The following guest post was sent in by a reader, and former World of Warcraft guildmate, who I raided with a year or so ago. When I first met him, LRNs played a hunter but later graduated to his feral Druid tank. When I left the game he was working on a new toon horde-side, but I'll let him tell his story.
My biggest reason for posting LRNS' article is that it tells a far different tale than my own, but has a similar outcome in the end. I never tried to re-engage the game in the manner that LRNs and his group did - perhaps because I'm unable to play alts.
Since Wrath came out, my friends - like many WoW players - have expressed various degrees of disappointment with the difficulty level. We're not "hard core" players, nor are we purely casual. We want to log in and have a variety of experiences. As time marched on, all of us broke with 25-man raiding. We started spending more and more time just doing casual stuff together and less and less time raiding with our guilds. Quests, instances, achievements, and 10-mans were the name of the game and that game was losing its fun.
Early this summer, we decided to switch to our horde toons in an effort to breath new life into our experience. We had abandoned the toons way back when Burning Crusade happened. Equipped with our under-geared level 60's & a pair of Death Knights, we began to run old instances. It was fun, but much easier than we remembered.
Then the beginning of the end.
Upon reaching 70, our Prot Pally, Destro-Warlock and I (on a hybrid Disc leveling priest) blew through Utgarde Keep. This was in crappy outland dungeon blues & greens. The next night, the 3 of us went over to Nexus. It was much more of a challenge for us, but we also defeated that instance. Heck, it felt like an actual accomplishment. We had fun! It felt like a Burning Crusade instance. We also felt sad. In order to achieve this effect, we had to be undermanned, undergeared and play toons that none of us had touched for 2 years.
Now in the 70-72 range, our group picked the lock to Kara. We obliterated it with 6 players. Again, undermanned, undergeared and on unfamiliar toons. Fun, but...sigh!
Finally, the nail in the coffin.
After doing Kara for a few weeks (and trying some bosses in AZ), we returned to outland and went after instances with mobs 3-5 levels higher than us. Azjol-Nerub...pathetic. Next came Drak'Tharon Keep. At one point, I - the healer - got so bored that I ran past the tank and used SW:P to aggro 4 packs of mobs back to our tank. Nobody died!
The idea that my level 72 Discipline Priest could intentionally aggro 4 packs of elite level 75-76 mobs to our under-level party and obliterate them was too much for us. What did we have to look forward to? Our Alliance toons had 10-man Ulduar (which was still mostly challenging.) Our Horde would quickly catch up. There was nothing else. Achievement grinding is all well and good, but where's the excitement? 5-man heroics...heroic, my ass!
I wrote a survey for the group asking various questions about our various needs from our online experience & how folks felt about WoW. The answers were all the same. We played MMO's to play together. We want to have fun, but we also want to be challenged. WoW was no longer doing that. The game had degraded into two types of encounters: Mindnumbingly easy or super-impossible hardmode. One friend put it best...
That the game now only seems to have two degrees of difficulty: "Bring your A game or don't come (and you'd better not have more than 400ms latency)" and "Go ahead and face roll your keyboard, we don't care, you win, have this completely useless item."
Why would we continue to play under those conditions? None of us needed the so-called hardcore gamer experience, but none of us want to face roll the keyboard either. We took the results of our little survey, did some research and plan to adopt Lord of the Rings Online as our new MMO home for now. We should all complete our transition by September.
Some of my friends have been with Warcraft since the original beta. My wife and I have been playing it for nearly 4 years. There are been weeks & months where we did nothing else but sleep, work, WoW. I understand making WoW accessible. I liked the concept. They went too damned far.
As always, be courteous in the comments.
16 comments:
Pretty common view, really. I too wish the normal non-raid game content was harder; or at least the heroic versions.
I honestly am happy with how the raid content is (I know many disagree) but the vast bulk of guilds I know are just now finishing clearing regular-mode Ulduar - really, just in time for the next tier. Precious few are able to do many (if any) hard modes.
But the non-raid content? Yeah, it's disappointing. Back when Heroics first debuted in BC, I remember a couple friends and I venturing into Heroic Underbog. We were new 70's (nobody was clearing Kara yet) and in blues.
We wiped on the first, lone sporebat.
That sort of thing just doesn't happen anymore, which is sad. The modern heroics are really just basic instances, given the gearing at 80 and regular mode instances are utterly pointless.
I wish you had to gear in regular instances, then enter heroics, then raids, etc... but as it stands, quest blues can take you into Naxx successfully. This creates a situation where content isn't so much trivialized as bypassed.
And while I like the overall concept of enabling people to gear to previous tier gear w/ tokens from heroics (so it's not impossible to gear up alts/new players to a raid-worthly level without horribly boring farming raids) but it's silly that that's really the only use the content has.
Regular instances and even heroic ones don't have a place at all in the progression path, aside as something to do when your raid lockouts are up :(
"We also felt sad. In order to achieve this effect, we had to be undermanned, undergeared and play toons that none of us had touched for 2 years."
Serious question. How is it possible to create an instance that will be challenging to people who may be new to their class, their role (hello new death knight tank) and/or the game and who may have soloed all the way to Northrend and still maintain any kind of challenge for experienced players (even on inexperienced toons)?
I just think as an experienced player sometimes you have to accept that they need to put in easy learning ramps for the new guys because they'll hopefully become the players you get to group with in a few months time.
Hope they enjoy LOTRO - like all games, it has issues of its own. But the big thing is that they'll have the fun of the learning curve properly again, and maybe that's what they are looking for now.
I have read this story so many times it is getting old for me.
In my opinion
You were hard core and didn't know it. The game is face roll easy to you because you became experts at playing it. All the class's have parity and most of the encounters are now manageable with a passing understanding of the game mechanics.
This is or isn't your game anymore and I really wish it was possible for us all to get along but it seems as if many players cannot handle the change.
I personally like it and wish you all the best of luck.
I miss all the great advise and analysis from Andrew on playing my Druid but i see his and your points. If its not the challenge you want then your not interested.
Peace all
I think people have to understand, at least as far as raid content goes, we are currently raiding the SSC / TK / Hyjal of Wrath, not Black Temple or Sunwell.
Do people not remember the facerolling week to week of those 3 (ok, Vashj, Archie, and Kael were at least a challenge) gearing people up?
As far as 5 man content, yeah it is pretty disappointing but I doubt it is that different from going back into BC heroics once you were T5 geared.
What we needed to see were Heroics more like MrT. Gear worth getting on par with raid gear and with the added difficulty.
"Mindnumbingly easy or super-impossible hardmode."
No, not at all. There is easy, which is for all the non gamers who play WoW to see content. Then hardmode which is fine for any guild filled with gamers.
You don't want a challenge you want something different, something not WoW.
This is fine and understandable. But more players should probably understand that. I've taken breaks but it's not WoW's fault. I've been playing since release, I don't expect the game to hold 100% of my attention for this long.
WoW has a challenge for those who pursue it. You can't expect a game to be able to tailor itself to all varying degrees of player ability.
Hardcore, accessible, casual... I don't think any of these things have anything to do with challenge. You can still have challening encounters that are easily accessible and designed for casul players. I think Blizzard just got mixed up somewhere along the process.
Maybe EQ2 just has a very good challenge curve because I never felt it was too easy or too difficult. There were plenty of instances that my guild couldn't complete until we learnt new tactics or got new gear.
I think you're friends have done the right thing by switching games.
I don't plan on wading into the debate here; I'll leave that to the author (LRNs), but I wanted to throw out two quick things:
1. If anyone ever feels the urge to write a guest blog about anything, email it my way.
2. MMOs need a more granular way of selecting player difficulty. Tipa's article on Dragonia Online (found here) suggests that there may be a way forward.
I have also been disappointed with the lowering of the difficulty curve of WoW raiding, but it's shortsighted to blame that individually on why I left the game. I get the feeling that the poster feels the same way, especially with lines such as:
"It was fun, but much easier than we remembered."
and
"My wife and I have been playing it for nearly 4 years."
and
"There are been weeks & months where we did nothing else but sleep, work, WoW."
I freely admit that the novelty of the game wore off and cite that as the main reason for my departure. It seems so difficult for people to admit that this may be part of the reason why they do not like the game anymore. Why is that? Is it because it seems as though it's their fault?
Instead we receive an inordinate amount of forum posts and blog posts that blame Blizzard and the game's difficulty and the accessibility and the casuals and the lost 'epicness' of it all. All of which seem to be synonymous at closer inspection.
How can you expect a single game to keep you entertained for thousands upon thousands of hours, year after year? It seems unreasonable.
Poeple forget they've been playing for a loooong time. They've learned a lot. Of course the game gets easier. It was hard for me when I hardly knew the difference between 1 ability and another on my bar, and I was stuggling to lead an instance. Learning how to mark mobs in magt was challenging and fun because
a) I had to know the mobs
b) I had to communicate & lead
c) I couldnt make mistakes myself.
That's why it was hard. Not because MagT was inherently hard. I was new to the business.
Btw, as a reminder, telling stories about how easy content is post-70 is silly. Dont people remember blizzard massively nerfed all bosses (including kara) at the end of TBC, to allow absolutely everyone to have a free for all time in instances they may not have seen.
After 3/4 years playing, its natural to be bored of a game.
This is LRNs...
Thanks for all your comments. I can't say I disagree (even with those of you who were critical of my story.) The game has become old hat to me. And I don't deny that being a long-time player and a one-time raider gives me a leg up on game mechanics over a new player. Add to that my group. We've been playing together, refining our techniques and teamwork for years. It adds up.
But, to chock it up to my being experienced or ready to try new things would be to ignore certain truths. For good or for ill, I believe that there has been a philosophical shift in Blizzard's approach & to their target audience. Couple that with my extensive play time, it's time for me to move on.
Good luck folks.
Well written and I totally agree but let's face it - reading through common WoW blogs there are many articles of this kind.
So my question about Blizzards whole new casual system is rather: Is this actually working out?
Every now and then I read a 'Well done Blizzard I like my FREE EPICS' but commonly and especially amongst my friends who still play or recently have quit (roughly 20 people, counting those who I am still in contact with...) I only ever hear such comments like LNRS's....
While I agree that a big part of WoW's player base 'likes it easy' I somehow doubt the fact that this actually works; that Blizzard actually IS making more money with this system. Most M&S (to use Gevlons term) played even in TBC content which pre 3.0 can easily be considered hard. So I don't think the few people deciding to give WoW a shot now really make up to the people saying 'feels like cheatin, I'm gonna go Aion/SW:ToR/GW2/etc.'.... .
The only reason I do not completely laugh at Blizz is that they're quite good at what they do and don't usually make such mistakes.
I just want to read about his experiences from LoTRO in a month.
I've played both. When I do play an mmo...I go back to WoW. >.>
LoTRO btw keeps getting easier too. Weekend xp bonuses, quicker leveling. This isn't a Blizzard only trend. Look at consoles, Nintendo, Wii, Popcap...
Aion will be the most watered down korean MMO to come out.
I am beginning to wonder if a lot of it is not just a continuous downward spiral.
The reason I say this is by looking at the casual guilds I have raided with over the last year and half as a microcosim of WoW in general.
BC was hard for the casual groups to get into, but hell, you could get there eventually (or at least mess with kara). It took work. Trash was tough and so you learned mechanics to suit your class. People learned CC and tanks learned to multitask multiple adds rotating their target etc etc.
Blizzard seeing that the casuals were not seeing end game content decided to make a change. Which was awesome- but I think they went about it the wrong way.
Letting there be 10 mans for all the raids, excellent bordering brilliant. However, the shift in CC and threat mechanics began a downward shift. Instead of just giving players more ways to get to see the end game content, they made it easier. They all but killed CC and then gave tanks huge boosts in threat generation, let us all hit 360 degrees around ourselves and the list goes on.
The problem with this is that players are getting rusty with the techniques they learned to be good at what they did. I became known as a damn fine bear tank and was taken places other raids would keep bears sidelined. Over time I saw ferals and warriors catching up and things turned around.
But over time with the new mechanics, I saw less and less of it. I saw more barge in, aggro bomb and never switch target till its almost dead. I see dps throwing every aoe they have off cooldown, hell many do not even use threat meters anymore.
New players come in and never have to learn these techniques at all.
...and so, the player base becomes weaker and less profficient and eventually settles at the new subpar skill level. Blizz sees this via a number crunch and makes things easier again so that more can join in, and the median just keeps getting lowered, with the player base always dropping to the point of knowing just enough to get by. It feeds its own demise really.
Meanwhile, you have a ton of raiders who played the old school mechanics, still remember them and still practice them- and for it they blow away instances. You can chalk it up to experience, but its more just the fact that they have played the way the game once forced you to play- do your job or everyone dies.
There is definitely a happy middle ground that can be struck up...the hard part is finding it. I believe they should have gotten to the point of having 3 settings, 5 man/10/25. The 5 man being heroic instance tough- just enough to let the casual of the casuals advance through story line. Then use 10-25 man as they are now and just scale difficulty as needed.
Ghostcrawler had said that they made 10 mans a bit harder than 25 (or tried to but failed on naxx), but doesnt that seem counter intuitive since the 10 mans were put in place for more casual guilds who could not get 25 people together?
I just think they need to go back to the drawing board on it...but with the new mmo being announced- it could all be just a wish too late.
You might think they went too far in opening up content, but the numbers kind of point otherwise.
A very small percentage of players has completed Ulduar on normal mode in either 10 or 25-man sizes.
That would indicate that content tuning, at least for normal modes, is not forgiving enough.
As for not being able to complete hard modes, I guess I'm not understanding where you're coming from. You want challenge, there's challenge there. Not _all_ the hard modes are soul-crushingly difficult, and most raid groups that are as good as they think they are are able to complete some.
If you're looking for a return to nonmodal dungeons that are too difficult for 50 percent of the player base, but easy enough for most raiders to complete, you're probably not going to get that from WoW.
I, frankly, think this new model is far and away the best raid model Blizzard has ever used.
I have to agree with your guest poster. My wife and I have played since the days of Classic WoW, and it amazes us when we compare the two. Look at how the Classic instances gradually introduced greater difficulty. Gnomeregen was noticeably more complex than the Deadmines, with patrols, adds and runners. Look at the trash density in Deadmines, then in a mid-range instance like Zul'Farrak, then in Blackrock Depths and finally Scholomance or Undead Strat.
Some terms from then... "you need a good puller." "ADDS!" "Don't hit the sheep!"
Complexity of the modern game is roughly that of Deadmines. Don't believe me? Walk in. Notice the patrols (or lack thereof). Notice that you can body pull darn near any group without consequence.
The challenge has been dropped to what was the original entry level. It's sad, really. What made WoW great was the terrific learning curve, one that players were mentored through as they leveled. That model is now gone.
Serious question. How is it possible to create an instance that will be challenging to people who may be new to their class, their role (hello new death knight tank) and/or the game and who may have soloed all the way to Northrend and still maintain any kind of challenge for experienced players (even on inexperienced toons)?
Spinks, the easy way is to have different levels separated by raids. TBC did this fairly well. There were easier heroics (SP, UB, Mech), somewhat harder (Bot, Ramp), and insane ones (Arc, BM depending, CoT Durn, Shalls, and finally MrT) with all sorts of things in between.
Furthermore, each catered to certain class mechanics. If you had a ton of CC, Shalls was easy. If you didn't, better have a pally. If you didn't have that, go home.
Simply put, having 5-man progression is an answer to difficulty. Things like achievement whoring is not, especially when the rewards are one-time only and they are not recapturing interest.
Think of a situation like this: what if there were 4 tiers of heroics. The first tier had 3 total bosses and dropped only conquest (unless it was the daily). The second dropped 4 conquest. The third dropped 5 conquest. The last dropped 5 conquest and a triumph badge. You could even separate out the loot a bit (like they did with mrT and with the new 5-man).
There are plenty of ways to do it. They're just choosing not to.
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