Greedy Goblin

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Do they want challege?

I don't like Blizzard is nerfing the endgame raids. I simply dislike it because it allows socials to participate and I simply can't stand their presence. I hate when someone litters the chat with "Megan Fox is so hot" or "Dr House is sooo cool lol". I hate their tendency to beg for help, usually in things that they should be able to handle (or avoid) alone. I really hate their completely pointless he-said-she-said dramas, the "if VeryFailBuddy can't join I don't go either", the "Why did you not congratulate for [explore Ashenvale], do you have problem with me?" questions and so on.

Hard content is a convenient screening factor to get this scum out of my sight. If only people with vials (Killed Vashj and Kael in BC, pre-nerf) can be in the guild, then 99% of these beings are outside without any other scans. Considering that good players tend to be Elitist Jerks, I assumed that the common dislike of nerfs is merely attributed to the lost automatic retard-barrier, and the necessity to make own effort to get rid of these annoying beings. I saw no other problems with nerfs, after all, challenge is not lost, you can do hard modes or in lack of them you can make up your own by adjusting player number, gear level or character level. Yet people constantly complain about "losing challenge". I found challenge several ways even when I found that my aims are incompatible to a hard mode guilds.

Tobold found a NYT article that made it clear. In it, "hardcore" Marathon runners whined about "casual" runners. Slow runners don't harm fast ones any way. They are behind you, they are not in the same clubs, you don't have to talk to them, they don't pester you with questions. Unlike in WoW, the HC runner has no contact with them, so has absolutely no reason to hate them. One of them said something that is very common among HC gamers too: "It used to be that running a marathon was worth something — there used to be a pride saying that you ran a marathon, but not anymore"

Running the Marathon fast worth the very same thing as the old times: you are a healthy, strong person with good chance of lot of healthy and therefore happy years. I never seen any other meaning in it.

Then it hit me: their reason for rejecting nerfs is not losing challenge (that's untrue), neither losing the natural barrier between them and the annoying socials, but the lack of feeling of superiority. Back then having top epic meant you belong to the elite. Now it merely means you have more brain than a piece of rock (that's not bad, you are already in the top 1/3) and have the monotony-tolerance to raid Coliseum 4 times a week.

Whenever I wrote about my disgust about nerfs I always got from trolls that "QQ moar for your lost epeen". I thought they are just bitter losers. I still think they are bitter losers and trolls, but I no longer blame them for their accusation. Majority of those who reject nerfs do cry for their lost epeen. Otherwise they would do the same as I do: distance themselves from the morons, either by going to hard mode guilds or make up achievements that they can do in a small group.

These e-peeners are socials, merely from the less dysfunctional group. The average socials aka "freindly heplfull ppl" are those who want acceptance, connection, love-and-be-loved stuff. Since their social goals are not conditioned to any kind of RL (or ingame) effort, they tend to do nothing useful for the society and to lack any useful skills (besides the things they are forced to do/learn). The e-peener wants respect of peers and the feeling of superiority. Since it can only be achieved upon completing a hard achievement, they often learn useful skills and do useful things to the society. However they can also get lost in completely useless - yet hard - achievements, like climbing mountaintops, making the Big Ben from matchsticks or clear a new WoW raid in the first day.

I obviously don't claim that all hard mode raiders are e-peeners. I also don't like to paint a black-and-white situation where someone is an e-peener or not. There are other reasons for hard mode raiding like reaching flow via a challenging task, theorycrafting (practicing RL math), being together with non-primitive people. The weight of these reasons differ in the people. However
  • the challenge-flow can be reached in a properly selected lowbie instance
  • theorycrafting is not affected by the difficulty of the content (you can calculate the last 0.1% even if only 30% performance is needed to complete the content)
  • primitive people can be fully and easily avoided by choosing solo or small-group content
This leads us to the conclusion: rejecting nerfs only has social reasons. It's either the social drive to be with similar, intelligent people, or the drive to be respected. I'm not ashamed to accept I has the former social drive and now I consciously want to weed it out. There is a huge difference between cooperating with such people and hanging out with them and it's easy to rationalize the latter with the former. Not anymore for me!

So from now on: "whining for nerfs" = "being social".

Find creative ways how to un-nerf the game! Create your own achievements. Feel free to send it here and I post to give hints to others.


PS: upon the description of the common social I no way mean that wanting love and acceptance is bad itself. It's bad when it's a primary goal, a major motivator of one's life. Also, all useful feat has good chance of drawing respect from others and it's not bad itself. But it's a side effect and cannot be a goal, or the person will surely optimize for it, quickly reaching some kind of useless activity like boosting lowbies or running 4 ToC every week.


PS2: there is a simple-looking answer why people go ToC and not WC: loot. However loot is just pixels and doesn't have innate fun value (you can't eat, drink or have sex with it). So it's only a reward if you can use it for something "fun". That can be the next instance, but this case ToC and WC has no difference, you can use the WC loot well in SFK or BDF just like the ToC loot in ICC. The only difference is social: you can't show off WC loot but you can stand in the middle of Dalaran with ToC loot waiting for envious inspects.


PS3: before you'd post "hard new raid is fun while old content is not" remember that no one bothered about Onyxia, and now, when her loot is upgraded, people swarm there.

37 comments:

Anonymous said...

I recently challenged myself to switch from clicking on abilities (which I am decent enough at to do normal content with no trouble) to keybinding and delegating all of the movement to the mouse. It is quite challenging for me, but a lot of fun. I currently have two alt warriors, same class as my main, one set up for keyboard movement with strafing and no turning with abilities keybound, and another alt where all of the movement and targetting is controlled by the mouse, with all abilities keybound to the left side of the keyboard. It is difficult to break old habits, but I like trying to find new ways of playing the game, mainly in hope of improving my playing (I would like to be good enough to get a spot in my guild's top 10 man team.)

Also, hopefully, when one of the alts gets to 80 I can devote a spec of it to finding the optimal warrior soloing spec, with maximized self heals from the fury tree balanced with the survivability of the protection tree. Both of my main's specs are used up for raiding setups so I have no room to experiment there (I am proud of being one of the raid memebers who can be relied on to switch between tanking and dps effectively.)

Another interesting challenge: how useful can the wintergrasp RPGGs get? They have a delicious knockback effect that is just asking to be used to inflict falling damage in the fortress and surrounding cliffs. If you are thinking of playing with this, pre-sight the fortress at a time when your side controls it. Also, figure out the best places to fire from while hidden as any damage taken interrupts the firing casting. Once you have the aiming and their guidance systems figured out, they are quite effective against enemy vehicles, too.

Gevlon, what is your take on Oculus in particular and vehicle combat in general? Most players on my server despise it, while I love it for the variety from regular playing style.

Anonymous said...

You've been thinking about this.

I agree. And I also think a lot of players look for self-validation in the game to replace what they don't or can't get in real life (miserable job, bad luck in relationships, etc), so the sense of social worth seems way more important than it really should.

Anonymous said...

I am on the quest to solo as many TBC HC's as possible.
I like how I any minor upgrades really shows what its worth there. Even a simple thing as switching from all stamina gems/enchants to agility made it much easier.
Im a druid.

To the first anonymous, I really hate all the vehicle combats since I carefully choose the character I want to play. I don't want to play the exact same thing as the guy next to me, like you do on, say, Malygos.

Espoire said...

A while back I rolled a Warrior alt. Wanting to learn to play the class in the most straightforward manner possible, I headed for RFC at level 13. I got a group, we were one away from full when one of the others insisted on bringing an 80 in to "run" us. I bailed, since I would learn nothing. Two hours, two deaths and 3 levels later, I marched back out of RFC, having soloed the entire place. I had learned an immeasurable amount about my new class, and was actually quite proud of my achievement. I posted in General about it (I'm an e-peener, so shoot me) and the leader of the group I had ditched sends me a tell: "noob lol since you left we ran it a zillion times and were all level 20+ now."

It's true what they say, it would seem that you get what you reward.

JX said...

Have you read Tobold's latest post on Generation Conflict Theory?

Basically, Blizzard is preparing for the next Generation Y of players, which unfortunately happen to be mostly socials. The days of HC oldtimers like us are passing by, and that unfortunately is just how the world is changing. It would be dumb of Blizzard if they did not cater to their widest audience--to use one of your own catchphrases, it's all business. Just like how you cater your posts to the 80% of readers who never post a comment, Blizzard caters it's products to the larger market as well, not just disgruntled bloggers.

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/10/generation-conflict.html
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/10/generation-conflict-theory-applied-to.html

Anonymous said...

JX: Yes but the generational theory is rubbish. It may possibly apply to game /designers/ but not to players.

Also, any hobby that goes mainstream gets more accessible. It's inevitable. The big thing with Gen Y (I guess) is that the internet is all about interactivity, so playing games (because it's interactive) is a much more dominant paradigm than back in the 80s where it was more about watching TV unless you were a punk or RPer.

Yaggle said...

I agree completely with your assessments here. I gave up on fixing Wow and finally stopped playing it. I don't think there is any hope for un-nerfing WoW because it has been nerfed so rigorously across all areas of the game, that I think fixing it would cause so many people who are used to the free candy to leave and find their candy elsewhere. What troubles me is that I think there is now a pattern that has formed for MMOs that if they become successful, they make the game easier and easier to attract more subscribers. So if Blizzard's next MMO comes out, I would expect the same pattern to happen. I base my conclusion of a "pattern" on WoW and Everquest.
However, I will say anyways what I would do to change it. I would change WoW to make instances harder across the board, meaning even the easiest ones would be difficult again. Just like parents don't want all the children playing inside the house all day, you don't want the M&S to stay in the instances. Children should play outside unless they are Elitist Jerk children.

Wooly said...

First, this has been said a bunch of times before in comments whether by me or my others. Maybe not in exact the same words, but exactly the fact that we're all socials. I don't really know what to think of the fact that you're writing a post now like you just figured it out.

Yes, we're all socials, whether we like it or not. I'm social, sometimes I reject it, but I'm not trying to fool myself either. You're a social, broken record: the blog is proof enough (and the fact that you care about subscribers).

What it's really all about is the matter of social hierarchy. The different levels and to what level in the hierarchy you think you belong (atm). Unless you loathe people in general, hating a certain group just states that you placed yourself in a higher spot on the social ladder. Pretty certain there are people who you feel equal too, and people who you look up to.

What I think you (well, we) consider the "socials" within all the social classes are the ones that are truly more dependent on others, because they lack the competence to reach their goals on their own. They need to compensate the lack of competence by using others to get what they want.

The behavior of what we call "socials" looks a lot like the behavior of small children. Children need to be carried in life by their parents too (clearly incompetent to care for themselves), they are by instinct/nature extra social towards their parents/caretakers, because them being loved is their assurance to survival until they can fend for themselves. But whenever they feel safe enough (what happens when you spoil them), they'll try to get more through manipulation (whining, crying).

A child is clearly inferior to an adult, yet they will try to gain power over them if they get the freedom to do so.

I don't believe this behavior stops when people grow up. Competent or incompetent, both will try go get to the "top" of the social ladder, or as high as they can. The competent will do it in respectful ways, the incompetent by manipulation, whining, blaming, etc.

And it has the same reason: the higher in the social ladder, the more chance of survival. Which is purely instinctual of course these days, because everyone has a good chance on that. It also gives more power of course.

Nevertheless, as competent person you don't want to see people that are inferior get the same statussymbols, because let's face it: it's never about what you're capable of, it's what you appear to be capable of. And when you've worked hard to get yourself higher on the ladder, you don't want to share that spot with idiots, because getting away from them is the sole reason for doing the effort: making a distinction between your kind, and them.

A true non-social wouldn't care at all about any of this, or whatever other people where doing/thinking, as long as they didn't get in his way. He would do his own things, and have no cares about other people at all. I don't think he would either play WoW, or have a blog.

Anonymous said...

I think the main reason people find more enjoyment in current content (which, yes, happens to award the almighty loot) is that the current content is actually interesting. Onyxia was a fun encounter. Ulduar was the best instance Blizzard ever made. Wailing Caverns was... uh... long, with bosses that didn't do much more but hit the tank a few times before rolling over and dying in complete silence.

In fact, I think that's why people have such fond memories of dungeons like Shadowfang and Deadmines. Though the fights weren't that complex (Arugal had that worgen curse thing and VanCleef had the occasional non-bugged Vanish) they had some quality voice acting. Dungeons like Blackfathom didn't have either of those things. And thus, even though they were around the same level range, people disliked that instance. Because it was boring.

Smeg said...

well technically onyxia is a challenge now.

i recall most classes could solo her in naxx 7.5 gear (i did on a paladin and a shaman) or at least duo with someone else prior to her revamp.

you now need a raid.

Ephemeron said...

I agree with the majority of your article, except for this part: "...or the person will surely optimize for it, quickly reaching some kind of useless activity like boosting lowbies or running 4 ToC every week."

If the person is successfully pursuing the goals that he or she set for themselves in the most optimized and efficient manner, how exactly is this activity useless?

Quicksilver said...

why are we searching for challenge in a game that's fading away?

I believe its the dev's duty to provide that special something to keep the players paying and playing... in our case, challenge...

if they fail to do it, its time to move on. Be it another computer game: for example Starcraft 2 is just around the corner, or another activity: I heard mini-golf can be quite challenging... :p

Gevlon said...

@Ephemeron: I mean that he optimizes for "acceptance" or "respect" that can be gained by pointless (and in itself) not fun activities.

Would you boost low lvl NPCs in RFC 3 times if WoW would be solo game?

Ephemeron said...

"Would you boost low lvl NPCs in RFC 3 times if WoW would be solo game?"

Back in the day when I still played single player CRPGs, I've done a lot of boring side quests for NPCs in exchange for negligible rewards - other than their gratitude and the warm fuzzy feeling of being a hero. So yeah, I probably would.

(Of course, that was before I discovered the dreadlord way, but that's beside the point)

Anonymous said...

It's a game. There are hard modes for progression raiders and normal modes for casual players. Not everybody can dedicate the time to this game and I like the fact that people who just play the game for fun as a hobby can enjoy the content. Most people IMO play the game for fun and for the social aspect. Ohh QQ WoW is becoming more casual freindly. Now I can't be one of the only ones to experience content because I spend many hours a day raiding. I play the game for the social aspect. Raiding is a challenge and I'm happy with it. I'm in a freindly guild that raids 10 hours a week and has fun. I do not agree with content that is only accesable by people who spend glad there lifes on this game

Anonymous said...

I think one of the major points is....without any hardcontent you DONT NEED any enchants any good crafteble gear or any consumables at all...which makes proffessions useless and is VERY BAD for buisness.

Anonymous said...

remember that no one bothered about Onyxia, and now, when her loot is upgraded, people swarm there.

"No one bothered" is an exaggeration, but it's a bit special case, level 60 Onyxia was easily soloable by few classes, and a-bit-less-easily soloable by few more, in worst case you could duo it with a friend (who's not retarded and enjoyable to play with), so you didn't need to bother with other people. Even "blue posters" on WoW forums admitted that people treated Onyxia as a huge pile of gold to claim, they even nerfed gold drops from level 60 raids somewhere when they realized the loot is not shared among 40 people but 10, 5, 2...

She also dropped BoE "blues" that could be sold for more gold, so it wasn't as pointless as [explore Ashenvale] or /love squirrel

There were also other kind of people - collectors. Why did "Foror Compendium" sell for a lot of gold? The item was useless stat-wise and wasn't even "ooh orange" like the two people farm from Molten Core. There were several other "fun items", I've met few people who were after the "book that summons a skeleton", there are such kind of people, they buy "rituals of the new moon" as well etc.

And when it was announced Onyxia will be removed, the instance was swarmed... too bad it was the sad period of "additional instances can't be launched" and people had to run it early morning or at least get someone to camp instance ID.

Usual mechanism of "limited supply" and "closing door", people want to get something before it's "lost forever".

But hey, my realm might be oddball, where some famous raiding guilds ran level 60 Naxx here the whole TBC on off-days, maybe they tried to assemble Atieshes...

"Facerollable" content has some value, there are much more Molten Core groups running on my realm than SWP groups, because people won't wipe in Molten Core even if they don't know tactics, and they will in SWP. Hell, 3 of 4 AQ40 pugs can't pass twin emperors. With level 80 people.

Anonymous said...

While I agree perfectly with your reasoning, my personal reason to prefer the current level appropriate challenge is competition. I can compete more easily with other players and other groups of players in current hardmodes. I, or rather we as a guild, like to compete with others on our server and beyond to see who clears PdOK faster and with how many attempts left. Who downs Algalon first. If the default was who is the first to 5-man SWP, that would be fine with me as well. But the focal point is the current, latest hard mode. As long as there is any hard, commonly accepted content, that's what I focus my game time on.

Graylo said...

"So from now on: "whining for nerfs" = "being social"."

I want to make one exception to your comment above. There have been a few times in my playing career that I've whined about a nerf because I hadn't cleared the content yet. I wanted to complete it on the hardest mode available.

Some may say this is still about epeen, because I want to be able to say that I killed it on the hardest version. There is probably a little trueth to that, but some times its because the nerf is a marker of failure.

Back when 3.0 was released, my guild was working on the first boss in sunwell. We were pretty close to killing him and probably would have had him in a week or so. When the content was nerfed we walked in and one shotted him with out any issue, and it felt very unstatisfing.

ObsidianRat said...

Regarding the PS3... I think the progression goes something like this: new content with loot > old content with loot > new content without loot > old content without loot. Onyxia is basically a loot pinata. 10 minutes of "effort" and she drops tasty epics.

I'd be more interested in seeing what would happen if ZG/AQ or MC were brought up to level 80.

Tonus said...

JX: "The days of HC oldtimers like us are passing by, and that unfortunately is just how the world is changing."

It just means that MMORPGs have gone mainstream. That's good in some ways (developers can make more money, there can be more variety) and bad in others (higher cost of entry, bigger and costlier development makes failure hurt more, lots of homogenization as developers try to hop on a successful formula).

Games like UO and EQ were targeted at a very narrow demographic which had little choice in what to play for online RPGs. WOW became far more successful than its developer expected (IMO) and so they've been moving the game in a direction that makes it more accessible to the lowest common denominator.

People who want a challenge will likely need to look to another format for it (possibly back to offline video games). With MMORPGs going mainstream and looking for wide audiences to feed the monthly subscription mill, expect the difficulty to get lower and lower. That's where the money is.

RyanC said...

Here is why I like loot: The Dismantling of my opponents in PvP (always fun) and the fact I can pick and choose which raid groups I go with, and am never on any 'bubble'.

Last night, I was #2 in damage as an Enh Shaman (what Hybrid tax?) for a Pug ToC-25; people kept screwing up the Northrend Beasts (Durr...what's Burning Bile?)

As soon as the girlfriend came over to watch the World Series and carve Pumpkins, I lit out of there immediately before they somehow managed to kill that boss and lock me to the raid.

Anyway, being an elite DPS (and an elite healer) allows me the luxury of going into certain instances on my own terms.

And like I said, being geared means in Wintergrasp or Battlegrounds, I can mop the floor with my enemies.

(Except for the hardcore Arena-geared toons who mop the floor with me.)

But here's the most important part: From 3.0 to 3.3 the game has required LESS and LESS time to be geared. In 3.0, you HAD to raid Naxx to get gear. If you spent 200 in game hours getting all 213 gear and put your character away until today, you'd be a LOL undergeared M&S being carried through content. However, if you boxed away that character and unpacked him in 3.3, ran him through LFG Heroics and the Pug Raid of the week for three days straight, you'd be an uber elite 232/245 geared monster.

I love gear because in relative power terms, I want to be able to destroy anyone I meet, player or mob. What I've learned, is that it requires less and less of MY time because of the catering to the casual.

People can do one of two things: Adapt or Cry.

I've chosen the former. Plenty of people have chosen the latter because quite frankly, they're not very good at handling change.

Armond said...

There is a tiny flaw in your reasoning: You assume the difficulty level both before and after the nerfs(/buffs/changes) is reasonable. This is generally the case in WoW, but in games such as Guild Wars (where the PvE content is so easy you can literally go afk for 30 minutes and let the AI clear it in some cases and the PvP content is so horribly broken people who just bought the game can load up one of the five or six current gimmicks and faceroll against experienced players with a high success rate), bitching about bad updates seems reasonable.

Anonymous said...

I started playing WOW this passed December not knowing how anything worked like LFG. I was on a server where I didn't know anybody and I think it led me to be really take pleasure in creating my own challenges. I solo'd Stocks at lvl 28 although it took 2hrs. Back then I did it because I didn't yet pick up the concept of the party system and I was on a server that was so low in pop, it would have probably taken 4hrs just to get a group together. But now at lvl 80 I do things outside of raiding like solo Attuman in Kara, which as Ret is pretty tough. Sure I could switch to Prot and make it easier but theres no fun in that for me.

Even though I was kind of indirectly forced into taking on challenges early on, it opened me up to the ability to challenge myself in the game today.

I also have a lvl 71 DK who I use strictly for mining. I left him at lvl 71 because since 3.2, I can fly in Northrend in him so there was no reason to lvl any higher. But competing for titanium ore at lvl 71 has opened up a whole new world of challenges :)

Ball of Kul Tiras said...

The e-peener wants respect of peers and the feeling of superiority. Since it can only be achieved upon completing a hard achievement, they often learn useful skills and do useful things to the society. However they can also get lost in completely useless - yet hard - achievements, like climbing mountaintops, making the Big Ben from matchsticks or clear a new WoW raid in the first day.

If the selected goal is challenge, how are any of the items you listed as useless any different than hard mode raiding or 2 manning a lowbie instance? None of the activities has inherent value, and all seem to satisfy the "challenge = fun" metric you've set up. I understand that the point is that the goal of the players are different, but there's nothing in those examples that differentiates between e-peeners and challenge seekers.

What's my main Again? said...

So what happens down the road if WC gets nerfed and changed into a 2 man dungeon... now everyone is 2 manning it or soloing it. You aren't going to get that feeling of "I did it pre nerf!"

You will because you are proud of your accomplishment now. The fact that you mentioned this and you and your wife's run through Nexus is evident that you think what you have done is a rare feat.

When things get nerfed to where doing these things with 2 people is the standard then your accomplishment doesn't seem all that great... unless of course you relate to doing said feat before the nerf.

Sean said...

I'm a bit confused, you said:
So from now on: "whining for nerfs" = "being social".

But then your 1st paragraph is full of qq:
I don't like Blizzard is nerfing the endgame raids. I simply dislike it because it allows socials to participate and I simply can't stand their presence.

I don't really understand your "create your own achievements" type of challenge. I want to play a game everyone else is playing, not some arbitrary made up game for myself. Maybe that sounds "social" to you but really, the opinions of others doesn't bother me at all.

If you want challenge, join (or better still make) a guild focused on hard mode raiding.

Even better still, do it the "goblin" way and pay people to join the guild. Their remuneration will be their performance or however you want to structure it.

In the end of the day, your QQ sounds a bit too "social" for me.

Anonymous said...

I wanted to thank Wooly for his comment, it was really good.

Everything is social in one way or another.

Nielas said...

@What's my main Again?

The crucial point abount accomplishing a challenge is that it is a singular moment in time. Things are not only defined by what happened but also by when it happened.

Recently I flew from North America to Europe and then back. I was a passenger and I spent most of the time sleeping or watching TV.

Transatlantic flight has been majorly 'nerfed' since the early days of flight so now the mere act of doing so is not really much of an accomplishment. However, this is completely irrelevant to the fact that those people who undertook the original flights concquered massive challenges and their accomplishments were substantial.

Should WC be nerfed into a an easy 2-man instance then it will do nothing to dimish Gevlon's acomplishment of 2-maning it pre-nerf. They will simply become to similar yet different challenges and the ease of beating one will have nothing to do with the difficulty of beating the other.

Similarly the fact that Onyxia can now be beat by a 10man group has no relevance to the fact that back in the days my old guild beat Onyxia 40-man. They are actually substantially different fights that focus on differnt aspects of group play.

Simon said...

I find all the whining that socials are walking around in epics a bit silly.

The difference between wearing a lv200 welfare epic and a lv254 bleeding edge epic is probably roughly the same as comparing lv60 greens from back in Vanilla wow to BWL stuff.

So realistically its the same situation these days in terms of disparity between the scrubs and the elite, just that the "friendly socials" get crappy purple items rather than green to stroke their egos. Who cares?

Simon

Bristal said...

The reason people QQ nerfs and run content over and over is obvious. Gamers don't want RESPECT from others, they want to be BETTER than others.

I QQ nerfs because now I'm not as BETTER than I was before. Why would I make up "fun" ways to make the game harder if I don't have a chance to become BETTER in an objective way?

You're not antisocial Gevlon. You depend on the presence of others to set you apart. More gold, more power, less dependent, etc. The M&S DEFINE you.

An MMO is like a tower. There may be all kinds of interesting things to do along the way, but the ultimate goal (and fun) is to take the next step UP.

Bristal said...

And as a postscript, perhaps one of the differences in casuals & hardcores is that casuals are more interested in BETTER THAN I WAS, and hardore are more concerned with BETTER THAN YOU.

Anonymous said...

Instead of looking toward the mechanics of the game to be challenging, would it not be more challenging to get over one's self and group with the "socials" that ruin your current experience?

Getting an achievement in game is just a binary flip of few bytes. Learning how to tolerate, manage and be successful with those deemed "impossible" takes a growth of your personality. Which do you define as greater?

Rob Dejournett said...

With Onyxia, I did retroraids that were fing disasters. Nobody waited. Aggro was a foreign concept (since she's growl immune - aka only warr/paly/DK tankable). Nobody had a clue.

Now, with level 80 ony, you need to at least haev some clue to not die. Deep breaths are meaningful.

The point is that ony80 is a signficiant challenge to do the fight the right way, as they designed it. That's one reason why the harder stuff is funner IMO, because it is an actual challenge. WC with 2 ppl is just as challenging.

Anonymous said...

Well, at least I can say I no longer raid ToC 4 times a week!
Instead, I raid 2 times a week with no onyxia raids!

It has been really fun when we decided we longer need the loots from there. Although some of us still want to go for the mount, the majority thinks they have enough of it.

Anonymous said...

Typo in the title ?

Anonymous said...

The frog hates that he was a tadpole?