So last post seems to have become a sort of center for massive controversy and a great deal of debate.
However, an alarming number of comments have either misinterpreted the original post (as in the case of Bellwether) or my words have been twisted so as to be completely unrecognizable (as in the case of Garret).
So let’s try this again, shall we? Set the record straight and all that.
Don’t worry if you misunderstood me, it’s not your fault. As a blogger, it’s my job – well, hobby, technically – to communicate effectively and clearly. If my points were taken the wrong way, it’s nobody’s fault but mine.
There are plenty of arguments that can be leveled at the Emblem of Conquest change. Things like “this change will ruin character progression” or “this will encourage players to skip content entirely” are legitimate issues.
The post was not directed at those holding that opinion. The post was not directed at everyone who has an issue with the Emblem change.
The post was directed at a specific set of people who have an issue with the change, an attitude that was summarized best by occam99:
Funnily enough, the people who have that attitude ARE the ones who feel that they should be worshipped for their gear…and that’s what this is all about. “Hey, I have T8.5. Obviously I’m a better person than you, which means that you don’t deserve what I have”.
It is ass-backwards, and supported by the fact that in WoW, we are all anonymous. If someone says to me, “I have a Jaguar and you don’t, therefore I am better than you, thus you don’t deserve the same things as me”, I’m gonna punch him in the throat.
It’s THAT kind of raider the last post was leveled at.
If you are NOT that kind of person, then that last post wasn’t directed at you.
Is that clearer now?
Alert readers will notice that there were two things missing from the last post:
- Any mention of Emblem’s of Triumph
- My actual, personal opinion on the matter
There was nothing in the last post about whether the emblem change is good or bad, merely that in the long run it won’t really change anything.
I’m ambivalent on the Emblem change. To actually get all the gear available from these badges will take a huge amount of effort.
Sure, you can get a bunch of pieces in four days, but you’d have to run every heroic each of those days. Who the hell has that kind of time?
To get every piece of gear possible from this change, it will take the average player weeks, if not months, to pick them all up. For the average player, all this will effectively do is act as a slot filling mechanic. You run Naxx for a few weeks, pick up some epics, but gosh darn it those pants won’t drop!
Whatever, just spend those badges, grab the pants and move on.
It’s also somewhat interesting that Blizzard is introducing a mini-gear reset in the middle of an expansion. Can we expect this to continue? Is Wrath going to be the last major expansion, and from now on we just have large patches, introducing new quests/raid content, complete with a miniature gear reset?
However.
Do I ever have a bone to pick with this Emblem change.
Remember how I was talking about how this system works just like it does with PvP gear? It gets a lot easier to grab the good gear, but it isn’t the best gear. To get the best, current gear, you need to be on the bleeding edge.
All a system like this does is give you the chance to not fall behind.
But then, there’s this whole Emblem of Triumph thing being available for completing the daily heroic quests. (Note that these emblems are awarded for both the “kill the final boss” quests and Timear’s “kill X thingies” quests.)
This… doesn’t make sense to me.
Awarding “last season” raiding gear for easy stuff makes sense. I’ve iterated why this post and last.
But awarding current season raiding gear for the same (relatively) easy content?
That, to me, is fundamentally wrong.
Though it may be irrelevant, as if you aren’t running the highest level content, those emblems are going to accrue really slowly.
I hope all that is a little clearer now. If not, I’m really struggling to find new ways to say the same thing. D:
I’m also getting really tired with this whole “WoW is EASY” thing. WoW is NOT easy. It’s more accessible, friendly, and easier than other MMOs on the markets, but it is not easy.
As I said in a comment last post, it took Ensidia two hundred and four tries to down the game’s hardest content. That is not indicative of an easy game.
You think heroics are easier? Try running Old Kingdom or Azjol’Nerub with a tank who hasn’t been there. Have fun wiping in Violet Hold when you get Erekem and a DPS that doesn’t understand “don’t DPS the adds!”
God forbid you have a new group and Xevozz.
Oh yeah, and Emalon is an absolute blast with a tank who hasn’t done the fight before, to say nothing of a DPS that hasn’t been there before.
In terms of straight up difficulty, WoW is not any easier. The amount of trash in a given instance is significantly lower, and of course attunements have been removed. All the tedious things have been removed from the game to make the game less time consuming and more accessible.
WoW is just as hard as it has ever been.
Problem is, the player base has not maintained the same level of skill.
Did you really think your skills would be at exactly the same level now as they were then?
Did you really expect a heroic instance to challenge you when you cleared SSC last expansion, let alone BT?
Did you really expect this expansion’s version of Karazhan to challenge you when you could clear last expansion’s in two hours?
I think the biggest proponents of the “WoW is easy” argument aren’t claiming that it’s easy so much as easiER. they’re claiming that over the course of a few patches WoW’s gone all soft on them.
This goes right straight back to the elitist issue. They played back BEFORE X was added or Y was nerfed, darn it! They remember when they didn’t have Summoning Stones and you had to WALK to your instances! Back when Paladin Seals lasted 30 seconds, not 30 minutes, Lay On Hands had a cooldown measured in hours, Windfury could proc off itself, and half the time Blink would send you through a wall or off a cliff or something!
The main point I hear these people making is that they used to be able to down Onyxia or Ragnaros back when that meant something, or blow up a pally or shammy back when they were faction-specific classes. Now any fresh-out-of-heroics-geared shmuck can join a battleground and get 50 honorable kills just by standing there and then snag some sexy Gladiator gear, or get their guild to carry their 1.8k dps butt through the 25-man they’ve got on farm status to get them gear they didn’t really earn.
Aww, my barely over 2k dps kinda sucks, but you didn’t have to rub it in. ~_^
Also, the line about walking to instances made me (a literally one week before Wrath was released player) crack up at work. Totally made my day. ^_^
I agree that garrett really twisted it in his head.
For Srlys Guys, someone who thinks that 600 dps is fine in a 10man raid, or even 1200…
I also think that he is jelous of all the people who are now going to be ahead of his casual guild where the best player with a whopping 3000 dps (which isn’t too bad) an alt of a raider (in blues and crafted epics that is apparently a “Top notch player”)
sorry euripedes, i had an axe to sharpen here.
i think you and i are talking about the same person, and his name was garreth i think.
You make a very very good point about player skill levels and it’s not one we consider very often.
I started playing WoW mid-2005 but it wasn’t until settling into a casual guild and running instances regularly – particularly getting ourselves sorted out into raiding Kara that I actually learnt to play the game well.
I probably spent 18 months with no appreciation of ‘mechanics’ or anything other than a passing nod at itemisation.
From there I’m now part of a team running our guild which has grown a lot over the last few months and we’re progressing through Ulduar. Both my skill and that of the people I play with has increased and continues to do so. We’re able to react with minimum communication to the latest trick of the RNG, know our classes well and know where to find information that helps us to achieve our humble goals.
It’s very hard for Bliz to create a game that caters both for new players who are, with respect, clueless and beginning their journey and keeping us old hacks entertained.
I think kthey do pretty well considering an dhte badge changes make a lot of sense apart from the accesibility of Triumph badges as you pointed out.
“Sure, you can get a bunch of pieces in four days, but you’d have to run every heroic each of those days. Who the hell has that kind of time?”
I think this is the part that you underestimate the speed of this change. You don’t need to do every heroic. You can just do Nexus (5 emblem) + DTK (4 emblem) + VH (3 emblem) = 12 emblem/day in the short period of time
“In terms of straight up difficulty, WoW is not any easier. The amount of trash in a given instancce is significantly lower”
I really feel that heroic 5-man in LK is easier than TBC. I have no problem with this because they only drop emblem for T7 at the moment. I just think that Blizz go too far to have them drop emblem for T8.5 in my opinion.
As I said in your last post, it is not all bad for the raider. We will get better geared recruit and able to progress to see the latest content which is more important than looked pretty
But I still have mixed feeling about this change.
I can not agree with you Euripedes, the game is easier then couple of patches before, Pink had a gr8 post on her blog about it. – time before enrage-Timed nerfs, look on Ulduar and compare the first 4 bossed in first two weeks and now, on first tries you had to been focus and give your best, and now? u can slack like hell and you will kill the bosses.
The best thing imo in raiding was progression and the excitement in killing the boss, after tons of wipes and thinking of improving the tactics, and now 1-2 tries and his down..
I would like to clarify about the difficulty in my previous post.
I did not talk about the level of gear required to succeed in Heroic 5-man but the mechanic of the fight. If you compare the fight with similar mechanic, the I feel that the fight in LK is easier than in TBC. For example Urom’s AE in Oc is easier to dodge compare to Ikiss’s AE because it always come from the same spot. Kiting the Grandmaster Vorpil’s VW (SLab) vs Kiting Xevozz.
Maybe you are right that I have more experience so I find LK heroic easier. But in my opinion, the LK Heroic fights are a lot easier to learn and execute.
@ Salandor
Part of the problem is that the WoW player base is too smart.
We don’t need to wipe over and over again to bosses to improve tactics, we just google the boss’ name and copy what some other guild did, which usually works just fine.
The only difficulty comes in the execution of these strategies, which only takes a few tries for experienced raiders to “get”, due to the simple fact that they’ve been raiding for years at this point.
@ Tryst
Blink had a 25% chance to cause the caster to fall through the world. I swear it did.
I would echo Euripedes here and add that in addition to copy and paste strategies the theory-crafting for WoW has improved leaps and bounds over what we had 4 years ago. Every class that I play has a community generated/moderated spreadsheet and dps/heal/tps model that responds to even PTR changes within a half a day.
Even if Ensidia never released a video or strat, people have tools at their disposal to make better talent, gear, glyph selections than ever before. In the past I had built my own spreadsheet for my main, but never had the in depth understanding of the other classes raiding with me.
Sure, it’s personally annoying to have Blizzard nerf bosses that we’ve already downed or were making good attempts on. I think you have to take a raid as a whole now though as that is the new model. It’s no longer separation of raid quality based on which boss you’ve downed, but if you can clear the entire instance and then if you can clear the hard modes. It isn’t “beat your head against Razorgore” before you can see the rest of the instance. It’s we’ve made it possible to see almost all of the bosses if you’re reasonably competent, and if you excel, you can get in, enjoy a beautiful raid and kill everything in a reasonable amount of time or you can take on hardmodes and Algalon for the elite loot and reputation.
@ PP
I disagree!
Consider Xevozz versus Vorpil.
Xevozz requires the whole party to actively kite away from the orb thingies, maintaining LoS with their own healer and staying out of LoS with the orbs as much as possible.
Vorpil requires the tank to wander away from the shadow thingies, with the healer and DPS following along.
Which wasn’t even necessary if the DPS and heals were solid.
If you have awesome heals and awesome DPS and try to zerg Xevozz, you will wipe in a matter of seconds.
If you have awesome heals and awesome DPS and try to zerg Vorpil, he’s not even as hard as the trash pulls right before him.
Hmm… I think it would be a good intellectual exercise to compare all BC heroics with all the LK heroics… perhaps a weekend project?
I haven’t had a chance to express my feelings about this yet. It amazes me how people cry about this changing the game for the worse and blah blah blah. It makes the gear more accessible to people who just ding 80. They don’t have to farm for months to get up to speed. Don’t like it? Don’t take that route. Trade your EoC for EoH and EoV. Run Naxx10 and Naxx25 for the gear and the achievement, not for the emblems. Remember, this is PvE we’re talking about. It’s one thing for PvPers to complain that people are handed gear, but you’re whining about PvE!
Anyone who claims the game is “too easy” really means that they are mad that everyone can get the gear they can get without putting in the time they did. Too easy? Have you done all the hard modes? Have you got the achievement for undergearing ulduar (I think I remember hearing about this)? How about running Naxx shorthanded? How about the Undying achievement? PvE is as hard as YOU make it. Start a guild with an alt that plays “the pure way” if you want to. I’m sure you can find a few people who are like minded.
I’ve only been playing since December. You don’t know how often I have to sit through people talking about how hard bosses were back in the day and how hard the game was and how much time they put in and blah blah blah. Do I care? Great, you’re a WoW grandpa. Grats. That doesn’t affect me. I would have dropped this game very quickly if I had to level through the crap you had to level through plus the new stuff.
The new way of showing off your e-peen, as a few have said, is achievements and also mounts. Get over yourself. It’s PvE!
Heroics are definitely easier, and I’m talking about for people who know how to play.
If you don’t know how to play, then Heroics and raids are going to be difficult, but that is not the issue here.
In BC when Heroics first came out, they were incredibly difficult. A lot of mobs had 360 degree Cleaves, for example, which meant any melee classes ended up eating dirt very quickly.
CC was very important back then, as was concentrating dps on single targets to kill them off one at a time, and not pull aggro off the tank.
These days the tank makes a few aoe taunts, and the mobs stick to them like clue; the dps aoe them down (and every dps can aoe these days), and you move onto the next mob group.
When was the last time you saw a Warlock using a Succubus for mob cc in a Heroic? In BC you had to know how to do that, or you didn’t get into a group.
As far as raiding is concerned, it CAN be as hard as it ever was, but also, it is a lot easier these days to make progression.
Any bunch of players with any kind of skill should be able to get 5 or 6 bosses down in Ulduar.
Imagine if Ulduar’s first boss was like Hydross or even Najentus? A serious gear check and inevitable wipe nights.
Instead we have a very fun and not very difficult encounter, and I think that is a good thing.
There were some nasty Heroic BC dungeons. Just nasty. Mostly hard trash pulls, chances for adds out the wazoo, etc.
I think Wrath toned down some of the crazy pulls and I think most folks are just smarter so it seems lots easier.
Is Kara easier than BRD? Maybe, or Maybe it’s because it’s a bit shorter and easier to slice up. I think Blizz does learn from mistakes in many ways.
I do think we had too many tiered emblems. I do think we needed to have them shrink but perhaps they went a bit too far.
My idea is: Heroics drop Valor, Naxx drops Conquest and Ulduar and the Coliseum drops Triumph. Heck even make it so you can exchange 10 Valor for 1 Conquest or 25 for 1 Triumph.
You are probably right about Xevozz versus Vorpil.
Maybe the need to CC mob and aggro management in TBC also make me think that TBC heroics are harder.
There are many boss in TBC that scare me. For example: Nexus-Prince Shaffar(MT), Murmur (SLab), Ikiss (SH), Omor the Unscarred (Ramp)
While in LK, once you understand the fight, the boss that concern me is Loken with Pally healer. (I am talking from the DPS perspective)
Also, I still remember several hard trash pull in TBC even now: The group at the top of the stair in Ramp, the group before Murmur when you don’t have CC, the bomb trowing demon in Mech when you have 3 melee dps >.<
In LK, I think there is only one pull that required LOS pull
Sorry about the off-topic. About the emblem change, I am not happy about the current system because people just stop doing it once they start doing Naxx. I think Blizz should encourage people to run Heroic because
(1) It help guildie bond with each other. I find it is hard to know other people in the 25 man raid. I think it make the guild stronger.
(2) Raider have chance to meet new players and see how they perform. Right now, raiders have zero don’t have any incentive to do heroic
(3) It give opportunity for old player to teach new player in the more forgiving setting.
But I think that Blizz is going too far by give emblem conquest to Heroic. I would prefer that they give emblem of Valor and add item that Valor can buy.
“Problem is, the player base has not maintained the same level of skill.”
Spot on, there. It may not be the complete “end-all” answer, but I think it is certainly an often overlooked elephant in the middle of the room. This coupled with the accessibility of published information… maybe we bloggers are doing our jobs *too* well…
Let’s start a campaign of disinformation: “stand in every colored circle in the game to get a special buff… the blogging general public swears by it”.
Sure there are a lot of extraneous factors like whatever the hell Blizz is doing/thinking, but lets take care not to overlook the obvious: we’ve got a strong, smart community of gamers on our hands.
“Though it may be irrelevant, as if you aren’t running the highest level content, those emblems [Triumph] are going to accrue really slowly.”
21 per week ain’t bad – probably be able to buy a Tier piece in four, if not three, weeks.
I’m convinced there is a disfigured man in a dark hooded robe somewhere within Blizzard HQ saying, “Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design.”
Wow… I’m suddenly feeling a surge of anticipation for the (yet to be determined) release of SW:TOR.
On the “WoW is Easier” topic:
I understand your point, Rip, but the game has gotten easier with every expansion. Lately it gets easier with every patch. If you add up enough ‘easiers’ you eventually get an ‘easy’ result.
For end game raiders that conquered the original Naxx WoW is easy.
For BC raiders the game is easier.
Either level of ease is, at a minimum, less challenging. When was the last time you sheeped in PvE?
I was asked to trap something for the first time in months the other day, and had to remember my chain-trap mechanics. As a Hunter this was my bread-and-butter, now it’s a lost art.
For me the game is easier. For my guildies the game is easy. It’s a perspective thing.
Also, you have to remember that many of the raiders have enormous amounts of experience and skill to call on. That is going to be a great deal of help, even in a new encounter. I wasn’t a raider in Vanilla, that only came in BC, but when I think about the player I was then and the player I am now… there is simply no comparison, my skill level is so much greater now than it was then… and I think that may often be forgotten by people… just how far they’ve come since they were a shiny new raider.
It was handed to me hard in showing my niece and nephew WoW the last few days… they never played before, they didnt know how to do the things I don’t even think about anymore, or the knowledge base I have…
So of course this is much easier for you than for someone new to raiding who has yet to acquire the skills you and me now take for granted. So relax, and remember, there’s always room for more fun. Those ‘noobs’ people make fun of and roll your eyes at are tomorrow’s skilled raiders, given half a chance to learn and grow their skills.
[...] by Euripedes at Critical QQ, who first lambasted raging “elitist” raiders and then explained himself a little bit better, laying out the more cogent issues behind the pros and cons to the new emblem changes. My final [...]
You know all the talk of easy really got me to thinking and I remembered something I wrote many moons ago
http://world-of-warcraft-help-guide.blogspot.com/search/label/Auchenai%20Crypts
THIS type of thing just doesn’t happen anymore, it just doesn’t.
As I said in the other post, wow can be hard and it just isn’t anymore. CC is definitely not required at all and for the most part you can simply bulldoze your way through most things now, which is to say a lot of the challenge has gone out the window.
I think more people would be ok with the changes if heroics were actually challenging and required some thought. I also like the tiered heroics theory (normal, heroic, Elitist raider) What would be really cool is if an instance could adapt to your gropus item level. I.E. Have it look at the groups average item level and provide extra life to mobs and bosses based on that. Then perhaps drop a scaled amount and type of emblems. This way even Uldar geared people could come back and play in heroics against enraged timed bosses.
Can you imagine actually have to SAVE to a heroic again? When’s the last time you had to come back and “finish an heroic”
Bah, my internet sucks and I may or may not have a double post in here. Anyway…
This:
“For the average player, all this will effectively do is act as a slot filling mechanic. You run Naxx for a few weeks, pick up some epics, but gosh darn it those pants won’t drop!
Whatever, just spend those badges, grab the pants and move on.”
I’m leveling an alt with the intent of doing end-game content with him. With the exception of the last few nights, my loot luck is teh suck. I was not looking forward to grinding content again in the *hopes* that I might see the item drop and then not lose the roll. Again. And again.
I can see how the special snowflakes would be irritated by the change, but I, for one, plan on abusing the hell out of it to get my alt geared.
I think it is a good change. I raid 3 days a week 4 hours a night or basically 12 hours a week. That is more than enough. Even with that much time invested, my guild just downed Freya last night for the first time and we spent pretty much the entire 4 hours doing it. After several stupid wipes and having to clear trash for the 2nd time, we finally had a flawless attempt. It isn’t just about the skil involved and the time sink, it is sometimes about getting the right people to log on and be ready to raid. We have a very good group of 25, when they are all available. I’m happy that now, I may be able to get some of that gear without having those 2 or 3 people who aren’t always available. I may be able to actually get a piece of T8.5. So far after several weeks of raiding in Ulduar, I still don’t have my first piece. Have I paid my dues to get one? I think so. However, I still don’t have one. At our current rate of progression and time spent, I think it could be several more weeks before I get one. Of course, part of that problem is that I play two different classes. If the guild needs a healer, I bring my healer, if DPS, I DPS. So, my time has split to a certain extent and so has my badges. Maybe after the change, I will be able to get a piece of gear, I have worked for and IMO, earned.
I just wanted to say that I understand what you’re saying (and even understood it in the first post). Unfortunately, those who are elitists are not likely to recognize or agree that there’s anything wrong with the behavior.
It’s similar to what happens in high school. Cheerleaders and football players are the elites of the school. Many (most?) of them feel it’s their god-given right to be elitists. They have made it to the top of their social ladder. Some, because of natural good looks and/or talent. Others because of hard work. Regardless of how they got there, many (not all) believe they are more important people in the world than those who either couldn’t make the grade or weren’t interested in doing so in the first place.
Many TV shows and movies have been made about this topic. There’s always the one elitist who has a self awareness experience that makes them realize that we’re all people, none of us being better than the other. Why are movies like that so popular? Because it’s such a standard human experience. There will always be elitists and only some of them will see the err of their ways.
Back to WoW, though. We all pay the same amount each month to play the game. Regardless of our skill level, we all deserve to see and experience all aspects of the game. Blizz’s model for accomplishing this is a good one, I feel. Let the most skilled and organized players have the first crack at the new content. Let them get the world firsts. Let them get the glory that comes with it. Then, when the dust settles, make it accessible to everyone who pays the monthly fee.
I get eliteist somtimes, but not as a kickass best in slot geared person.
Just being a mage, a part of a higher class society that others… just couldn’t ever understand.
I tell them that in the end its all good fun,
but we really know the truth, /wink
Xevozz.
The bane of people looking for an easy 3 emblems.
So the last 3 times I’ve had Xevozz in H VH someone has got the achievement void dance.
This has been because the PuG was;
a) not capable of understanding my brief but clear instructions to DPS THE VOID THINGYS IF YOU GET PHASED…
b) healer got phased 3 out of the first 4 times and just decided to ignore the voids
c) the only people who were prepared to kill voids didn’t get phased.
As the tank, using DBM, I know exactly what’s happening and watch the affected player to see what they do when they get the debuff. Almost always they do nothing, just keep up the DPS.
Strangely, he still dies. I remember wiping on this boss a few times while levelling, but in heroics the healer just powers through and all is well.
What’s up with that? have I just been lucky and had pro healers?
Meanwhile, do we stock up on emblems of heroism before patch day? Will all the QQ over emblem changes have an effect on what goes to live?
Euri, I think the strong negative reaction to your post was mostly due to your failure to differentiate between two different ideas in your post. They are:
1) People who think they deserve better rewards for accomplishing more challenging tasks
2) People who think that having better epics or more skill in a video game makes them BETTER PEOPLE OVERALL than others.
The source of the confusion is that your original post, and most of this one, sound like they are railing against group (1). I’m gleaning, by reading between the lines and carefully parsing your quote from occam, that you meant to tell off group (2). It really sounds like you keep saying that being more skilled SHOULDN’T earn you better rewards, or that people who effortfully apply skill to a greater challenge don’t deserve a greater reward for that than someone who facerolls over an easy heroic.
It seems like you are trying to say that this is NOT what you mean, but you are having trouble explicitly coming out and saying that clearly.
So Euri, is it true that you think skilled players who put effort into using that skill to defeat greater challenges deserve better rewards than those who do easier content?
And is it also true that your vitriol was ONLY meant for those who wrongly think that doing better in a video game makes them overall a better person than someone who doesn’t spend as much time playing?
Or am I misinterpreting you again? If you just come out and say things clearly, and are alert enough to separate the ideas you are talking about, then hopefully that will prevent similar misunderstandings in the future.
I just don’t fit in, I guess. I don’t give a flying squirrel about gear, and I don’t care about how anyone else is geared, either. I run around in a crappy guild and we have a good time and I get pwned a lot by other players (the other day it was a friggin’ Priest, A PRIEST — good God). I fight in battlegrounds and die over and over again. I go on instances and am often the 1st person killed, and I LOVE IT anyway.
I am getting better, and eventually, I might be able to hold my own in a top-notch raiding guild, but I don’t think I’ll join one, because they’re too intense and stressful, and so many of them are into that “I’m better than you are” crap. The minute I start to get all huffy about my mad skillz and start lording it over other people because my gear is T200.5 and theirs is only T199.9, I hope my computer explodes and kills me instantly.
[...] Woah, Woah, Woah… Slow Down ThereSo last post seems to have become a sort of center for massive controversy and a great deal of debate. However, an alarming number of comments have either misinterpreted the original post (as in the case of Bellwether) or my words have been twisted so as to be completely unrecognizable (as in the case of Garret). So let’s try this again, shall we? Set the record straight and all that. Don’t worry if you misunderstood me, it’s not your fault. As a blogger, it’s my job ? well, hobby, technic [...]