lol

Now, Atramedes, that one is barely different from normal. It's just a bit more damage/sound and that add is such a non-event.

I don't blame anyone for not wanting to do heroics. Personally, I like 'em, but they are tuned to the metal this tier in parts and not everyone is going to get excited over mechanics that wipe the raid over a missed GCD.

Heroic raiding being fun probably really depends on your guild and their scheduling and mix of friendliness/competence. If I was in the standard kind of raiding guild I see, there's no chance in hell I'd still be playing currently. Rough schedules and filled with douchebags (the guild one spot above us on our server raids 2x as much as we do and has some real nutjobs, for example).

I feel lucky to have a guild that has a pretty mature atmosphere and can facilitate decent progress on a ~8 hr a week schedule (which is kind of pressing it still for me nowadays).

 

[cuevas. PhD.]

Cho'gall
Sinestra
Al'akir
Council

Yeah, when you hit these you will know what hard modes really are. errr, well now with everything that's changed they are a bit easier now.

 

[wonderdung]

Now, Atramedes, that one is barely different from normal. It's just a bit more damage/sound and that add is such a non-event.

Our now-defunct second raiding group got server first H Atramedes so our group had been avoiding it in favor of progression kills that would count on wowprogress for a long time. Last week we finally decided to do it and killed it in 3 pulls.

Nerfbat does help some, but we were all pretty surprised at how easy it was.

We're still months behind but progressing pretty quickly now. After being stalled for a month on Maloriak we got V&T, Conclave, and Omnitron all pretty quickly. We're probably 1-2 raids from killing Nef as well.

 

[Alex]

Yeah, that's about where we are, though as a 10 person guild we're still struggling a bit with attendance issues. One of our primary tanks has to travel a lot for work lately and our very, very good DPS Warrior has to fill in for that spot.

Meanwhile we recruited this Shaman since he's an old friend of the guild (apparently) and while he's a really cool dude and he always comes prepared and does a lot of the side bits for us like making feasts and cauldrons he's.... pretty low on the ol' DPS pole. Like really low, actually. I realize Elemental isn't a real wrecking ball at the moment but the gaps we're talking about are huge. As in a difference of 8k+ on both Heroic Magmaw and Heroic Valiona last raid versus our Fury Warrior and Frost DK who about tie usually.

 

[PillowKnight]

Yeah, that's about where we are, though as a 10 person guild we're still struggling a bit with attendance issues. One of our primary tanks has to travel a lot for work lately and our very, very good DPS Warrior has to fill in for that spot.

Meanwhile we recruited this Shaman since he's an old friend of the guild (apparently) and while he's a really cool dude and he always comes prepared and does a lot of the side bits for us like making feasts and cauldrons he's.... pretty low on the ol' DPS pole. Like really low, actually. I realize Elemental isn't a real wrecking ball at the moment but the gaps we're talking about are huge. As in a difference of 8k+ on both Heroic Magmaw and Heroic Valiona last raid versus our Fury Warrior and Frost DK who about tie usually.

Ele shaman is ridiculously easy to play. How much is he doing exactly? Off-specing with my resto gear I do about 14k avg.

If he's that cool of a person you could prob. send him to any decent ele shaman and so long as he can actually use hot keys right his dps will go up.

We had a similar situation with a mage of ours, and it wasn't until we talking to him and pushed him to better his DPS that we saw him begin to improve. It actually worked out pretty well and now he's doing pretty average dps(say about 16k+).

 

[markot]

Anyone else hope blizz reverses the 'premium' crap they are trying to pull?

I wouldnt even use it, but its really annoyed me >_> im pretty much done with blizz in general if they stick to it...

That and 6 months of nothing, and the talk of quicker expansions.... Never felt more like a wallet to a company. I know that we all technically are, but it just seems like they are going into 'milk it' mode for wow....

 

[Mairu]

Anyone else hope blizz reverses the 'premium' crap they are trying to pull?

I wouldnt even use it, but its really annoyed me >_> im pretty much done with blizz in general if they stick to it...

That and 6 months of nothing, and the talk of quicker expansions.... Never felt more like a wallet to a company. I know that we all technically are, but it just seems like they are going into 'milk it' mode for wow....

Remote chat from my phone was pretty cool but there's no way I'd spend a monthly fee on that. They shouldn't be charging for basically instant messaging, they should be opening up more ways to access BNET chat outside of the game with no cost :|

I have no plans on paying to pay with friends on other servers either, seems crazy.

 

[markot]

Just because they are making mental profits with wow, doesnt mean they cant make... mentaller profits.

Feel like plinkett in one of his star wars reviews 'get your hands out of my ass wallet'.

Maybe they realise that they cant get the subs any higher, its plateued and on the way down slowly, so they decided to milk, milk like there is no tommorrow before the precious golden goose finds a better home to roost in.

Kotick probably regrets not milking Guitar Hero a bit harder when it was most popular.

 

[GLopez12]

Anyone else hope blizz reverses the 'premium' crap they are trying to pull?

I wouldnt even use it, but its really annoyed me >_> im pretty much done with blizz in general if they stick to it...

That and 6 months of nothing, and the talk of quicker expansions.... Never felt more like a wallet to a company. I know that we all technically are, but it just seems like they are going into 'milk it' mode for wow....

Yup. I'm getting legitimately pissed.

 

[Swag]

Chimaeron has 0 rng and is incredibly easy on everyone but your healers...it's barely any different than normal mode. I think the generally accepted easy->Hard rankings at this point would be:
Halfus
Chimaeron
Atramedes
Magmaw
Maloriak
Omnotron
V&T
Nefarian
Conclave
Cho'gall
Sinestra
Al'akir
Council

I'd put V&T a bit lower on difficulty, that fight is ridiculously easy as long as you have 4 competent DPS and 2 competent healers ( assuming 25 man ). Even if things are going somewhat sketchy up top, 6 people performing appropriately below trivializes it.

Doing H Nefarian now, and apparently interrupts are difficult. Every wipe of ours has been to Blast Nova, 5+ interrupts on every platform /sigh.

 

[bjb]

As far as "I'm bored, nothing to do, BUT I DONT WANT TO DO HARD MODES" that's fucking ridiculous frankly. If you don't want to do it that's fine, but to then say you're annoyed that you only play 2 days a week because there's nothing to do is a bit silly. Of course you wipe doing hard things, if you didn't wipe it would only take 4 hours to do everything in a given week.

I'm annoyed by lack of content, not really hard modes. Perhaps that came off the wrong way.

It's been -six months-, and the only new stuff we consumers get are recycled dungeons with recycled gear. Additional charges for a new service. And (eventually) new daily quests and a new raid instance? It's really pathetic. Especially considering the Cata Raid's all have recycled mobs with the same exact animations / attacks as stuff in Vanilla.

Regarding hard modes though. I was in a US top 20 guild during BC and Wrath. When I look back, I wasted so much of my time / life spending hours learning and wiping on encounters that, in a few months, became so trivial that pugs were doing them. To me, it's just not worth it anymore. I don't see the gratification like I once did, but perhaps that feeling stems for my distaste with the direction of this game (and franchise).

 

[Swag]

Regarding hard modes though. I was in a US top 20 guild during BC and Wrath. When I look back, I wasted so much of my time / life spending hours learning and wiping on encounters that, in a few months, became so trivial that pugs were doing them. To me, it's just not worth it anymore. I don't see the gratification like I once did, but perhaps that feeling stems for my distaste with the direction of this game (and franchise).

All about those achievement dates baby!

 

[Thoraxes]

My guild is the same way right now. We're just breezing through the hardmodes now. We never really bothered to try too many of them before but man, it's not so bad.

Also, the new Keyring change saddens me. I'm going to be out many many bag spaces now. I really could use another bag or bank slot.

 

[CassSept]

Wow just popped here to see how people are doing and barely 70 posts over the last week? Is WoW really that dead?

 

[Miletius]

My guild is the same way right now. We're just breezing through the hardmodes now. We never really bothered to try too many of them before but man, it's not so bad.

Also, the new Keyring change saddens me. I'm going to be out many many bag spaces now. I really could use another bag or bank slot.

I take the keyring announcement to mean that they are removing keys. At least, I hope.

 

[DarkKyo]

Wow just popped here to see how people are doing and barely 70 posts over the last week? Is WoW really that dead?

WoW is so dead that I've quit and moved onto FF11 while waiting for The Old Republic.

 

[Swag]

WoW is so dead that I've quit and moved onto FF11 while waiting for The Old Republic.

Desperate times call for desperate measures

 

[DarkKyo]

Desperate times call for desperate measures

Hahaha, pretty much. That and the fact that when FF11 was super hard back in the old days I could only make it to level 61.

 

[Swag]

Hahaha, pretty much. That and the fact that when FF11 was super hard back in the old days I could only make it to level 61.

I had 8 75s, I don't know if that's a good or bad thing though given the context.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

Removal of keyring = removal of more flavour.

Getting rid of more eclectic elements slowly makes the game more boring to me. It's not a HUGE deal, but things like this slowly destroy the personality of the game.

 

[DarkKyo]

I had 8 75s, I don't know if that's a good or bad thing though given the context.

Oh my god.. Well either I was clearly a super-noob or you clearly had absolutely no life.

 

[Alex]

I agree with some of the interface stuff removing of flavor, but not the keyring, the keyring has been completely useless for years. People don't even bother to put it in custom interfaces for a reason.

It's a total non-event, just sounds like more time wasted on UI instead of more important things. The very last thing that this game needs improvement on is it's UI.

 

[Alex]

Some fan made a tier of Uldum-themed armor for fun:

Looks really good for fan stuff, that Leather set is great, that looks wildly better than any Rogue set since BC for my tastes.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

It's not so much the removal of the keyring UI element, but the removal of more keys themselves.

I'm still bitter over the removal of my Keymaster achievement though. They really should have converted it into a feat of strength (though the title "the Keymaster" would have been pretty badass to have as well. I would wear that all the time.)

I liked collecting keys as a another more chill activity to do like grinding reps. Getting the BRD key was a notable highlight still being the only quest in the game I know of where you have to be a ghost to progress.

 

[Alex]

Keys, interesting reps, attunements, I agree with you on that stuff, I just don't see the point at getting mad at something that's basically already gone.

I was on their case to reduce MMO time sinks for years, but in some areas they went way too far. Like basically killing the greater world and all a lot of the little layers of personality.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

And that Uldum mockup set looks pretty cool. Reminds me of the Jaffa helmets from Stargate:

EDIT: And I'm not upset or mad so much, but disappointed.

 

[Dresden]

So I started playing again and I'm leveling my priest right now - he's 65, Disc for dungeons (which are all laughably easy now thanks to ridiculous hp and healing output), and while the queues are nearly instant and the runs are all swift and fast, I don't think I've ever had anything approaching a conversation in any of those runs. No communication whatsoever; we get in, we tank and spank, and we all leave with maybe a 'ty ty' tossed in at the end.

I know it's been like this for months now, and it gets better (somewhat) at 85 when some degree of communication is required, but man. I had more of a sense of community playing Diablo 2. As troublesome as the LFG shit was when it was restricted to one's server only, I actually felt like I was playing a MMO. I do feel like an old man yelling at the clouds when I say this, though.

And pvp in general is a total clusterfuck now. I thought 100k hp pools were supposed to be reduce burst, lol. It's fun globaling people, but otherwise... sigh. And whoever thought Spirit Link totem was a good idea should be shot.

 

[Thoraxes]

I take the keyring announcement to mean that they are removing keys. At least, I hope.

Not removing all the keys. They're removing a bunch of them, but not all of them. The leftovers will be added to your bags as inventory items.

Idk if i'm OK with this change yet, considering we have yet to hear anything about them upgrading bag space. I have a feeling upgrading your backpack will be another goldsink if anything.

 

[Swag]

Oh my god.. Well either I was clearly a super-noob or you clearly had absolutely no life.

Well i had built them up over time, so it wasn't like I banged them all out in a year or something, just have to be efficient and always have a BRD, I played with 4 other friends so we never really had issues with that.

 

[French]

Just installed Catalysm on my new PC.

9GB patch ... :'(

 

[TheYanger]

Annoyed by the keyring change because I LIKED having every key possible and now my old main who I have all this stuff on is actually going to have overflowing bags, even from just the 8 or so keys they're leaving in. So until we see this 'extra bag space' being useful, he's unplayable.

 

[SiegfriedFM]

Oh my. Did my second set of dungeons as a healing shaman and got a tank in fury gear and spec. We didn't make it across the SM Cathedral courtyard before people started dropping. I requeued and got into Uldaman, with the same tank :/

So we made it through the first few bosses, then he ran ahead and got himself killed. As we killed the rest of the pull and waited, he entered, and then ran randomly around the first rooms, trying to find his way back to us. Eventually he left the group (thanks god!). We then got a competent druid tank who saw us through the rest.

In a situation like this, should I still keep healing the tank and forget the dps, or heal those that actually need it (like rogues and hunter pets offtanking)?

 

[Mister Zimbu]

I hooked up my Driving Force GT wheel to my PC to dick around with iRacing earlier this weekend.

I have the sudden urge to play around with my controls and try to raid using a steering wheel tonight.

 

[Bisnic]

Oh my. Did my second set of dungeons as a healing shaman and got a tank in fury gear and spec. We didn't make it across the SM Cathedral courtyard before people started dropping. I requeued and got into Uldaman, with the same tank :/

So we made it through the first few bosses, then he ran ahead and got himself killed. As we killed the rest of the pull and waited, he entered, and then ran randomly around the first rooms, trying to find his way back to us. Eventually he left the group (thanks god!). We then got a competent druid tank who saw us through the rest.

In a situation like this, should I still keep healing the tank and forget the dps, or heal those that actually need it (like rogues and hunter pets offtanking)?

I dunno, when i was lvling my holy paladin in low lvl instances, i got a couple of arms warriors and ret paladins as tanks(sigh), but even then i had no trouble keeping people alive, low lvl instances are easy enough. Most of them were using heirlooms though, so even without tanking stances, armors or buff, they were doing tons of threat.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

Annoyed by the keyring change because I LIKED having every key possible and now my old main who I have all this stuff on is actually going to have overflowing bags, even from just the 8 or so keys they're leaving in. So until we see this 'extra bag space' being useful, he's unplayable.

Saying a character is unplayable because of bag space is almost absurd.

For it to be unplayable:
-You would have to have 10 characters on your server in a guild making you unable to make a bank character that has it's own person guild bank and tabs. 4 tabs are cheap (1,850 gold) and that's a total of 392 slots. 678 slots on the bank character when you add in 22 slot character bags:

-The character would have to have eleven 22 slot bags (65 gold each if you farm the cloth ) full of soul bound gear on said character. A characters maximum 22 slot potential is 286 total slots I believe.

 

[Manus]

Oh wow, huge raid nerfs coming in 4.2. Going to make the raids even easier than what they already are.

 

[Bisnic]

Oh wow, huge raid nerfs coming in 4.2. Going to make the raids even easier than what they already are.

Be honest though, hardcore raiders won't give a shit about 4.0 raids once 4.2 is out. Nerfs or not. If these nerfs are only there to make life easier for casual players, than so be it, hardcore raiders wont care anymore about those raids they've been doing for 6-7 months.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

Ewwwww. Plate tanks won't get dodge from agility anymore in 4.2. That removes some strategy in gearing/enchanting.

And those are some massive raid nerfs. Like 20% less damage from everything across the board. I'm okay with them nerfing it, but I think something a little lower like 10% would have been more appropriate.

 

[cuevas. PhD.]

Be honest though, hardcore raiders won't give a shit about 4.0 raids once 4.2 is out. Nerfs or not. If these nerfs are only there to make life easier for casual players, than so be it, hardcore raiders wont care anymore about those raids they've been doing for 6-7 months.

I think those are normal mode only nerfs so they are even less relevant.

 

[wonderdung]

I think those are normal mode only nerfs so they are even less relevant.

I might have missed it, but I didn't see anything specifically indicating normal mode. I'm guessing this is a bit like the massive nerf at the end of TBC that suddenly gave 6 shitty guilds on every server a Kil'jaeden kill. Possibly because the legendary requires 12/12 to start the quest?

The content is already pretty accessible, though, especially if they only nerf normal modes. I'm not sure why they're doing this now.

In other news good to see they're rethinking some of the mage nerfs. Obviously they want spellsteal to be less viable overall, so I suspect they won't put anything useful for spell stealing into Firelands.

Crit -> Haste on the legendary makes me sad, especially since I hear it's BiS for disc priests now.

 

[Alex]

It doesn't really effect me, the T11 nerf that is, but it is a bit sad to watch all but the active tier of raid content have absolutely every ounce of challenge sucked out of it.

Also, I have to say this (among other nerfs) is absolutely hilarious after this "hardcore cred" strut they tried to pull early on with blog entries like "dungeons are hard!"

They made these long winded articles on how people should suck it up and how they need to deal with it then start clinging to their legs when it turns out they may actually be headed out the door :lol (although I do not think lack of accessible raid content is why anyone quit)

 

[Touch]

I just got an email from "WoWAccountAdmin" stating that one or more of my characters have been reported for using cheat programs. Seeing that I'm pretty sure I never even played WoW past the trial on the account I received this email, I'm going to mark this up as an account phishing attempt.

It's interesting because I haven't logged on to battle.net with that account in forever. Anyway, just thought I would give everyone the heads up.

 

[Mairu]

I just got an email from "WoWAccountAdmin" stating that one or more of my characters have been reported for using cheat programs. Seeing that I'm pretty sure I never even played WoW past the trial on the account I received this email, I'm going to mark this up as an account phishing attempt.

It's interesting because I haven't logged on to battle.net with that account in forever. Anyway, just thought I would give everyone the heads up.

battle.net phishing is probably the most common form of phishing

 

[Touch]

battle.net phishing is probably the most common form of phishing

I would agree. Although this is the first time I have ever had it attempted on me. I'm just curious why on such an old unused account?

 

[Freyjadour]

If you've completed Blackwing Descent/Bastion of Twilight then you should focus on Firelands (you're ready to step up), but if you haven't yet seen most or any of BWD/BoT we want to make sure you're able to as soon as 4.2 comes out - not spend weeks running dungeons and grabbing the new gear before you can start progressing.

The content has been out quite a while, there's no reason to make people wait and spend even more time running dungeons to grab the new gear before they can start on raid content they haven't seen yet.

While it isn't necessarily "new", I like the idea of new heroics to play catch-up on a lot more than making previous raid tiers extremely accessible. I guess ZA/ZG kinda fits that mold, but the impression I'm getting is that you'd want at least full 359 before venturing into Normal Firelands unless they are stepping back on Normal difficulty (I really don't know, I keep up with bits and pieces of the game but I rarely spend more than 5 minutes browsing MMOC, etc. a day).

Then again, the whole idea of playing catch up is pretty destructive to many guilds' rosters. I'm as much to blame here as anyone else, but god damn is it frustrating to run a raiding unit when jumping on and off is so easy. Replacing is easier, I suppose, but I still see a lot more attendance and roster issues than I used to by and far.

More and more it feels like the goal is wiping the slate clean with each major content patch. It's sort of hard to justify the time commitment with that in mind. Another bullet point on a long list, for sure, but nevertheless.