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[Bisnic]

It's pretty sad that 1-60 is so fast. I barely need to do 4 zones

1-60 is very fast yes, but 4 zones is far from the truth, unless you include lots of dungeon runs in that.

 

[markot]

Wish 60-85 was just as quick >.<

 

[Alucrid]

Wish 60-85 was just as quick >.<

I don't mind 80-85, but 58-80 is such a boring grind.

 

[Alex]

1-80 in New Azeroth paced and designed as well as 1-60, 80-85 zones in it's own peninsula, woulda been the way to go!

That way they could eliminate flying mounts outside of simple, designated areas, bump ground to 200% (maybe 100% instantly then 10% extra every 2 seconds while mounted or something fun), introduce new travel options, etc too, but it may only be me that abhors flying mounts so. It'd be so neat if the world was tangible and whole again, especially if they had put in a new kind of content to get people scattered in it instead of hubs. Would bring back some of the renewable content and social bits the game is missing lately.

 

[strafer]

So which achievment are you most proud of?

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

1-80 in New Azeroth paced and designed as well as 1-60, 80-85 zones in it's own peninsula, woulda been the way to go!

That way they could eliminate flying mounts outside of simple, designated areas, bump ground to 200% (maybe 100% instantly then 10% extra every 2 seconds while mounted or something fun), introduce new travel options, etc too, but it may only be me that abhors flying mounts so. It'd be so neat if the world was tangible and whole again, especially if they had put in a new kind of content to get people scattered in it instead of hubs. Would bring back some of the renewable content and social bits the game is missing lately.

Ooh. Accelerating speed buff for ground mounts? Would be awesome. Might provide an interesting new dynamic in BG PvP as well.

 

[dimb]

Yes, as a matter of fact I got it yesterday.

Never saw it when I was raiding Karazhan for progression. I did it perhaps once a month since resubbing for Cataclysm, so it took less than eight kills. Totally random, of course, you could do it for a year straight and never see it. Good luck.

They upped the drop rate on it after Cataclysm. Congrats on the welfare horse.

 

[cartoon_soldier]

before cataclysm, there were so many people pining for the ability to "go back to azeroth" and now that they delivered on that, everyone is complaining that it's not new enough.

wtf did you expect if they were going to revamp the two continents?


this expansion might be a wash as far as that goes, but the raids have been really fun and cool, albeit a little skimpy when it came to the amount of firelands bosses. but this expansion is designed with heroic encounters.

I think what people wanted or longed for were the raiding of pre-BC. But I would say even that was just a vocal minority.

I think most people otherwise were happy with the WOTLK content (their best expansion to date IMO), with the big misstep being the Argent Tournament patch (IMO) and Naxx at launch. Ulduar and Citadel were nicely done and balanced.

 

[Alex]

They upped the drop rate on it after Cataclysm. Congrats on the welfare horse.

No they didn't, they did for the Headless Horseman one though.

Looks like they've opened up a thread to liaison with the PvP crowd. Maybe some good stuff will come of this, a a period of stagnantation and looming competition seems to have finally lit a fire under them

 

[dimb]

No they didn't, they did for the Headless Horseman one though.

They did up the Fiery Warhorse drop rate. It was either after Wrath or Cataclysm, I forget which specifically. It used to be around half of what it is now (which is a number that should rightly be divided again by ten because Blizzard should have taken the mount out of the dungeon once everyone and their grandmother could solo the content).

 

[Alex]

They did up the Fiery Warhorse drop rate. It was either after Wrath or Cataclysm, I forget which specifically. It used to be around half of what it is now (which is a number that should rightly be divided again by ten because Blizzard should have taken the mount out of the dungeon once everyone and their grandmother could solo the content).

Are you sure? The drop still shows 0.9% and there are no comments leading me to think otherwise.

The Horseman mount, which is a reskin of it though that sucker was pretty easy to get last year. At least for me.

 

[ch0mp]

Are you sure? The drop still shows 0.9% and there are no comments leading me to think otherwise.

The Horseman mount, which is a reskin of it though that sucker was pretty easy to get last year. At least for me.

I have a feeling the drop was around a quarter of a percent at one stage. At 1% it's still very unlikely that you will ever get it.

 

[Alex]

Subtlety is so amazingly fun (in PvP) I really feel like this spec feels the most "right" out of anything else I've played lately and that's quite a lot cycling through my account and a friends =/. I think a big problem I have is from them taking away or totally marginalizing every niche, it all kind of blurs together where everyone still manages to have some nagging design fault that makes it hard to ever really feel happy on. Subtlety feels completely of it's own though, and I really appreciate that. It's that perfect flow of high quality combat that makes this game so hard to ever give up.

Queued my honored up alt with a friends main Rogue in the BGs and it was hilarious just taking everyone apart one by one.

Good times.

 

[Alex]

Some data from the PvP thread:

In regards to Old AV:

I even ranted to Tom Chilton and Greg Street about this recently. For all the reasons it was wrong, I still loved losing all track of time while involved in an endless -- quite literally -- battle for AV. I loved doing constant suicide runs from SF graveyard on my gnome 'lock just to try and interrupt the Horde summons.

We haven't stopped talking about it. Part of the problem is Battlegrounds are incredibly scripted, to the point they're actually worked on quite a bit by our encounter design team. We need to keep working on new ways of developing Battlegrounds to improve their design.

But, to your point, it's doubtful AV 1.0 will be resurrected, and there's only so much tweaking we can do to try and improve the current one -- we'd be working on very old framework with AV. At this point, it'd probably be easier and produce better results if we started from scratch.

In regards to ressurecting World PvP:

All I can say for now is that we've driven people to SW/Org in this expansion too much and that's not cool. We want to fix that in the next go.

In Regards to Halaa-type areas:

Speaking personally, I think they have a good place in WoW and should come back. A place like Halaa doesn't take nearly as much design time as a place like Tol Barad or Wintergrasp, yet the payoff is relatively high. The Tol Barad style is a quite massive undertaking, and ultimately becomes a very contentious PvP content topic, especially when daily quests and raid bosses are at stake.

In regards to a RBG group formation tool:

We can bring this up with the developers. It'd probably have to fundamentally function a bit differently from the Dungeon Finder and proposed Raid Finder though, otherwise a cross-realm random RBG Finder wouldn't differ that much from randomly queuing for a normal Battleground, aside from the fact your team can persist after a battle concludes.

In regards to low-level PvP:

We talked to Ghostcrawler about this yesterday. He's well aware of this, but more importantly, he's not very happy about it either. The class design team's first priority is obviously balance around the end game, but absolute neglect of low-level balance isn't okay. This is something that isn't going to improve much in patch 4.3, but we hope to have more sound solutions coming.

In regards to Transmog and PvP/PvE:

That isn't true. Mogging will work with PvP gear. You can even swap the look of PvP gear to PvE and vice versa.

 

[Magnus]

so glad my priest has benedicition

The My-Little-Pony of staves. (I have one too, and am glad, for it is no longer obtainable....right?)

If I ever play again, I'll be using the graphic for Staff of Immaculate Recovery or the Apostle of Argus, for sure.

Unless they relent on legendary graphics use, in which case I'll be rockin' the visual for Val'anyr.

 

[Alex]

I usually rag on vanilla but man, talking with a friend... I kind of miss the questing back then. They didnt have all of the scripts and cutscenes and vehicles and unique gameplay bits, but you could actually be challenged. The Ogre Mound, Stromgarde, that tower in red ridge, lots of fun to get a little group and die your way to the top heh.

 

[ch0mp]

I usually rag on vanilla but man, talking with a friend... I kind of miss the questing back then. They didnt have all of the scripts and cutscenes and vehicles and unique gameplay bits, but you could actually be challenged. The Ogre Mound, Stromgarde, that tower in red ridge, lots of fun to get a little group and die your way to the top heh.

I always thought stuff like the warlock epic mount quest was pretty cool. You had to earn it. Now you just get it at the trainer.

 

[zugzug]

I don't mind 80-85, but 58-80 is such a boring grind.

I disagree. MMOs are meant to be long lasting with substance. Not a race to end of game. That defeats what a MMO is for.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

I disagree. MMOs are meant to be long lasting with substance. Not a race to end of game. That defeats what a MMO is for.

Except when they nerf levleing and throw away all previous raids right? People are sick of doing Outlands and Northrend, period.

WOW is long lasting because of RNG, weekly caps, and repetition time sinks. That's not substance, that's artificial/inflated content to keep you subbed month to month.

Like I said earlier I still play because the good outweighs the bad, but the MMO genre needs to innovate a lot of things.

I usually rag on vanilla but man, talking with a friend... I kind of miss the questing back then. They didnt have all of the scripts and cutscenes and vehicles and unique gameplay bits, but you could actually be challenged. The Ogre Mound, Stromgarde, that tower in red ridge, lots of fun to get a little group and die your way to the top heh.

I remember when I needed to CC on a mage in low level zones. Coming up with a solo start to kill a named non-elite with adds was fun.

 

[wonderdung]

I disagree. MMOs are meant to be long lasting with substance. Not a race to end of game. That defeats what a MMO is for.

I suppose it depends on why you play or which part you enjoy most.

I mean tons of MMOs have failed specifically because they had no worthwhile endgame.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

I suppose it depends on why you play or which part you enjoy most.

I mean tons of MMOs have failed specifically because they had no worthwhile endgame.

The leveling/early-mid game experience is important, definitely. If that's not good enough people won't play after a month or two. A meaningful/rewarding endgame is definitely key though - that's where you keep your base hooked. If you don't have that, you won't be able to maintain subs.

Leveling you'll always have the carrot of the next level, new ability, new skill points, whatever. Without being able to increase power that way at endgame, you need methods of acquiring gear or other forms of improvement that are new types of carrots...and you need to introduce new content periodically to effectively raise the "power cap" on level-capped characters.

 

[Angry Grimace]

http://www.wowhead.com/item=44703/dark-herring

Blizzard says you can't transmogrify this, regardless of whether it has stats or not.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

http://www.wowhead.com/item=44703/dark-herring

Blizzard says you can't transmogrify this, regardless of whether it has stats or not.

Now I have to wonder about the fishing rods...

D:

 

[Angry Grimace]

Now I have to wonder about the fishing rods...

D:

Fishing Rods have no type. Blizzard says that anything without either stats or type is not eligible AND anything they deem sufficiently silly will not be allowed.

 

[markot]

Fishing Rods have no type. Blizzard says that anything without either stats or type is not eligible AND anything they deem sufficiently silly will not be allowed.

So they are deleting some of the tier gear!?

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

So they are deleting some of the tier gear!?

HAAA.


So just a thought...Would Blizzard ever consider giving players something like one (maybe a few) free character transfer or customizations per year? Sure, both services are ridiculously profitable (seriously, it probably costs in the realm of pennies to do server transfers), but it would be a nice bit of goodwill since players are already paying their $15 per month. There is some precedent with the free SC2 name change (though that was for different reasons).

Or offer "free" transfers every "X" months for people subbed to premium services like the Mobile AH.

Maybe I'm a special case, but I know if I could transfer some of my characters for free, instead of racking up $100+ in fees, I probably never would have unsubscribed in the first place since I could have moved on to fresh faces rather than being stuck on a (somewhat) backwater server.

 

[Angry Grimace]

So they are deleting some of the tier gear!?

It's not that they won't have silly gear or will delete it, it's that they don't want you to be able to transmogrify it to wear it in raids.

I think they should let you transmogrify the holiday gear during the applicable holidays.

 

[wonderdung]

Guess I've got at least one toon ready for 4.3 after some minor farming tonight. Kinda boring but choices are limited with DK.

 

[devildog820]

So which achievment are you most proud of?

Veteran of the Molten Front. Love the "Flamebreaker" title.

Also, about the quick leveling, I think they made it so fast to move to 85 because that's where people want to end up. I would imagine WoW was losing subscribers based on the length of the Vanilla grind. People just wanted to get to Lich King content.

The quests seemed to be designed much better than old Vanilla (based on old comments on wowhead). When I leveled my main (starting in Feb of this year), I did lots of quests I didn't need to, just to experience the lore. I even did Desolace long after I was past it, just to follow a couple of storylines. But when I leveled my tank, I just blew past all that because I had already seen it. I did spend extra time in Silvermoon and some other places, though.

 

[th3dude]

Just hit the Outland. Very cool area.

Hit level 60 (now 61). Flying is pretty awesome. Didn't have enough to get my license yet, though, to fly around the kingdoms and other areas. Working on that.

So far, leveling from 58 to 61 hasn't been too bad at all. Tons of XP in the Outland. I fear it will slow down soon though.

Really looking forward to starting some closer-to-end game content so I can start caring about my gear and stats, rather than throwing it away every time I run a dungeon.

 

[theinfinityissue]

Just hit the Outland. Very cool area.

Hit level 60 (now 61). Flying is pretty awesome. Didn't have enough to get my license yet, though, to fly around the kingdoms and other areas. Working on that.

So far, leveling from 58 to 61 hasn't been too bad at all. Tons of XP in the Outland. I fear it will slow down soon though.

Really looking forward to starting some closer-to-end game content so I can start caring about my gear and stats, rather than throwing it away every time I run a dungeon.

Turn on the music when you get to Terrokkar forest. You will zen the fuck out.

 

[strafer]

Time Lost Proto Drake!!! Y U no show

 

[zlatko]

Saw I had 7 days and I was bored so I figured why not? Totally forgot wtf I did with my warrior for abilities during fights. After some fooling around I got back into the swing of things, but I didn't feel an incentive to keep going after a few dungeon runs. Frostmane the server I am on just feels empty, but even dungeon runs feel like everyone is just on auto pilot. WoW just doesn't feel MMOish to me anymore, and while it's a much more streamlined process from 1 to max... it's also a hollow one unless you play with friends on a regular basis.

I much preferred the old days in vanilla WoW of /shouting around looking for a group, the mystery of so much, and the actual feeling of being rewarded when an instanced wrapped up. It took longer, and could be more frustrating, but it never made me sleepy like today and the month I played after Cata launch.

Is it safe to say the actual WoW experience to be had isn't there until you are max level and doing raids?

 

[Bisnic]

Saw I had 7 days and I was bored so I figured why not? Totally forgot wtf I did with my warrior for abilities during fights. After some fooling around I got back into the swing of things, but I didn't feel an incentive to keep going after a few dungeon runs. Frostmane the server I am on just feels empty, but even dungeon runs feel like everyone is just on auto pilot. WoW just doesn't feel MMOish to me anymore, and while it's a much more streamlined process from 1 to max... it's also a hollow one unless you play with friends on a regular basis.

I much preferred the old days in vanilla WoW of /shouting around looking for a group, the mystery of so much, and the actual feeling of being rewarded when an instanced wrapped up. It took longer, and could be more frustrating, but it never made me sleepy like today and the month I played after Cata launch.

Is it safe to say the actual WoW experience to be had isn't there until you are max level and doing raids?

Low lvl dungeons are easy, boring and boss fights lack the originality the high lvls have, so yeah. If you want runs that are fun and somewhat challenging, you pretty much have to wait for lvl 85. Lvl 80-85 dungeons could be challenging if you have some newbies who never did them, but other than that...

 

[crpav]

Time Lost Proto Drake!!! Y U no show

Aeonaxx!!!! WHY YOU NO SHOW?

 

[BeEatNU]

Time Lost Proto Drake!!! Y U no show

I grew tired of him, after farming for so long. He pissed me off

 

[Alex]

Saw I had 7 days and I was bored so I figured why not? Totally forgot wtf I did with my warrior for abilities during fights. After some fooling around I got back into the swing of things, but I didn't feel an incentive to keep going after a few dungeon runs. Frostmane the server I am on just feels empty, but even dungeon runs feel like everyone is just on auto pilot. WoW just doesn't feel MMOish to me anymore, and while it's a much more streamlined process from 1 to max... it's also a hollow one unless you play with friends on a regular basis.

I much preferred the old days in vanilla WoW of /shouting around looking for a group, the mystery of so much, and the actual feeling of being rewarded when an instanced wrapped up. It took longer, and could be more frustrating, but it never made me sleepy like today and the month I played after Cata launch.

Is it safe to say the actual WoW experience to be had isn't there until you are max level and doing raids?

Yeah, if you want tension and any challenge, it's sadly all at cap, it's like going down a water slide with a brick wall at the end. The leveling game was sort of turned into this pseudo adventure game with vehicles and gimmicks and heavier storytelling devices/humor.

I made a post about this last night, but even while I rag on vanilla a lot, and it does deserve it, in the end I prefer the kind of experiences youd have with the old elite and group quests that made up fair bits of a zone and as DeathNote said I believe back then even packs of normals took good strategy at times. They took all of the elites out of New Azeroth and even the few that showed up in BC/LK can be solo'd easily by anything.

But that's a lot to do with class design too and how overpowered we've all become, and to be fair the game is old and has been spread out to high hell so you can't exactly expect people to be able to pull up groups on a whim like in 2005.

They changed their design rhetoric a few too many times over the years, while it did good for cap it always left old content in shambles.

Clearly, that's why they need level matching and heroic leveling! If they did that in conjunction with the new continent and attempts to bring back world pvp they talked about already, it'd sure make the next expansion memorable.

 

[ShadyMilkman]

Just hit the Outland. Very cool area.

Hit level 60 (now 61). Flying is pretty awesome. Didn't have enough to get my license yet, though, to fly around the kingdoms and other areas. Working on that.

So far, leveling from 58 to 61 hasn't been too bad at all. Tons of XP in the Outland. I fear it will slow down soon though.

Really looking forward to starting some closer-to-end game content so I can start caring about my gear and stats, rather than throwing it away every time I run a dungeon.

Don't listen to anyone who says Nagrand is awesome (it isn't).

 

[ShadyMilkman]

I disagree. MMOs are meant to be long lasting with substance. Not a race to end of game. That defeats what a MMO is for.

I agree, but it doesn't work with WoW, as there is virtually 0 player presence outside of Org/SW from 1-84.

It rocked in EverQuest where people actually existed sub max level, but alas.

 

[idlewild_]

Don't listen to anyone who says Nagrand is awesome (it isn't).

nagrand is awesome in that it's faster leveling than the other zones which allows you to leave outland earlier.

 

[Acidote]

I totally have to farm a fist of the deity for the transmogrifier.

 

[SuperSonic1305]

I was thinking of playing again for a few months until TOR comes out. Will probably just start another new character and try Horde this time. Anyone else who just started a new character that I can play with?

 

[Rokam]

I totally have to farm a fist of the deity for the transmogrifier.

Dual wield the fists off of the last boss in Shattered Halls for maximum badassity. I wanted to dual wield the frying pan + rolling pin and wear a chefs hat but they killed my dream.

 

[zugzug]

I agree, but it doesn't work with WoW, as there is virtually 0 player presence outside of Org/SW from 1-84.

It rocked in EverQuest where people actually existed sub max level, but alas.

Blizzard and how they handle WoW now is exactly like the people in the general thread complaining about Bioware and bad WRPGs being made by Bioware.

Both companies have betrayed the good quality they use to have for the cheap buck. Their inability to cater to multiple dynamic player ideals with different ruleset servers is key.

The player who got angry at having to do grouped quests/elite quests and having to find others to help do them at the correct level is the same person who thinks all quests and quest writing is bad. They are also the wrong people to be playing a MMO.

 

[Pollux]

like the other posters have said agility, agility, agility.

you missing out on some good damage boosting talents too. like Focus Fire, and One With Nature

here is a better talent build for BM. http://www.wowhead.com/talent#cfhfckhdRRofMZc

you can check these links out to help get more dps. the wow forums have some good guides but no BM guide is available yet. although they should have some good info like EP values, rotations and macros.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/1012664/
http://www.wowpopular.com/

Thanks....I'll give this stuff a try and let y'all how it goes.

EDIT: Is this a good guide for a BM hunter for PVP?

 

[f0rk]

Blizzard and how they handle WoW now is exactly like the people in the general thread complaining about Bioware and bad WRPGs being made by Bioware.

Now think what happens when a Bioware team makes a WoW clone!

Help us Guild Wars 2, you're our only hope.

 

[ShadyMilkman]

Blizzard and how they handle WoW now is exactly like the people in the general thread complaining about Bioware and bad WRPGs being made by Bioware.

Both companies have betrayed the good quality they use to have for the cheap buck. Their inability to cater to multiple dynamic player ideals with different ruleset servers is key.

The player who got angry at having to do grouped quests/elite quests and having to find others to help do them at the correct level is the same person who thinks all quests and quest writing is bad. They are also the wrong people to be playing a MMO.

I agree with you 100%.

Going off your comment about how Blizzard's quality is faltering -

It's the general "dumbing" down of everything. Everything needs to be instantaneous, with as absolutely little effort required.

This leads to the frame of mind that seems to be quite persistent amongst many - how since they pay the same $15 as we all do, they're entitled to see, do, and have everything and anything, without doing the necessary work. Just reading the main forums raises my blood pressure.

For example, the numerous threads complaining about how T11 Shoulders/Helm weren't made available for JP. Well, shit, they nerfed all of T11 - get off your ass and get them.

A rant, but whatevs

 

[zugzug]

Now think what happens when a Bioware team makes a WoW clone!

Help us Guild Wars 2, you're our only hope.

Eh depends on what timeframe of existence you want for the WoW clone. If you find 3 months, 6 months, 1 year for your $60 or $150 purchase thats fine if you know going in.

However WoW was changed to be a shallow uncaring little bitch that it is today unlike what it was when it first came out.

So if i get 6 months of fun out of SWTOR I'm good.

 

[Alex]

The genre badly needed some trimming of the fat and removal of timesinks, Everquest fucking destroyed MMOs for years, Blizzard just went too far in some areas. For me, it's flying mounts and drop down menus. For example, I'm cool with the addition of the dungeon finder, etc, I think you should just have to waddle your butt to the specific meeting stone to use it.

I think the actual design is way better in spots though, class design and dungeon and encounter design reams the original fare and even most of the stuff through BC, but I fully agree with how far they bent over in certain areas to overly casualize it. This is partly out of misplaced intentions and partly because they try to peddle hardcore content too much to the unwilling instead of just putting in more content types. BC was 2007 and we've not see a meaningful new game mode since.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Blizzard and how they handle WoW now is exactly like the people in the general thread complaining about Bioware and bad WRPGs being made by Bioware.

Both companies have betrayed the good quality they use to have for the cheap buck. Their inability to cater to multiple dynamic player ideals with different ruleset servers is key.

The player who got angry at having to do grouped quests/elite quests and having to find others to help do them at the correct level is the same person who thinks all quests and quest writing is bad. They are also the wrong people to be playing a MMO.

Bioware has bad WRPGs other than Dragon Age II?