By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of the change in LK that will change all the buffs/debuffs so that multiple classes can have them.
Case in point, Fel Intelligence, a buff that increases Intellect and Spirit, just not as much Intellect as AI does, or as much Spirit as DS does. And all these various buffs/debuffs no longer stack. For example, Scorch and Winter’s Chill will no longer stack with each other.
What this change is supposed to do is kill raid stacking, so that people don’t have to go raid with people because of their class/spec, but rather, raid with the people they want to raid with.
In other words, raiding with their friends, without screwing themselves over because nobody rolled a priest.
The good news: casuals rejoice! No more shall you have to scrape to get the right people in order to actually run a successful raid! No more shall you be forced to call a raid because a key person(s) somehow failed to show!
The bad news: say goodbye to class originality and uniqueness! No more will you be able to stack groups favorably, no more will you have to stack groups favorably. Now you won’t need to put in any effort whatsoever to raid successfully!
Blizzard is simplifying WoW, making it easier for the casual player to get in and check out all the content they’ve developed. Think of it this way: compared to the older MMO’s like the original EQ, WoW is the Fisher Price of MMO raiding. And Blizzard only made it easier by removing attunements and so on.
Lemme talk about board games here for a second to clarify my point.
Checkers versus Chess. Both are, essentially, the exact same game. They involve pieces on a board, moving around and capturing other pieces, with the intention of destroying the other side.
Both games, by their very nature, are very simplistic games. They have simple rules, and literally anyone can get in on the action.
At it’s heart, chess is moving pieces around a board. However, chess is infinitely complicated. Chess has blockades, castle swaps, swindle moves, compensation tactics, using a pawn gambit early on to try and get a successful flank, in order to force a move…
To play chess well, you need to be excellent at both long term strategic thinking and short term, move-by-move tactics. It’s a simple game, that a person can spend decades devoting themself to opening strategies.
Checkers, on the other hand, is simple. And that is that. Sure, it has some strategical depth, but nowhere near the complexity of chess.
I cannot stress this enough
SIMPLE =! NOT COMPLICATED
I am all in favour of simplifying something, if it means that the something will get better. I have no issue with Blizzard’s design choices to homogenize class abilities some if it means that WoW as a whole will be moving towards a more chess-like game.
If, however, it crosses the fine line and starts making things stupider, rather than simpler, and moves towards a more checkers-like game… well. Now I have a very, very serious problem.
The concern with homogenizing the classes in WoW this way is that it will remove whatever skill is currently required to play those classes.
As raid stands now, it takes much, much more than simply showing up and knowing how to play your class. There is a whole extra level of synergy, talents, and group composition that upper tier raids need to have to succeed.
A hardcore guild doesn’t just want to put 3 BM hunters and a feral druid in a group with an enhancement shamanfor the ridiculously high DPS, they need to do it to even beat the encounter. Take that away…
If you can’t stack groups/classes the same way, really the only option you have is to make encounters easy enough so that such stacking is no longer necessary.
Make encounters easier, now all the more casual types have a solid shot at those instances, and now all the hardcore raiders don’t have a challenge.
The hardcore raiders DO NOT want to go raiding with their friends. They don’t want to log in and clear Kara for the fiftieth time with their RL buddies. RAIDERS WANT TO RAID, to hell with who they do it with.
Picture a 5v5 arena team. 4 of those players are starting to become hardcore, and seriously considering becoming officially competitive. However, the fifth player is a feral druid named “Melvin”. There’s a resto druid, fairly well geared, advertising that he’s looking for an arena team. A couple of these players know of him from a former raiding guild, he’s quite good.
So what do these players do?
The hardcore raider mindset would ditch the “Melvin” without hesitation, snatch up this almost total stranger druid, and start going at arena seriously.
Thats what raiders do.
Give them a choice between running Karazhan with some friends and running Sunwell with total strangers, they’ll pick Sunwell every single time.
It’s a common misconception that the hardcore begrudge having casuals “in there instances”. This is incredibly wrong. Hardcore players begrudge what Blizzard needs to do (read: nerf) to those instances in order for those casuals to get in.
Raiders want things to be hard. They want to go at a new boss, wipe a few times, figure out they need to bring ten resto shamans and no other healers, get that makeup, charge back in, and take that boss down. They want to go to a new boss, realize that they can’t afford to bring any warlocks, they need all those raid spots for mages for decursing and low threat AoE…
Raiders like that kind of thing. That kind of extra layer of difficulty the average player would never even think of is something raiders love to deal with.
It’s like comparing the Olympics with a high school track meet. Sure, “nerfing” the olympics so that every young person with even a modicum of interest in competing can do so is all fine and dandy, but then what the hell is there left for the hardcore athletes to do? What could an athletic event of that magnitude possibly challenge them with?
Of course, as of yet, we, as a community, don’t know what type of boss fights there are in our collective raiding future. We know for sure there will be Arthas, a few undead guys, some dragons, and a really big giant made out of ice. Maybe an insane Titan.
Still, it is a fear that the raiders have. It looks like WoW is heading in a checkers direction by making all classes Bishops and Knights. Maybe some of them wear funny hats, but in essence, they are all exactly the same. This is what the raiders are so angry over.
And then there is the fact that all this change will do is make min maxing and raid stacking much, much worse.
By allowing multiple classes/specs to bring the same buffs/debuffs, you make it possible for the cutting edge raiders to say “Ok, we need these exact people for these debuffs, and the other 12 slots can go to whatever class has the highest DPS this patch”.
You could very well end up with a 25 person raid that has eleven warlocks in it, all of them wearing identical gear and sporting identical talent specs. Or a dozen mages. Or 15 warriors.
WoW could, of course, be homogenized even further than it already is so that there isn’t a significant difference in between classes…
Which I, for one, would utterly hate. There is already far, far too much homogenization going on.
Giving druids an OOC resurrection ability? A good change. Being unique because of something that you painfully lack?
“Hey, look at me! I don’t have a left arm! I’m unique!” You sure are.
Givng Paladins Evocation, giving it a new icon and putting “Divine” in it’s name? An awful change. Blatantly stealing something that makes another class unique, just because you don’t want them to rely on potions so much?
“Hey look at me! I just cut off my left arm! Now I’m unique too!”
So what’s it going to be, Blizzard? We going with checkers here, or chess? Make up your mind, it’s practically September.
Excellent, well organized post, sir. Your comparisons and explanations of things are genius. Oh, and good to “see” you again
Having said that, here’s my comment:
I personally accept these changes and am really excited about them. Think back to the LC days. We wanted nothing more than to get a group into Kara. Looking back on it now, I think everyone realizes how sophomoric a goal that was. But at the time, it was our goal and it was great. It never happened because the class makeup just wasn’t right, we couldn’t manage to get online at the same time, etc. But with these upcoming changes, we *could* have taken that group in and been successful through at least half of the instance. We were all good players with the wrong makeup and groups like that are what these changes benefit most. You, me, Vox, Herah, Mog, Buck, Ed, Ilmar, Sleez, and Cruarc could have stomped through Kara after a couple weeks learning the encounters, but it never was to be (although, that’s actually not a bad comp for Kara as is–very caster heavy, but there’s plenty of CC from the priests, and me providing backup heals when necessary).
My nerdy, literary disposition compares it to Hemingway, who is SIMPLE but certainly COMPLICATED. Hemingway wrote simple stories with short, easy to comprehend sentences and descriptions. But the real joy to his work is finding all the threads that run just under the surface. I hope that this game will become just that. Get your pals together, make sure at least some of them can tank or heal, and go have fun together. What I do insist upon though, is that with all these changes seeming to “dumb down” min/maxers that the encounters themselves not give an inch.
Sure, everyone should have the opportunity to SEE Arthas’ lair, but only a small percentage of the population should have the skill, coordination, and attitude to actually defeat the Lich King himself. Encounters like Vashj, Kael, Illidan, and Kalycgos (sp?) are hard because they HAVE TO BE. Anyone who knows a lick about Warcraft lore not only appreciates this fact but insists upon it. Remember, those of us who have been with the franchise since the beginning have lived through many battles with Arthas, Illidan, and many other epic heroes in the game. We were there when Illidan captured the Skull of Gul’dan and did what he felt he must to expel the demons from his homeland. We were with Arthas when he went on his crusade against the Undead only to be corrupted by the runeblade he used to defeat the dreadlord he had been persuing. As a result of those encounters, we expect the possibility of defeating these thoroughly epic characters to be just as epic in design and execution.
But who gives a shit if now you don’t *have* to have a Shadow Priest? Grab a Survival Hunter or Ret Pally now. God knows there’s plenty of both lying around. Is there gonna be lots of incidental AoE damage? Then, rejoice! You don’t have to recruit three more Resto Shaman! Get your melee battery in the form of a Death Knight or Warrior instead of feeling like you have to bring an Enhance Shaman.
I hope beyond hope that just because they’re allowing multiple classes/specs to provide what are considered the “necessary” buffs in a raid environment doesn’t mean that the encounters themselves are going to suffer. Please, please, please Blizzard, do not do yourselves a disservice by eliminating the spirit of such well designed and challenging instances as Zul’Aman, Mount Hyjal, and Zul’Gurub. My favorite encounters in BC are the ones that have very little room for execution flaws: Shade of Aran, Hydross, Al’ar. I hope to see fights just as complex as those in the new expansion.
Raiding should be easy to get into but difficult to master and defeat. These changes make actual raid comp not matter as much. But I hope we wont see a nerf to execution, groupmind, and persistance.
‘Tis but a scratch!
I just… can’t agree more.
I am a self admitted casual raider. I have a wife, kids, (a dog and cats too) and a full time + job. Why should my $15/mo mean less than the 15 year old kid who can play 8 hours a day and raid 6 days a week?
I for one like the idea that they are making it possible for smaller guilds and RL friends to see end game content. I started playing WoW a year before BC, so I never got to see AQ40 as a 60 or BWL, etc. Since BC I have found a casual guild who has made in to BT, but we will not get to Illdan before Itch King comes out, so I might see it…but as an 80 on a night everyone is bored and says “hey lets go kill Illdan for fun”
For the casual player these changes will make it possible for them to see the end game content and it will still be a challenge and HARD for them. Blizzard is probably looking at their demographic and playing up to it. Hard Core raiders I’m sure make up a much smaller percentage of the players than casuals. The Hard Core players can take a chill pill for once, stop yelling at everyone (DOTS DOTS DOTS!!!), and divide their WoW time between WoW and Diablo 3 if they finish the game too quickly !
Epic raids need to be Epic !
*fingers crossed for a pre-wotlk illidan kill*
thx Euri, best post of the day for sure.
I’d agree with you completely, if this game allowed people to create geared max level characters of any level for raiding purposes, like Guild Wars did for PvP.
I’m perfectly content with playing a different class/spec for a given raid encounter, but one I need often isn’t on my character select screen. That’s what this patch is about, making it unnecessary to bench all of your healers for shamans on a particular fight, or keeping four spriests on your roster but only being able to bringing two to any given raid.
Checkers and Chess.
I’m all for a simpler game, so long as it isn’t any less complicated.
I’m all for fury warriors, ret paladins, and deathknights taking up the exact same role in a raid, so long as all of those classes still feel and act like a distinct class.
If the only real difference between a fury warrior and ret paladin is that one of ‘em has a mana bar… frankly, that is unacceptable.
I don’t want to see that happen.
This change, as a whole, has the potential to be excellent. But it’s a fine line between “simple” and “easy”.
What I want to see is a game that is balanced so that it’s possible to be challanged as a raider in “hard” encounters, even though you don’t spend 5 nights a week raiding.
I raid two nights a week. But I don’t want to be forced to the equivalence of doing Kara for the 50th time because of that.
I like raiding which takes some brain achtivity. It’s like a riddle, a puzzle that you need to solve. And it feels damned good when you do it. I just wish there wasn’t such a distinct barrier between casuals and hardcore raiders and their needs. The reality is so much more shaded and full of nuances.
There are raiders with little time who still want hardships in the game. Hardships that can be overcome if you’re smart and motivated and focused. But not necessary un-employed and without family.
I’m not sure if the planned changes will go in that direction. Maybe.
Lol, I throw out a Monty Python reference, and all you guys want to talk about is the actual content of the post.
NI !
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