My Take On How To Fix WoW

There’s a lot of complaining about WoW in general lately. I myself have complained quite a bit about recent changes. Just a few of the complaints have been about the dumbing down of raiding, forthcoming pally changes, and a banning incident that happened recently which is only further supported by the recent suspension of Exodus for the Yogg exploit.

But you know what? I don’t care. I just don’t care anymore. I know I can’t fix it. I know I can’t change it. But here’s my take on how I think they could fix WoW.

The State of WoW

It’s my opinion that WoW is broken. I think if you approach any player that has played since Vanilla or even BC they will have the same opinion if not the exact same view of what’s broken. Those players who may have started playing just before or after Wrath came out might be blissfully unaware of any problems with the game because to them there are no problems. The experiences they are having are completely new and as a result are exactly the way they are supposed to be.

Here is my current list of issues with WoW:

• Leveling
• Class Changes
• Content
• Progression

Leveling

Let’s start at the beginning. We all have to level a toon at some point. Most of us want to level at least one alt, if not more, to understand other classes or just for something different to do. Some think that the problem with leveling is the massive amount of time it takes to get from 1 to 80, because let’s face it there are precious few people that actually want to spend the next 6 months leveling another toon while playing their mains. But I think the larger problem is with the Old World quests.

The Old World quests are monotonous, repetitive, and often have you spending more time traveling than actually questing. Whenever I level an alt now, I skip every single quest that takes me to another zone. It makes absolutely no sense to spend 30 minutes traveling for a quest turn in that will reward me the same experience as doing another quest or even farming mobs for 5 minutes.

Blizzard’s answer to this problem has been to reduce the level requirements for mounts and heirloom items. These are both good solutions in my opinion, but still doesn’t address the main problem. Leveling is tedious and boring for those of us that have already done it. The new player wanting to experience everything will have fun, but for those of us used to localized questing as in Northrend, and to a lesser degree in Outland, Old World questing sucks!

As Blizzard is not willing to devote resources in fixing Old World questing and insists on patching it with heirloom items, experience nerfs, and nerfing mount requirements I think they should probably just go all the way and provide the option to roll any class at 40 if they choose.

Why not 55 like DKs? I think leveling is important in teaching a player the basics of their toons and DKs had the added fortune of learning their abilities piece meal as they quested rather than having all level 55 abilities just dumped on them. Backing down the level to 40 would assist in giving the player more time to learn their toons, besides with the heirloom shoulders, and the forthcoming 2nd heirloom item, getting to 80 will still be fairly easy.

Class Changes

The holy paladin class changes regarding crit and mp5 have me fairly upset. Do we have a limitless supply of mana? If we’re careful, yes. Does it need to be changed? Probably. But don’t change the way I do things! Adjust my stats, adjust my gear, etc. Don’t give me a bunch of mp5 gear that’s useless and nerf my Illumination all at the same time! Adjust my Intellect, adjust my crit bonuses, adjust my output, not my input!

My biggest complaint is “Bring the player, not the class”. I think what’s happened here is too much homogenization. Maybe I’m the only pally out there that doesn’t want to be good at raid healing, but I like that I’m specialized. I also like the fact that when I do have to raid heal (i.e. when things go bad) and I can pull it off, it’s a measure of my skill and a little bit of luck if I can make things happen!

Besides I also look forward to being specialized in raid healing with my shammy and priest and where’s the fun in that if my pally can compete with raid healing? This also ties in to my complaint with leveling alts. The lack of specialization doesn’t give me a lot of reason to level alts. If Class A can do what Class B does, just with different spell names, then what’s the point?

I’m not saying it isn’t nice to have pallies be a little more diverse, but I don’t want to be able to compete on even the tiniest of levels when it comes to group healing.

My solution? Go back to specializations, but change the encounters such that more than one specialization can successfully compete. Don’t do things like require Replenishment for raids and then give it to multiple classes! It doesn’t work properly. Each class handles mana differently. Give them the ability to manage their own mana. Shadow priests with replen was just an added bonus and should have been kept that way.

Content

I didn’t get to see all of the BC raids. I started roughly 6 months after BC was released. Did I miss a lot? I think so, but I still had the time of my life! Why? One reason was because of the available content.

BC saw us with Karazahn, Gruul’s, Mag’s, SSC, TK, and Hyjal. Although somewhat ignorant of the original raids, I believe all of those may have been part of the initial relase and I’m at work so I can’t look it up right now. I believe Black Temple was released later as were Zul’Aman and Sunwell. Regardless there was more content at release than with Wrath. More to experience, less boredom.

Now one might argue that we have 10s and 25s now. Well I haven’t experienced 25man Ulduar, but every 10 and 25 I have experienced is THE EXACT SAME THING!!! There’s nothing different except the boss’ health. And it didn’t even scale well as Naxx25 was easier than Naxx10.

It seems to me we’ve sacrified the quantity of content for the quality. Wrath raids are beautiful! Ulduar is impressive to say the least! But I’d trade a lot of it in for a couple more raids. Which leads me to the number one problem I have with WoW to date…

Progression

Ding! I’m now 80! What to do? Start gearing up I guess.

/craft a couple of epics
/run a couple of heroics

Screw it, I wanna take a peak at Naxx! Anyone wanna go?

/assemble 10 man raid

Holy shit this is easy!!! Forget heroics! Let’s go in here all the time!

Sound familiar? In BC we hit 70, crafted a couple of items, leveled rep, bought keys to run heroics, ran attunement quests to get keys to raid, all while we wiped and cried about how hard each step of the way was. But it was fun! I’ll never forget the night I finally got Murmur down! Pally healing that fight was a bitch! I earned that Champion of the Naaru title! I sweat blood and tears for it! To this day I’m proud to have that title.

Champion of the Frozen Wastes? Couldn’t give a rat’s ass! Displayed it for like two days and switched.

Progression. Fix progression. It’s too late to go back now, but for future reference make us work for heroics. Make us work to raid. Then make us work to keep raiding.

In the two years I’ve been playing the best thing I ever thought Blizzard did was to nerf all BC raids one month before the release of Wrath. Hyjal was still challenging, but I got to see it pre- and post-nerf. I just got to see more post-nerf.

Release a raid. Make it harder than weasling your way out of being caught cheating on national TV. Wait until the next raid you release and nerf it for others to follow. Make us still work at the nerfed raids. We don’t need to be in the raids the hardcore guilds are in at the same time. I personally don’t want be among the first. I’m content to get in there eventually. Give the achievements and titles to those who complete the raids pre-nerf. They can gloat and feel all special because no one pays attention to them 5 seconds after they got it anyway. In a month 90% of all players won’t even remember the name of the guild Exoskellywhatchamawhosits that got the Yogg achievement with the exploit.

My Take

I know I’m not smart enough to fix WoW. But I do know what I liked about it and what I currently don’t like about it. If I could fix only one thing it would be the progression. It’s what kept me going and what keeps me away now. It’s what motivates me to level alts for end-game because what’s the end-game without a little challenge. I don’t want epics handed to just be handed to me. I don’t necessarily want to struggle like I do with my main, but I don’t want it easy either.

Last night was our guild’s 2nd night to go back in and get Hodir. I so wanted to be a part of it! But I got home late and it wasn’t to be. Sadly, I didn’t even miss it. I don’t know if they got Hodir down, but I do know that I wanted to be a part of that first kill. So it saddens me that I’ve reached a point where I’m not sure I’d care if I ever logged in again.

Maybe I’ve changed. Maybe I’m looking for something new. Maybe I just want to spend more time with the family. I don’t know. But I do know that without a feeling of progression like we had in BC, WoW just isn’t the game for me anymore.

Did He Just Say…?

First Time Shammy Healer

Thursday night was Naxx25 which is basically a Guild Pug night. Grab as many guildies as you can and pug the rest. So this time I decided to go. I even spent 2.5 hours researching and purchasing crap for my resto shammy to get ready.

For those that know me, they know that I generally could give a flaming fart about loot. If it drops and I want it, I’ll roll unless I can see someone else probably needs it more. If I’m on an alt and someone’s a main, I’ll usually pass regardless. Basically I think loot rules should always be fair pretty much regardless. So it came with a bit of shock and a whole lot of confusion when Hunt started to explain the loot rules.

In a nutshell if you’ve been a part of his group over the past few weeks, you get special privileges. Main rolls are /roll 1000. Offspec rolls are /roll 100. Now let me interject by saying that /roll 1000 is just weird to me anyway having come from a server that never did that. It seems to be the norm on Azgalor though so whatever. Anyway, the special privileges come in the form of attendance.

If you attended last week’s raid you get to roll out of another possible 100, meaning that you /roll 1100. You can do this up to the last three weeks meaning the highest rollers get /roll 1300. One can argue this promotes a guild type raid by encouraging pugs to return to Hunt’s raid each week. So in effect it’s a positive thing. But I have a problem with it.

Hunt starts his invites by our guild calendar. I had never attended one of these raids before, but I signed up and got an invite. Then we start looking for pugs from the list of previous attendees. So what about the pug that was invited last week, wants to go this week, but no slot is available because a new guildie got to go? The pugs roll priveleges get screwed up. But overall I just don’t agree with the system. My mentality is that every member of a pug group should have equal privileges. It’s not a guild run.

Anyway only one person left the raid after loot explanations. What makes me laugh is how many people couldn’t figure out why. I whispered Atropus and said I’m half tempted to leave myself because the loot rules promote a sense of unfairness and I don’t think I’ll be attending that raid again in the future. To which Atropus was obviously very confused and tried to argue the benefits of it and that I’d still get loot, etc.

/headdesk

I suppose it’s my own damn fault for being fairly anti-social in this guild and keeping to myself that people don’t know me. I guess Amber’s really the only one that understands I could give a shit about loot…

Anyway to make matters worse Hunt started to promote a new loot system that the guild wanted to use and it’s that more than anything else that was confusing me. He was trying to explain two systems and I couldn’t figure out which one was which. If I understood correctly, the new system would have people rolling in groups based on the /roll 1300, /roll 1200, /roll 1100, and then the /roll 1000. And if that’s the system, then I’m definitely not going again. I can probably live with the other system, but a system like this second (if I understood it correctly to begin with) I cannot support.

Looks like Erdkrieg’s going to be in for a tough fight to gear up…

Anyway back to the real reason for this post. Got side tracked.

I healed for the second time and the first time in a raid as a shammy! It was somewhat lackluster and I really don’t know how well I performed. On a couple of fights I was only spamming Chain Heals and trash pulls were mainly Lesser Healing Waves with a Healing Wave or two thrown in.

It also didn’t help that our pallies were complete FAIL!!! So I don’t think I got a good handle on how well I was doing. Take a look at our Thaddius wipe!

Guess which one was a healer? You got it! #8 FTW!!! OK maybe he died early idk, but what I do know is that he shouldn’t have if he did and what holy pally does 591.3 hps??!!! As for the other three they were ret pallies, although I’m now wondering about #5…

Anyway, it looks like I was doing OK, but it makes me wonder if I was healing right because everyone has complained about how boring pally healing is and it seems shammy healing is worse, but I’m weird as I never thought pally healing was boring.

Now I just gotta get used to it and get used to holy priesting.

Oh and that heal meter? That’s pretty much what it looked like ALL NIGHT LONG!!! /sigh

Rest In Peace

This past week has seen a wave of celebrity deaths. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and finally Michael Jackson.

I’m a child of the 70′s. I barely remember Farrah from Charlie’s Angels, but it was a show I remember watching. I grew up with Ed McMahon watching Star Search, TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes, the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes commercials, and of course everyone’s favorite The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

I wouldn’t say that I’m a fan of Farrah Fawcett having barely remembered her as a kid. But as I said Charlie’s Angels was a show I watched and I always remembered.

I was however most definitely a fan of Ed McMahon’s because I watched all three of those shows almost religiously especially The Tonight Show. Johnny Carson will always be the King of Late Night and Ed McMahon will always be his sidekick.

I was also a fan of Michael Jackson albeit not a huge one. Say whatever you want about him, but he was a music legend. He was talented beyond beliefe. I won’t deny that Michael was odd and constantly surrounded by controversy, but it still pisses me off when people in trade chat say all sorts of derogatory things, make jokes, and generally put down all three of these artists, Michael Jackson obviously being the biggest target.

Dear Lord people! These were people too! They’re someone’s child, someone’s parent, and someone’s loved one. So take a minute and think about how you’d feel if you were one of their loved ones being left behind. Show some respect and at least make an attempt to restore my faith in humankind.

Rest in peace. All of you deserve it more than you know.