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Hello! Just passing and noticed updates to the thread, so I thought I'd see who was stil playing.
I feel let down by WOTLK and all the hype. Yes, it looks great, probably the best looking of the three 'games' and the areas are nice (with the exception of the Borean tundra, which looks like someone's done a sick on it, it's so many colours. Oh, and the P.H.E.T.A joke is cringingly lame, but these are just just niggling little things) and also the quest stories are interesting as mentioned above. In addition, some streamlining to regeants has helped cut the unnecessary downtime in the game (as a rogue - poisons and flash powder come to mind).
All hunkydory so far, but what's really let the game down for me is the gameplay. 4 years on and Blizzard are still making 90% of the quests:
'Collect 10 Sealion dicks for me'
which you do, followed by
'oh yes, I forgot, I need 10 sealion bollocks too, from exactly the same sealions'.
And on. And on. It's become tiresome, especially when I think I need to do the same all over again with my alts.
The real shame there is that some of the few quests that try to be a bit different are actually quite good (the Murloc King blackmail chain, being a favourite), making the rest just feel like tacked on quests, lifted from the old game.
Then there's how easy the new dungeons are. Very forgiving, no real tactics required - they're also designed around an AOE rushing/blunderbuss approach over Crowd Control. My guild (who are not hardcore raiders by any means) did most of the dungeons a few levels higher than their characters when levelling. Hoping heroics would be tougher, we were disappointed to find that they weren't really - a few wipes here and there but no real challenges.
We've not raided yet but good friends in a more hardcore guild on my server (Prepared - Nordrassil EU)did 7 bosses in 10 man Naxx on the first night. Leaving aside the fact that Naxx is just a pumped up clone of the old raid, almost all of them were still using lvl 70 gear. "It was a doddle to the point of boredom" one of them said afterwards.
I don't remember TBC dungeons being that easy even on normal, and the idea of doing a handful of bosses in Kara on my 1st night there is laughable. By way of further example, the SK Gaming and Nihilium conglomeration managed to clear ALL content of WOTLK on the test realms in 3 months. Yes, I know: test realms, but no one got anywhere near that on TBC, not even the top guilds. I hope the new material (Icecrown, etc) is going to be better better, coz guilds on our server are already clearing most of the 10 man stuff and complaining about the lack of challenge and achievement.
The most disturbing thing about the new expansion is the complete disregard for the subtleties of the old group balance and synergy.
Whilst I concur with Blizzard that the need for specific types of class just to do a boss should have been looked at (The need for a priest shackle early Kara is one example. The need for 4 tanks then 1 then 4, etc in SSC is another), the answer was not to make everyone the bloody same like they have done. Indeed, overcoming some class shortages were part of the challenge in TBC, so long as it wasn't just impossible without a required class (which is just unfair).
One of the worst examples to class watering is the tanking pallie - bang goes the spell damage and the skill of keeping the mana pool up and balancing stats with those needs. Now all they have is the same gear as all other tanks - namely strength based re-itemisation of all their previous gear, so they're just warriors with a rez ability.
Hunters - used to be dedicated single target damage dealing specialists - not now, their AOE is ridiculous and they may as well be a locks. They also now share gear with Shammies. The unifying of gear to a number of classes is just a lazy way to rush out an expansion.
Then there's rogues with misdirect & AOE.... And don't start me off about Death Knights - a wasted class in effect - just being a one stop shop for all things, which was not why the idea of classes were there for.
This watering down of class individuality and distinction is furthered by the new raid wide buffs - yes it's faster and easier, but we'll all be pressing one button like hunters soon. Before, it was a challenge to get the best from raid grouping... it was part of the skill of raiding. Now it doesn't matter.
I can understand they want the raids to become more accessible to all, I've no problem with that, but simplifying the whole game isn't the way to do it. If they wanted accessibility, why did they add another 10 levels, so that even with the nerfed exp, a newcomer to the game has an even bigger mountain to climb to reach everybody having the fun? I know people who want to join the game, but are put off by the ever increasing expanse they have to cover to get to their friends - most casual gamers wont get to 80 before a level 90 shift-to-the-goal-posts occurs.
Grump over. It's not bad enough yet for me to stop playing yet, so I'll cya in Azeroth! |
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