Why I Didn't Like Wrath of the Lich King

This post may be somewhat controversial, but I could care less.

I've always personally felt that Wrath was a hit-and-miss at the same time with many players. Some disliked it for its ease while some loved the fact that they could get to tread the same ground as the endgame players before them for once.

At first, I expected Wrath of the Lich King to bring more of what I'd seen in Burning Crusade. I was aware of the new 10/25-man raid size options for every raid dungeon and was interested in seeing how that worked out. After all, I was still going the 25-man route, which a lot of guilds did in the long run. The main problem with that was, the more hardcore players began expecting their raiders to outfit themselves with items from the 10-man versions in order to make progression easier.

When I first stepped foot on Northrend with my main character I quickly started work on the quest to 80. I kick myself in the ass sometimes over rushing my way to 80, because the three days I spent leveling only accelerated my oncoming disappointment: the endgame.

The heroics, while somewhat troublesome, weren't quite as dangerous as the heroic dungeons we'd seen in Burning Crusade. The new buffs and changes to the classes didn't help much either. AoE (area-of-effect) spells were greatly enhanced this time around, so much that they wound up in some form in everyone's DPS (damage-per-second) rotation. The splash damage was insane. It would only get worse as time went on. While there were the heroics that most players loved to avoid, the majority of them were laughably simple. That was disappointment number 1.

Naxxramas was re-introduced as an entry raid this time around largely due to not enough players being able to experience it when it was relevant during the final months of Vanilla (original WoW). Now tuned for level 80 characters in mind, I expected the immense difficulty to be significantly downgraded for entry-level raiders. I think it was a bit too much.

The fact that we blew through the Spider Wing (Arachnid Quarter) and Plague Wing (Plague Quarter) in one night was somewhat... unsatisfying. We touched on the Abomination Wing (Construct Quarter) before calling it a night. Eventually Sapphiron came up and he too, went down with the rest. By the time I and my 9 max-level guildmates had cleared out Naxxramas I was already nearly decked out in iLevel 200 epic gear. This is not how I started out when I began my journey at Karazhan. Disappointment number 2.

The Obsidan Sanctum and Eye of Eternity were up next. The 10-man modes quickly went down with the wind and by that time most of the guild was touching on 80. We could start 25-man raiding once more. Great. Back to Naxxramas, this time for iLevel 213 gear- still not too much problems, guild was a bit rusty having not raided since patch 3.0's release and the fact that our main Paladin off-tank made the switch to a Death Knight, which really weren't all that great at tanking at the time. Obsidian Sanctum was cleared out then Eye of Eternity. The fact that all that content was cleared out by us in the span of a month was completely devastating. I'd been through every heroic dungeon and every raid at that point. All that was left to do was sit back and await the next content patch.

It was January 2009. I decided to quit playing for the time being and focus on school for a bit. Ulduar opened the following April to critical acclaim. While I couldn't really return to the game due to time (late afternoon classes) I followed my guild as they got in the first few kills (I'd fill them in on our guild board) until I was able to return by late May. By then, the guild had had a falling out and raiding was at a standstill. A few members defected to a new guild and dragged me along. It didn't last very long either. I'd been in this situation before. I was stuck doing Ulduar on 10-man for the time being. So far it was a great raid. I was very curious about the hard modes that some of the bosses possessed and wondered if I'd ever be able to do them with a decent guild. The fact that there were now hard modes meant that your character wasn't going to be at his/her prime from normal modes only.

This is where disappointment number 3 comes in. Hard modes/heroic raiding introduced yet another tier of raiding, or the "real" challenge most of the veteran players were looking for, me included. In my case, my server was extremely lacking in talent, and had been since the later parts of Burning Crusade, when the most progressed guild packed up and left the server when the recruitment pool for Sunwell Plateau grew thin. Only about a handful of guilds were attempting hard modes and neither of the guilds I'd been in since my previous one fell apart were nowhere near heroic material (no offense intended). Eventually along the way I ran into an old raiding buddy from my Karazhan/Gruul days who had transferred back to our server with a start-up hardcore raiding guild. I happily joined and conquered the entirety of Ulduar with them, eventually defeating the Old God, Yogg-Saron.

The guild, despite all the minor setbacks we'd had, did fairly well in the end, but it definitely wasn't the dream team I needed to pursue hard modes. By the time we'd downed Yogg-Saron the Argent Tournament raid had opened and the guild leader bailed on us shortly after the kill, citing that the guild wasn't overly fond of his leadership skill. It was a sad day. That guild eventually struggled to stay together but failed in the end after attempting a hard mode kill in Ulduar and some dabbling in the Argent Tournament raid. Next.

(CONTINUED IN NEXT POST)

An Era Long Gone

I came across this article tonight:

Little Article Here

And it got me thinking about something that's been on my mind as of recently. This is basically the issue most people have with today's World of Warcraft, some may not be aware because they've been playing so long it's slipped their mind or most are truly aware of the state of the game.

A while back a forum post on Blizzard's official forums from a player most would consider "undesirable" because of his lack of knowledge towards the game was made. Anyone who has noticed it should had least felt felt some type of sympathy towards said person.

We all started off as rookies in the World of Warcraft. I'll never forget my roots. I made the grind to endgame with a plethora of mistakes that I worked out by the time I began raiding. I would wear gear with the wrong stats, screw up my talent specialization, have a weird rotation because I tried to use every damn ability given to me. It happened.

When we didn't have things like Looking For Group and Raid Finder we definitely had to build up a reputation on the servers we played on in order to get anywhere in the game. You couldn't do it yourself. You needed a team, a guild. What you did on your server was on you. If other players knew you were a respectable and good team player you would be happily accepted into most guilds.

My hardcore raiding years were during the Burning Crusade expansion- I spent a great deal of time trying to find a suitable raiding home after my first raiding guild crumbled. My class wasn't exactly desirable unless you  were either the one role it was good at (until Blizzard fixed another) so I was straight out of luck. I went through a few guilds before landing a spot with one of the server's higher-end guilds- most players on the servers quickly noted the guild "application" I had put in and were sending me all kinds of whispers wishing me luck as if I'd truly deserved the moment. I only wanted to raid with a guild that kept its things together.

I eventually was allowed to join, but my character wasn't exactly up to snuff in terms of gear (didn't have much luck with raid drops). I had a Lionheart Executioner and various pieces of my classes' Tier 4 armor. I didn't make the cut but was allowed to remain in the guild, and I took a backseat for a while. The internal issues within the guild finally came to a boil and it dissolved during my burnout period.

When I was finally ready to play again I was quickly offered a raid spot from a guild that had existed on the server for some time (reputation being the key reason) and had finally reached the last tier of raiding in the three months I'd been away. I joined and made the best out of that summer with the guild until the second expansion's release.

Addons And You

In the early days of WoW, addons weren't very common.There were only simplistic things like CT Raid or Recount. You had your standard UI with the raid frames and mods like Decursive or Healbot. Nothing too fancy.

When I was approaching the realm of endgame I was quick to jump onto one of the few existing World of Warcraft addon site to get myself ready for raids. I pulled out things like Recount and CT Raid and installed them. Recount I didn't use until about a few months into my raid career.

This is one my earliest UIs, when I started experimenting with things like Bartender, Big Wigs, Titan Bar, Atlas Loot, Omen and PallyPower. All the mods the normal raider would need. This was a horribly designed layout, but it was the best I could do at the time. 

This was probably the first ever UI I ever worked with, modding it slightly with every new update.

After my first big burnout from World of Warcraft I returned three months later a bit refreshed and with a better head on my shoulders. I started experimenting with pre-made user interfaces, all I had to do was download a file and put the respective folders in their designated areas. It definitely freed up from screen real estate, which I sorely needed after months of raiding with only 20% of the screen visible to me. I used to play on a 1280x1024 screen.

  

Going into the third expansion UIs had begun to radically improve in design. It was rare to find a decently designed UI unless you had a good computer or a widescreen monitor. Only the most hardcore raiders would customize their UIs to the fullest. At this time they were trickling down to the rest. Low-memory solutions for those with weaker hardware.

Halfway through my second year of raiding I needed to redo my UI yet again. By this time, widescreen user interfaces were becoming increasingly common and the lack of solutions was really starting to get to me. I had to look even harder for something suitable. This would do well for now.

In February 2010 I finally went widescreen. Although I was only working with a resolution of 1366x768 I was still able to game effectively on my small screen. Not to mention the better graphics and faster hardware!

This UI, going into the third expansion, didn't last me very long. The patch that came and changed everything broke it. If only I knew how to code addons like this...

I spent the majority of the first few months using this UI until it was broken by a future patch too.

This was my UI from when I began raiding in Cataclysm. This lasted me a good couple months until this too was broken/out of date and wasn't continued.

This is the UI I have been using for the past year and a half. It's been constantly updated and looks radically different from the version shown here, but it's very functional and low memory. I haven't turned back since.

Changes

I've decided to get back into World of Warcraft following a series of real-life mishaps and needing to get away from the real world for a bit, except for school.

While it's nice to be back, I chose to come back at the wrong time. That or I should have upgraded my account for the new expansion over a month ago.

But oh well.

Now that hardcore raiding won't be much of an option for me considering the state of my server (unless more 25-man raiding guilds appear) I will simply raid casually for the moment, one or two days a week. I will simply get more into competitive player-versus-player activity to balance it out.

No point in idling around in major cities when there's things to do and gold to farm. There is indeed lots to do besides the daily gold grind, which I'm still mostly burned out from thanks to the later parts of Burning Crusade and the horrible Argent Crusade dailies in Icecrown. Simply horrible.

A Lookback

Quoted "Blue" post from June 2007 regarding the Black Temple, when it had been cleared in a week due to extensive PTR testing:

(This wasn't posted on Blizzard forums, but a guild site forum run by players.)

"I've enjoyed reading this thread and I think there are a lot of valid points and views here.

(Disclaimer: I've also been following the threads on the WoW Forums that are similar and wanted to respond there but the forums are down!)

I think there is some nostalgia going on here though. Either that or we're watching a textbook case of the "grass is always greener" going on. In WoW 1.0, we faced many complaints about the lack of raiding options. We were often criticized with coming out with new raid content "at a snail's pace." In fact, I challenge anyone to find a thread from Winter 2005 where people are talking about how awesome the pacing of the raid content was.

Some other things to remember. You *could* skip some of AQ 40 in your progression if you wanted to. This was viewed as an interesting debate (having options is a good thing, yes?). Not a design flaw. We're always looking to give players options -- from PvP (multiple arenas, battlegrounds), to 5 mans to raiding. My biggest criticism of our 10 person raiding game right now (I have a few) is that there are no options beyond KZ. We're fixing that. But you get my point. Players need options.

I'll go ahead and make a controversial statement to illustrate a point. Let's pretend for a moment that Burning Crusade never came out and we were still in vanilla WoW land. The community, as a whole, would have eventually screamed bloody murder over the difficulty of the Four Hoursemen. The Four Hoursemen was considered one of our best tuned encounters in the game. But I'll argue that's because so few people actually progressed to the point of needing to beat them. And the ones who did beat them, were ok with going to extreme measures to do so (consumables, world buffs, server transfers for tanks in 4 peice dreadnaught). A fight that requires 8 tanks is *NOT* acceptable to the raiding community as a whole. A fight that requires 8 tanks was acceptable to the bleeding edge only (and their fans) and only because it seperated them from the rest -- not because that's what made a *fun* raiding experience. How fun was it for the hunter who got benched for Warrior #8? How fun was it for the guild who lost their main tank when he server transfered to be a part of one of the World Firsts?

For the place and time, the Four Horsemen were great. They were beatable and mostly bug free.

While we're on the topic of Naxx, I want to remind everyone that during it's initial opening, almost ALL of the bosses died within the same period that the BT bosses are dying. People forget that because of the Four Horsemen wall. If raid content is tuned correctly, it will die relatively fast (UNLESS it requires some sort of progression check -- Onyxia Cloak, resist check). Even straight up gear checks are very dicey. More often than not that lead's to excessive raid stacking rather than a true gearing up.

Another thing to keep in mind is the PTR. In order to release the highest quality encounters, we put the content on the PTR. This happened with Naxx as well. It's not surprising that the three EU guilds who have progressed the furthest in Black Temple are also the guilds that spent the most time on the PTR. While it's "only taken them 2 weeks" to kill most of the content in BT, we've been watching them rep on the dungeon for 2 months now.

Properly tuned and accessible raid content will die. It's ok. We'll make more. That's what we do for a living. What's really important is for the content to be enjoyable to do for more than just one clearing. Because after all, your priest wants his shoulders off of Boss X or your tank wants that shield off of Boss Y. It should be epic to kill a boss like Illidan or Kael. But it shouldn't be epic because no one is doing it because they are overtuned or bugged out.

My opinions on Black Temple? Najentus is tuned perfectly -- we wanted a "reward" boss for getting in. Akama is a tad easier than we had hoped but he's a really cool, fun fight so it works out. Reliquary of Souls is just where we wanted it to be -- it's very hard. Teron is a hard fight until people know what they are doing at which point it becomes easy. The more guilds that kill Teron, the easier the fight becomes for everyone.

I think the raid game is in a very good place right now. Raiders of all skill levels and time commitments have a variety of options. There *are* some extremely challenging and rewarding fights in the game (Kael, Reliquary, Archimonde, Illidan). Raid tuning walks the razor blade. Things that make raids *seem* more challenging (trash, raid stacking, consumables, resist checks, attunements, limited access, limited tries) are usually perceived as tedious or "progression blockers" and the complaints fire away. But I'll reiterate, a well tuned raid boss -- even a very hard and complex one -- will die quickly if it's tuned properly and bug free.

I'll leave you guys with a question. How many people posting in this thread that the Black Temple is too easy have killed a boss in Black Temple?"

Seven Marks Maximum

The Four Horsemen...

...Of the impending apocalypse!

Once among the hardest of raid bosses (from an execution standpoint) it still holds the record for being the longest undefeated encounter in World of Warcraft at seven weeks since the very first attempt by any raiding guild ballsy and skilled enough to get to this point.

Of the four wings in Naxxramas, the Deathknight Wing (or Military Quarter) was the last one guilds tackled before getting to the Frostwyrm Lair. The bosses in this wing were among the hardest of the first 12.

Four bosses, forty players, one room. The object of this encounter was to defeat the four horsemen before they cast 100 marks total or you just flat-out died. You couldn't just brute force this fight, though. Each marksman placed a stacking de-buff on players that dealt increasingly amounts of unresisted Shadow damage. This was called the Mark of [Horseman's Name]. This meant that the raid had to split into groups and rotate on the bosses with one group hanging around in the "safe zone", a spot in the center of the room that was out of range of each Horseman's mark (range was 50 yards). The marks could NOT be removed by ANYTHING except by death or letting it run its course.

Keep that up and you'd win. Just don't take longer than 20 minutes.

A good video of it in action!

The Problem In The Mists

The man in this video speaks well. I was there.

Years ago, the real motivation in the game was to become one of the stronger players in the game. All you needed were 9-24 like-minded players to take the lengthy journey. When I would take breaks from questing or dungeon crawling I'd inspect the stronger players and the stuff they'd worked so long and hard to get. To be like them and become well known among the playerbase was quite the thought.

I wanted to be like the max level guys that took the time to help out rookies like myself on my beginning journey to the endgame.

These were the days where planning ahead wasn't something you wanted to do, especially if you were in it solely for the loot. Guilds would spend a couple nights or even weeks on one boss until it died. Developing a guild strategy was extremely important. It required patience, but at the same time it was fun. In guild chat on off-nights or raid nights we'd be busy discussing boss strategies we could use or the gearing we would need, the kind of number crunching that's usually done on some website out there.

The end result of such demanding conditions in raid were players that were exceptionally sharp. Before then, you didn't need an achievement to prove that you killed a boss. If you had the gear you definitely had what it took to get your guild through it. And it showed. When I used to do pick-up groups for dungeons I'd occasionally get a player from one of the higher-end guilds on our server, and they kicked ass. It was pretty admirable. Sometimes I'd ask about where their guild was in progression and other things, stories about raiding, silly wipes, whatever.