World of Warcrafters - Anyone?

[Caeltos]

Hey!

About a little over a week ago, I started playing World of Warcraft again, to get back in the groove for the next expansion, and I'm having abit of fun learning the ropes and getting the hang of things. So I figured I would just ask, are there any former WoW'ers that are out there, or want to start playing?

In that case, I'm on EU, and I play on the server (Relatively new one) Chamber of Aspects

Things to keep in mind -

1. If you're smart, and good - You don't have to actually pay the monthly subscription fee, due to the fact you can buy monthly subscriptions with in-game gold.
2. Leveling is way faster now, so now not so much snoozefest to level (altho, that was maybe a charm for some)
3. If you've got the $/£ etc, you can buy levels, or get free-level 90/100 characters, if you really don't want to spend about a week leveling. (Assuming you have the Heirloom gear)

I'm thinking about going Hardcore again for the next expansion. Speedy leveling, getting Gladiator rank and all that jazz. It seems they are going to reward Hardcore players more in the future, and I'm liking that direction to seperate the playerbase abit more.

[Lost Son of Nikhel]

As a WoW player who played on a lot of private servers (and even part of the staff of one) and some months in the official one there are some questions.

1. How many bugs it have? They are important ones?
2. How many instances and raids are open? Are they fully functional? The bosses are fully scripted?
3. Is the server stable? Its laggy when there are a lot of people connected? What about the delay between actions? (The time between you order an actionand the character do that action?
4. There are enough people? How much pop the server have?

[Ace of Swords]

I've played since late vanilla and tried out the new xpac some time ago, you can easily make 100k/month now with at least 30k easily coming from garrison missions alone (last time I played the token was a 40k EU and half of that US, so it's easy to buy).

Still I wouldn't recommend, it's boring, braindead and they dumbed down all the classes to only a few buttons, almost like if they were aiming to launch it on console, it's not coincidence that the numbers of subs are at about 5 mil now.

The PvE was alright, the pvp was pretty bad, with the game becoming a oneshot macro fest even at 2.4k+.

Also I haven't seen a single fact pointing to blizz trying to reward skilled players right now, especially PvP ones, while PvE has mythic modes and those are pretty much the only worthwhile part of the game, they have been fracturing the pve into raid finder, normal, hardmode and mythic, with the 3 before mythic being jokes pretty much, which you still must run in order to gear up for mythic.

PvP...well cheaters (as in hackers and win traders) are running rampart, top players on AJ aren't even hiding the fact that they will boost anyone for IRL money and blizzard has barely been banning the dozens of people that offer these services (hell you can even find those openly offering them in LFG or under their streams with thousand of people watching) without even considering the atrocious state of balance and how watered down are classes are.

And for next expansion I don't see any hope, I mean, their big card is the demon hunter class which the fanbase has been requesting since forever....they aren't even bothering giving it 3 specs, can't really see them putting much work into legion when WoD was half of an expansion and yet 10€ more expensive than any other before it.

[Caeltos]

As a WoW player who played on a lot of private servers (and even part of the staff of one) and some months in the official one there are some questions.

1. How many bugs it have? They are important ones?
2. How many instances and raids are open? Are they fully functional? The bosses are fully scripted?
3. Is the server stable? Its laggy when there are a lot of people connected? What about the delay between actions? (The time between you order an actionand the character do that action?
4. There are enough people? How much pop the server have?

I'm not playing on a private server, I'm playing on official.

@Ace

Well, most of the content seems pretty braindead. But I've heard from some folks that those that want challenge can have via the Mythic/Challenge stuff. I haven't tried that yet, so I'll have to give it a spin. When they introduced the Heroic stuff, they actually did a fairly good job. (I'm talking about Ulduar WoTLK stuff, that was really well-done for making stuff difficult and etc). I heard pretty much nothing but generally negative stuff past that tho, that means Cataclysm & Mist of Pandaria, but alas - I can't form my own opinion on that, since I never tried it, Cataclysm bored me to death and I quit.

WoW tokens are ~60k gold at the moment (But it keeps shifting inbetween 59k-61k). But making gold, again - is not a problem if you just do it right. You can make that roughly in a week, and you're good to go.

Warlords of Draenor is as it is at the moment, but I'm talking about 'Legion' for an ex. you can check up their PvP Preview for Legion on their website, or the battle.net client. All of which seems really good, and that's coming from someone who was a Brutal Gladiator/Vengeful Gladiator in S3/S4, and I still think the PvP is pretty neat. (Altho, from my perspective at the moment, it's abit unbalanced, and they've completely dumbed down certain mechanics and gameplay. Stance-dancing Warriors seems like a thing of the past, and it just seems like the macro-bullshit has just overflooded the game.

That's my one grip with the game, is the macros and how much impact they have at the moment at times. I wish macros just didn't exist, because it's like a tool for people for not paying attention or don't want to get any better at the game. I never ever used any macros during my raids, or arena. I despised it, and I still do. It's a lazy tool for lazy people. (Altho, some macros interruptions and etc is passable, and quite useful for raiding when comms had to be a minimal)

Besides, it's hard to keep a playerbase sticking around until the very end. Any games suffers a decline, and there comes a time when someone will almost always put the game aside and tend to other things. I mean, the game didn't decline because of the hardcore people, because they are so insanely in the minority that it's silly.

But it seems that Legion really wants to kick it up a notch, and I mean - the supposed villains are afterall, the big baddies (Burning Legion aka led by Sargeras, Kil'jaeden & Archimonde (Unless he's completely goof'd after WoD, can't remember the lorelol). I've heard some spoiler stuff, and I'm liking what may happend. Altho, I don't think everyone will neccassarily agree with what happends, but at LEAST SOMETHING happends to keep the story going.

[Ace of Swords]

I enjoyed WoD for a couple of months and for me it was a step up from cata (which made me quit the game about 3 months into the expansions after having played no-stop from when I started and that was for give or take, 5 years.)

But still very lacking in content, it got to a point where I were so bored I didn't even bother logging to press the button to complete the garrison missions, didn't help the fact that all my old arena mates quit about 1 month into it and while the new LFM/LFG tool is great for PvP, the huge amount of cheating (I forgot to mention that kick-bots have become a quite popular thing in both pve and pvp now, there has been a huge banwave of about 200k players around spring but now it takes less than 48 hours to level 1-100 and it doesn't help that the same people who use these bots also use leveling bots), but back to what I was saying, this new tool is great to find new partners but at the same time you have to skim through hundreds of boosted people (no joke, there's plenty of people who not only buy glad boosts, but even boosts to 2k rating for IRL money).

About macros, I never minded them too much, arena 1 - 2 -3 macros as well as focus one have always been necessary for the classes I played and for a fast response, the problem right now is that it's impossible to kill even pure DPS classes through normal damage, to kill someone in arena you have to blow your "big" 1-2 min CDs, along with on use trinkets (or line up with on proc ones) and pretty much use all your big damage spells all at once, outside that unless you play RMD which has a cycle of about 40 seconds, you will have to go into dampening (a new mechanic where after X minutes in arena healing done by everyone is reduced by Y % every Z seconds, it's very common for R1 wizard cleaves to go into 20% dampening before scoring a kill, or at least it was so during WoD S2, damage might have gone up now I don't know).

TL;DR
Everyone, even pure DPS classes like hunters have a retarded amount of self healing, don't let me start on hybrids in 2s and 3s and steady damage is too low to break passive healing effects or healing from hybrids/healers and everything happens around big 1-2 min CDs like bestial wrath, killing spree, avenging wrath etc...

To conclude, it wasn't the fact that they didn't cater to hardcore players what killed this game, I agree that I and the people I know played really too much, I even know a guy who almost divorced over it, but that's not the point, they made everything so easy to get, everything so instanced and instant that there's no satisfaction at all in achieving anything, not even for the most casual of players, as well as everything can be cleared or seen in a few weeks, there's also lack of cooperation now, that's what made this game great to begin with, back when I started playing without grouping up with random people you couldn't often finish most quest, although that also depended greatly on what class you played, still they killed any feeling of a living world of an MMO, playing right now feels more like a normal MP game where you que up for what you want to do and then just leave the party once it's done and never see those guys again (this goes for pvp too nowdays, you just set a standard, find people of X rating, got to Y rating and once it's done say goodbye to them, rinse and repeat to glad.) unless, of course, you still have old mates that still play to group up with.

To me, the game has gone too far to be salvaged, which is a shame because there's no other game that does pvp like WoW did and I enjoyed it greatly (even though I started as a pve player) but in all of the past 3 expansions I haven't seen a single step towards the right direction, instead I've heard bullshit excuses on how they lack "resources" to do this and do that, cutting content left and right and putting our more and more store mounts/pets while giving rehashes of other mounts for in-game achievements.

[Caeltos]

Yeah, I'll say that there is maybe a certain sense of diminished sense of accomplishment lacking in the game now, since everything is so easily obtained, or acquired in some shape or form. I remember when having maxed out proffesion, or a certain receipe was a real sense of accomplishment. There was alot of those small details scattered, be that proffesion, PvE or PvP related.

PvP wise now, everyone and their mother can acquire ilvl710 (boosted in PvP, so around 740 iirc?) pretty easily, and I've done with like 3 character thus so far. The ratings now only seem to be like a really "small" improvement, or cosmetics. (Which is just most likely color tints, but that's ... passable I suppose).

There's both positives and negatives to that. Previously from past experience, the gear was just way too dictating of a thing, and it STILL is - however, since it's so easily obtained now, alot of people are playing on relatively the same iLVL and keeps things "fair". But when you've got a team with ilvl that is potato, and the other team is wearing ilvl 700(+), you're not going to do squat damage, or anything to keep you in the game. At least, even in TBC - potato gear, could still be helped out abit by being really good.

The talent changes is just weird. I'm just looking through it all and proccessing it - but alot of my favorite talents are just completely absent, or reworked into not-so fun stuff anymore. And everyone has so self-denial of CC, or stuff that can just keep them relevant. Also, not to forget the fact that mana issue seems completely ... well irrelevant for the most part now?

And that thing is so god damn fucking frustrating. It's like playing vs Warrior/Druid in the S3/S4 that could last for like 30-40 minutes until someone got bored and just intentionally lost the game. There were comps that were good against it sure, but when mana isn't a thing to be sparse or strategical about, the game kinda dumbs down and everyone just stays the fuck alive for so long that it's just annoying. Warhammer Online skipped the mana issue thing, and healers were broken as hell. (Particulary Warrior Priest AKA Paladins with infinite mana).

I think the community aspect of the game has dimnished or faded away, partially because that cross-realm stuff. (Altho, it does help with queue times and etc). Because back then, it helped to fuel some rivalary between the Horde & Alliance on the existing realm. I have so many fond memories, and I still remember certain characters and their names, and what they would do. The community made the game for me, and that seems to have lost all it's charm. I really would love that have that back.

For PvP - I'm just really so saddened over the loss over certain talents and how things worked, and comparing how they work now. Particulary Warriors are just such a shallow shadow of their former-selfs. Second Wind + Blood Craze back in vanilla for insane sustained control over the regular damage-builds that existed. Now it's a Fury specilization instead of Arms? AArghhh, just thinking about those changes makes me mad. And not to forget they removed alot of the stance-dancing elements. But I guess I've got to get along with the way how things have changed and adapt.

At least I'm having more fun with Warlocks compared to how they were before. Rogues seems alot quite fun so far - but I just can't seem to let go over the certain specilizations and how much sustain everyone seems to have nowadays. It seems like alot of classes have lost their flavor, as well as the specilizations and etc.

I can't speak much on behalf of Cataclysm, or Mist of Pandaria - but from my experience on Warlords of Draenor is that, it had great focus at start. Then it just seemed to lose some direction, at least in a story-sense way. I mean, it seemed like there was this great threat, and then it faded away and there was nothing to it? I mean, Wrath of the Lich King always seem to have some sense of progression for the most part. Ulduar was such an amazing instance, and I still think it's one of the best instances to date so far. Yogg-Saron was rewarding and fun as hell, unique as well and inspired by C'thun. Throw in the bone with Algalon (For the EXTREME HARDCORE, with the only 1 or 2 hour attempts PER WEEK + brutal difficulty) and Hard-mode Mimiron, it was just a blast.

I actually stopped playing after that, esp after the unveil of the stupid ass Argent Tournament thing. That felt like just a placeholder thing, and just uneccassary. I wish there was something "greater" at that point. Lich King stuff was cool - but Ulduar still holds a higher standard for me.

Legion will at least reward some of the top players more greatly, prestige awards and all that jazz. I think that's at least an good intended goal and design behind it. I just hope the execution is there, and that the supposed "top" players are not bots, or well - you know, cheaters and such. Or at least, it may be easier to identify the unreasonable players (X amount of hours, and if they leeched or etc) so it could be a win/win situation.

Legion will also at least not focus so much stupidly on the Orcs, and at least put more focus on the real threat at hand in the Warcraft universe, which is well - Sargeras, and when that figure pops up - you can bet your sweet behind Medivh might be around the corner as well. There's alot of key-figures that might make a resurface, and well - Illidan making a comeback can make things interesting. (Altho, the retconning of that is silly)

Garrisons was a cool addition I find, but I feel that it becomes too much of a chore automatically. I mean, afterall - You are the commander, why are you doing so much of the legwork even in the first place. It would have been so much better if you actually felt more impactful, as in you direct units, and tell them more what to do. So you don't have to. It's difficult to explain, but I feel that area could be explored and is executed more colorfuly in Legion, IF it does make a resurface.

EDIT: So Garrisons are "reworked" in a sense. Quote as follows;

In the reveal stream, they said that your old garrisons are out. they're introducing a new system that builds upon the old garrison system where you have much fewer but more meaningful followers, and they will be partners instead of people you just send to go and get you stuff. more details later.

So, that's at least something in the right direction?

[Lulgrim]

[Lulgrim]

In a non-sexually-discriminating, purely Blizzard-deriding sense (I sometimes feel guilty about using ‘gay’ as a negative adjective but I’m gonna keep doing it anyway)

[Lichtbringer]

Demonhunter and Illidan is really tempting for me,
but I will never forgive Blizzard for removing the Hunter melee weapon... -_- Argh. I could even get over the changed gameplay, but now I don't look as cool!

Besides that, I never really played WoW hardcore, when leveling now you could aswell play a SP game, and I don't have that much time anymore as back in the days^^