Comments:
Weather has been added to several areas of Azeroth. Good change that add to an already immersive graphical style.
"Along with the new Armor Sets, the high-level 5-10 man dungeons have received some changes regarding loot. Many items have been improved in quality and use. In addition, several epic items, such as Headmaster's Charge and the Runeblade of Baron Rivendare, have had their drop rates significantly increased. In order to preserve the challenge of these dungeons, they have had their instance caps lowered. Stratholme, Scholomance, and Blackrock Depths now allow a maximum of five players inside, and Blackrock Spire allows a maximum of ten."Finally Blizzard is getting a clue that challenge should rewarded instead of the number of people in the group. Just because a raid group has 40 people does not mean they should be rewarded for an easy jaunt through Molten Core. A hard five man dungeon should reward the player just as well (if not better) than a raid instance.
"Previously, quest experience was wasted if one completed a quest at level 60. In this patch, any quests done at maximum level will have their experience reward converted to a healthy amount of gold, thus adding additional incentive to completing those quests in your log once you hit 60."Great way to reward veteran players... oh wait... whats that? You already did most of the quests? Oh sorry you are SOL. Great for the long run after the Burning Crusade expansion and people begin hitting level 70.
"You will no longer lose your current target when affected by a crowd control spell (e.g. Fear, Polymorph etc...)"A change I had requested long ago! Sometimes it's the little changes that count!
"Frostwolf and Stormpike faction will now be gained by killing players of the opposite faction. Reputation will no longer be split up among the entire raid group."
Bye bye stupid collection quests and bye bye reputation gain in Alterac Valley for just sitting AFK. You actually have to kill people to get rewarded with reputation. Really sucks for the players that avoid fighting to complete objectives, but Alterac Valley was never really a worthwhile fight to actually care about winning.
I'm going to skip over the class changes as I realize Blizzard is going to do what they are going to do with class balance. Maybe in a few years they will have them balanced? Got me.
Overall the patch is looking good, but it is lacking any major content additions. Understandable with the Burning Crusade expansion they are building, but still disappointing since the patch took three months. Three months seems to be the rate at which Blizzard is going to patch and that is a slow down from right after launch. Most likely again due to the expansion they are working on. Hopefully we can expect a pick up on patch speed after the expansion release.
Update: 29 Nov, 2009 - Edited post, corrected spelling, and applied labels.
I hear how easy Molten Core is a lot. Always, always, the complaint is that Molten Core is really easy and doesn't justify epic loot (relative to some as yet unimplemented 5/10 man dungeon).
ReplyDeleteBut it's not easy. I was in a guild that first got started on Molten Core about a year ago. None of us had done it before--we were late starters, relative to the real hardcore raiding guilds. We wiped for an entire day on the first pair of molten giants, and when we killed them we got no loot. It took us weeks just to down Lucifron. Up to that point, we'd had nothing to show for our efforts but repair bills. I wouldn't describe that as easy.
The reason a lot of people think that Molten Core is easy is because they didn't do this. They joined guilds where the hard work of paving the way had already been done. They walked into their first Molten Core and the veterans did all the hard work for them. That doesn't mean that the content itself is easy, it means that you know what to do, you know how to do it, and you have all the tools you need--so it seems easy.
By the same token, I could argue that Blackwing Lair is mostly easy. It took my guild 40 wipes each to learn Razorgore and Vaelastrasz. Between the repairs and consumables, that's probably ten thousand gold in expenses. It took a whole month to get them down and during that time there were several times it looked likely that the guild would just dissolve under the strain. Now it takes 30 minutes to kill both of them. Look! We got 6 epics for 30 minutes' worth of "work." But wait--there's the small matter of that ten thousand gold and a month of raiding. That doesn't sound like it's easy to me.
The same will be true for the supposedly hard five man dungeons. They'll be hard until people learn them--then they'll be easy.
You are correct about dungeons becoming easier with time. Can't argue that. It is the path of least resistance... players eventually figure it out and abuse it.
ReplyDeleteDire Maul took tons of runs to figure out. LBRS/UBRS took tons of runs to figure out. Even Maraudon took a few runs to get right. Level 60 dungeons should be and have been tough to figure out. With knowledge and better gear they have become easier.
Every dungeon operates in this way. So why the fuck do 40 mans get fucking epics and 5-15 mans get jack squat?
Epics = I brought more people. When epics should mean that the dungeon/boss was HARD.
I've always bitched/argued that Blizzard sucks at time vs reward AND group size vs challenge.
And to add on to this. If 5 man dungeons offered the same loot as 40 man dungeons do you think any players would spend the time to organize raids? Hell fucking no... because organizing 40 people blows and instead of letting down a group of friends you are letting down 39 pissed off loot whores instead.
ReplyDelete40 man raids should of always been limited to things like Onixyia, the green dragons, and other real world boss monsters.
And they focus on it because the hardcore catasses are by far and large the loudest voice in the community.
ReplyDeleteCasuals may bitch all day long, but in the end Blizzard can always pass off "wait for the expansion". The expansion will give casuals loads of new content.. errr we hope anyways.
Hardcore catasses on the other hand are banging Blizzards content so hard that if there is anything wrong with it they are up in arms protesting, making online petitions, scheduling server sit ins, and all kinds of other dumb shit. These are people way too attached to the game and is the crowd that Blizzard cares about.
Casuals are just another # on the # of total boxes sold.
And thinking about the hardcaps on dungeon group size... they learned that lesson in beta when they let 40 man raids into any dungeon they wanted. They cut it back and even back then people were telling Blizzard to pick a number and build content around that number instead of making multiple tiers of group sizes.