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I've been playing since a few days after launch. I joined a guild with some old friends and, well, all I can say is this group has the worst tanks I've ever raided with - and I've been playing a long time. We still have not gotten down Stone Guard and we've spent 12 hours wiping so far (4 sessions at 3 hours each). It's so bad I've been helping a friend level a monk via RaF to replace one tank and the other will also be replaced.

I haven't taken the game too seriously this time around so it hasn't bothered me much. It's getting there though. We've leveled the monk to 87 now and it will only be a couple days before we can actually start raiding.

<p>You could probably do it with 15 competent people but it wouldn't be possible to solo. At current gear levels I think 25 is a reasonable minimum. He'll mind control 5 people at a time (including tanks) and that has to be broken by DPS so the absolute minimum would be 7 people (1 tank+1 dps + 5 MCs) but even that is pretty unlikely.

If you play on a pvp server 7 is definately unlikely XD

  • 3 weeks later...

Treat it more like ICC gating and it makes sense.

  • Raiding is pretty solid. Most content seems pretty interesting so far. There's some forgettable/boring content but so far it's not terrible
  • Heroic dungeons are boring, challenge modes are more a question of class stacking than skill. It's hard to say if there's any real interest as long as people still have raid content to grind.
  • Daily quest/rep-grind system is rediculous and not fun. I'm opting out - **** blizzard. Sadly, not everyone is prepared to give up their grinding so that leaves me without friends to play with (at least not enough to do interesting things).

I'm playing exactly 8 hours a week and then logging off right now. The "non raid activities" are just too damn grindy and I'm not going to do things I don't think are fun.

They went completely overboard with dailies and rep grinds in this expansion.

Yeah no doubt about that.

I'm so bored by dailies that i did not play at all in the last week. Did not even care about capping my valor. Right now i'm raiding once a week (3 hours) and that's all.

Treat it more like ICC gating and it makes sense.

  • Raiding is pretty solid. Most content seems pretty interesting so far. There's some forgettable/boring content but so far it's not terrible
  • Heroic dungeons are boring, challenge modes are more a question of class stacking than skill. It's hard to say if there's any real interest as long as people still have raid content to grind.
  • Daily quest/rep-grind system is rediculous and not fun. I'm opting out - **** blizzard. Sadly, not everyone is prepared to give up their grinding so that leaves me without friends to play with (at least not enough to do interesting things).

I'm playing exactly 8 hours a week and then logging off right now. The "non raid activities" are just too damn grindy and I'm not going to do things I don't think are fun.

I agree with all of this. Not only the amount of dailies but their requirement to the hardcore raiders if they are to max themselves is just atrocious. What's recently bothered me is that I hadn't touched Cloud Serpent reputation. However, I just got the Pandaran Dungeon Hero achievement. Now, I can't even use the mount until I get the reputation with Cloud Serpent.

So after playing around and getting back into it, I can't believe how dumbed down WoW has gotten. :(

I always laugh when people say a game that requires a left mouse click or a right mouse click has been "Dumbed Down". They did make stuff easier but like I said, left mouse and right mouse. Hell I tanked MoP heroics and 2 raid bosses using an xbox360 controller on my monk with ease. I even levelled him 1 - 90 with a 360 controller and died twice the whole time due to a crap healer in dungeons.

I always laugh when people say a game that requires a left mouse click or a right mouse click has been "Dumbed Down". They did make stuff easier but like I said, left mouse and right mouse. Hell I tanked MoP heroics and 2 raid bosses using an xbox360 controller on my monk with ease. I even levelled him 1 - 90 with a 360 controller and died twice the whole time due to a crap healer in dungeons.

You just proved my point. WoW has gotten dumbed down. There's no variety in builds anymore since you pretty much have very few choices and they went back to the burn and aoe everything dungeon style.

You just proved my point. WoW has gotten dumbed down. There's no variety in builds anymore since you pretty much have very few choices and they went back to the burn and aoe everything dungeon style.

WoW hasn't really been dumbed down, what Blizzard did is that they clearly separated contents into categories accessible for different types of players. So yeah if you are doing content that is intended for casuals like me who play on the weekends and look forward to do a couple random battlegrounds and some scenarios then yes you will find it easy, but if you want hardcore stuff try raiding heroics, or getting a gold time in challenge modes. As for builds, how can you say there is no variety in them anymore? You would have said this during Cataclysm I would have agreed, but the new talent system has at most 1 or 2 mandatory talents and all the other ones are for you to decide. It has been streamlined, yes, dumbed down? no. Again, they have just made the experience more enjoyable for people who just don't have the time to invest, but if you do have the time the HC seen is still huge and thriving.

WoW hasn't really been dumbed down, what Blizzard did is that they clearly separated contents into categories accessible for different types of players. So yeah if you are doing content that is intended for casuals like me who play on the weekends and look forward to do a couple random battlegrounds and some scenarios then yes you will find it easy, but if you want hardcore stuff try raiding heroics, or getting a gold time in challenge modes. As for builds, how can you say there is no variety in them anymore? You would have said this during Cataclysm I would have agreed, but the new talent system has at most 1 or 2 mandatory talents and all the other ones are for you to decide. It has been streamlined, yes, dumbed down? no. Again, they have just made the experience more enjoyable for people who just don't have the time to invest, but if you do have the time the HC seen is still huge and thriving.

Don't want players to invest too much time in building their character (the fun part) but instead on dailies and rep grind (the annoying part).

Somehow, I think they have their priorities a little mixed up. :/

Don't want players to invest too much time in building their character (the fun part) but instead on dailies and rep grind (the annoying part).

Somehow, I think they have their priorities a little mixed up. :/

Yeah that's a point I agree with, the entire premise of dailies is very obscure and if I'm being honest I think it's just a way for them to ensure you'll be paying next month. I don't like dailies, at least not the hundreds of dailies that we get in MoP, but I guess at least they're not absolutely mandatory this time around as you only get vanity items by being exalted.

I would argue that the importance put on dailies this time around is for two reasons. One, to encourage players to experience the new areas they've created. For instance, you can't purchase new PvP gear from the main city - you have to travel to the middle of nowhere to do so. I can't ride my new Crimson Cloud Serpent because I didn't grind my reputation with Cloud Serpents. Two, to postpone the obsolescence of their content for as long as possible by making valor and gear more time consuming to obtain.

Blizzard has a habit of doing things that encourage their content to be played/seen by as many people as possible for as long as possible.

Now people are complaining that there's too much content?

More like the content takes a little effort to complete. In Cata, all you had to do was sit in SW/Org and queue for heroics while wearing a tabard. Now you need to complete dailies for the rep in order to buy the epic pieces.

There are a LOT of dailies, but its nothing you need to complete all at once. Golden Lotus has a ton of quests, but the Klaxxi, Shado-Pan, and August Celestials don't take long at all. And Cloud Serpents, Tillers, and Anglers aren't required for anything but basically cosmetic rewards.

I would argue that the importance put on dailies this time around is for two reasons. One, to encourage players to experience the new areas they've created. For instance, you can't purchase new PvP gear from the main city - you have to travel to the middle of nowhere to do so. I can't ride my new Crimson Cloud Serpent because I didn't grind my reputation with Cloud Serpents. Two, to postpone the obsolescence of their content for as long as possible by making valor and gear more time consuming to obtain.

Blizzard has a habit of doing things that encourage their content to be played/seen by as many people as possible for as long as possible.

Having to go traveling around to get your pvp gear is such a terrible idea. What will they think of next for a terrible idea? Take the armor repair ability off of all the npcs in town and make you have waste time to go out to some remote location to be able to fix your gear? Actually, i shouldn't have said that, cause they probably will end up doing that here soon.

Also, they don't make gear, items and points take a long time to get just to postpone the obsolescence of the content. They do it so they can get more money out of you in sub fees.

More like the content takes a little effort to complete. In Cata, all you had to do was sit in SW/Org and queue for heroics while wearing a tabard. Now you need to complete dailies for the rep in order to buy the epic pieces.

There are a LOT of dailies, but its nothing you need to complete all at once. Golden Lotus has a ton of quests, but the Klaxxi, Shado-Pan, and August Celestials don't take long at all. And Cloud Serpents, Tillers, and Anglers aren't required for anything but basically cosmetic rewards.

Right, the dailies aren't a huge, difficult chore, but they are a chore. Dailies have never been enjoyed by the majority of players yet Blizzard still implemented them. Probably for the reasons I mentioned.

Also, they don't make gear, items and points take a long time to get just to postpone the obsolescence of the content. They do it so they can get more money out of you in sub fees.

Personally, I don't believe Blizzard developers outright asks themselves what they can do to increase money in their pockets. They may ask themselves how they can get more out of their content which indirectly benefits their subs and also benefits the players if it's done right.

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