Quick 'n' Dirty - VI

Felt like writing but have nothing specific to talk about. Or at least anything controversial, interesting or indeed though provoking.

We have been steadily progressing though ICC, having killed Putricide and Valithria last week on 25-player and everything up to Sindragosa on 10-player. Notice the politically correct use of `player' instead of man. Mainly out of courtesy to our female players. Yes we got a few and I must admit they are just as good if not better as their male peers. But that is beside the point... if there is one in this post...

Where was I? Ah yes, Putricide, Valithria and our new target, Queen Lana'thel. I must admit I find these encounters, or all of ICC for that matter infinitely more refreshing than ToC encounters, or indeed Ulduar ones. I wont even discuss the difference in the feeling of immersion of ICC, a rich instance in terms of areas, compared to the blunt Trial arena. The encounters themselves seem to me like a very nice combination of different mechanics. Movement, situational awareness, raw output, phases - all seem to be nicely orchestrated and combined, making the encounters challenging in a more involving way than in the past. It still does not beat the feeling I had with Black Wing Lair but hey, different times.





And on top of all, the Gunship encounter. For me, this is one of the most enjoyable encounters, mainly because it reminds me of Pirates, Start Wars and Boba Fett (The Return of the Jedi rumble over Sarlacc's Pit). I mean, how cool is that? Jumping off the Alliance ship, with rockets on the back, landing in the midst (or something close) of battle. This has to be one of the most immersive fights!

All of the above would be even more enjoyable, if it was not for the stupid lag of the past weeks. Nevertheless, we had some nice raid days the past week, around challenging encounters and a constant smirk in my face as I look froward to meeting him again...

Guild recruitment and Tiers of capabilities

One of my observations, related to the current state of things in WoW concerns the quality of applications for recruitment. It seems that the level of those seeking guilds, in terms of quality, has degraded a lot. At least in our realm - allegedly the top PvE realm in EU - and regarding our own applicants. So, I could not help thinking that the easier content essentially hurts mid-range guilds and eventually will hurt top guilds. Now, here is my reasoning.

We got three tiers of guilds. Tier One (T1) is the `hardcore' top guilds of a realm where the 'cream of the crop' finds home to satisfy the desire total annihilation of bosses-targets within the smallest amount of time possible, after their introduction. Tags like, realm-firsts, rankings etc go in this category.

The second tier (T2) is mid-range guilds which are usually slower than the top ones, either due to schedule (like my guild which raids 3 days per week just for its members to keep their sanity, their spouses and their RL in order) or due to `lesser' skill.

The third tier (T3) is the entry level guilds wich range from `social' doing-nothingness, to clearin a fragment of the content or just not attaining the top achievements.

Since the content is easier these three tiers are more distinct than ever. Those who can do things fast, efficiently or what I like to call `punchy'. Those that can do the same things more or less but require a bit more time. And those that for a variety of reasons can not do all, some or most.

Although my tier model is crude, its adequate to demonstrate my point. Each tier mostly replenishes itself from its immediate lower.

Now, I believe that in the past where the content was harder people often transferred to guilds within their tier. Top guilds were off limits, mid range guilds were much more and casual guilds quite fewer cause there was not much `casualness' in the game (I am excluding PvP from this ofc).

Whereas some players sleeked for more and jumped tiers, many stayed with in their tier - mostly T2 - and tried to find more satisfying raid environments. Nowadays things are a bit different. Since content is easier people can jump to the tier above with greater ease. That means that T2 which has capable players looses quite a few to T1. Unfortunately those from T3 who wish to go to T2 and who for a variety of reason could not complete certain (if not many) elements of an overall easier content are usually not good enough for T2.

In other words those that have not done basic things in this content (and wish to do more, hence its not a matter of commitments/time etc) are not good enough for many T2 guilds.

Of course, these are just observations. I may be way off there. Do I make sense or this sounds like a phd thesis...?

Can I have a Legendary Ferrari?

(Continued from a Blessing of Kings comment)


Wait...

Can I email Aston Martin then to make a cheap, super-fast, super-luxury, super-desirable (almost legendary) car with a couple of grand (in euros please) because I got a life and have no time to earn (farm?) the hundreds of grand needed?

In the debate of casual vs. hardcore, easy content vs. challenging content etc. …

I admit I can not have a clear opinion. Of course if I could get my hands on a Ferrari I would. Still, if all could get their hands on one it would loose its value as an exotic, luxury car. Whether we like it or not the ease of acquiring some items is what makes them more desirable or more valuable.

In current Wow the Ferraris are some mounts, derived from certain difficult achievements, unlike in the past where rare mounts were an occurrence of luck. Or to be precise Ferraris were some legendaries, or some Tiers. Now, if you kill this boss with a set of (difficult nonetheless) conditions you get a Ferrari (albeit with no technical advancements to other cars, just the novelty from looks). If you can't, you can settle with some slightly less cool mounts. Which themselves are better than the Yugo's you can purchase from Vendors.

Blizzard (or 'Disney' as Rohan and Tobold mention ;-p) changed its approach towards what we call casual players (I call them mainstream, ‘casual’ players often do not know how to get to Northrend...or even that Northrend exists) and allowed them deeper in the content. Unlike in the past if you are a mainstream player you can easily see:

* The story and the lore (could not to a great extent in the past)
* The encounters (at least in 10-mans, possibly 25-mans with much less effort than in the past)
* Wear Tier-7 or look-alike gear with formidable stats
* Gather reputation rewards easily
* Experience the 'bulk content' of the game

As a hardcore player you do all of the above but can differentiate to some extent with:

Completing difficult achievements or achievement-groups with some novelty rewards

Possibly get some of the rare-est end-game gear

I feel Blizzard has managed to get the structure of the reward hierarchy fairly right. Still it needs some tweaking to make it compelling to a larger (read: mainstream, not casual nor hardcore) player base. And we must also bear in mind we are at the beginning for this expansion cycle with one of the most important raids being a recycled version of a past one (which was mostly left inexperienced). I think Blizz ought to keep us in our toes with:

* Gradually increasing Instance difficulty - Blizz presumably tried to bring more players to the raiding world with Wotlk and gave them the opportunity to learn some basics. Now possibly they can hook more people into raiding.
* Introduce more than one instance levels per content patch. Ulduar, plus something else for example. People are becoming better and better into raiding and along with blizzard streamlining the raiding process people go over the content faster.
* Introduce more achievement-like rewards (achievements now work kind of like legendary quests)
* Introduce legendary item(s) to differentiate the elite from the mainstream
* Possibly introduce gear/reputation checks within reason.

As I said, I feel Blizzard managed to introduce a fairly good structure to the game for the rewards hierarchy. Now they need to enrich it, mainly to keep the mainstream players satisfied and offer some reasonable challenges. After all, they want to keep us hooked in the game – and that can not be done if we cruise through everything in a couple of months time.