It's kind of obvious that the difficulty of the game depends on your relative strength to the monsters. The standard way to perform a challenging action in WoW is going to a hard mode raid. Here top level and near-max geared people fight with monsters tuned to very strong.
The same monsters will no longer be hard after the gear or character level rise. Sarth+3 was the pinnacle of raiding in 3.0, while "LF2M shaman and 4.5K rogue for nightfall zerg" today. The "old school" lvl 60 raids are done by 15-20 random players wanting achievements.
So it's obvious that game difficulty can be set to any point by changing the number, the level and the gear of of players. That's exactly what my girlfriend and I did. We locked level on 24 and the two of us went to a scary place:
The fanglords dropped one by one:
Werdant the everliving also hit the ground:
Finally, the endboss, the dreaded Mutanus the Devourer was found to be "not prepared":
Like all serious raiders, we analized the damage meters. (that's overall, on Mutanus I had 76.8 with AM-AM-FBlast rotation.
After the hard raid, relog to the PvP characters for some easy PvP:
I have to say it was easier than we thought. Maybe lvl24 and the remnants of the lvl19 twink gear we collected once was overkill for WC. However this could be fixed in the following instances. I guess SFK is already outgeared-outleveled (especially since we unlocked XP and got to 25), and BFD is considered ugly by my GF, but RFK on 28 sounds challenging enough.
What's the point (besides spending some time together in the game)? That if you want to do something challenging, you don't need a raid group. You can also find out your own strategy, as it's damn sure that no EJ article tells proper spec/rotation for a lvl24 druid-mage duo.
The big question is "why people claim to have not enough content?", when insane amount of class combinations can be created to play PvE content challengingly. Some examples:
So why can't we see lot of people doing such content all the time?
(My answers tomorrow)
The same monsters will no longer be hard after the gear or character level rise. Sarth+3 was the pinnacle of raiding in 3.0, while "LF2M shaman and 4.5K rogue for nightfall zerg" today. The "old school" lvl 60 raids are done by 15-20 random players wanting achievements.
So it's obvious that game difficulty can be set to any point by changing the number, the level and the gear of of players. That's exactly what my girlfriend and I did. We locked level on 24 and the two of us went to a scary place:
The fanglords dropped one by one:
Werdant the everliving also hit the ground:
Finally, the endboss, the dreaded Mutanus the Devourer was found to be "not prepared":
Like all serious raiders, we analized the damage meters. (that's overall, on Mutanus I had 76.8 with AM-AM-FBlast rotation.
After the hard raid, relog to the PvP characters for some easy PvP:
I have to say it was easier than we thought. Maybe lvl24 and the remnants of the lvl19 twink gear we collected once was overkill for WC. However this could be fixed in the following instances. I guess SFK is already outgeared-outleveled (especially since we unlocked XP and got to 25), and BFD is considered ugly by my GF, but RFK on 28 sounds challenging enough.
What's the point (besides spending some time together in the game)? That if you want to do something challenging, you don't need a raid group. You can also find out your own strategy, as it's damn sure that no EJ article tells proper spec/rotation for a lvl24 druid-mage duo.
The big question is "why people claim to have not enough content?", when insane amount of class combinations can be created to play PvE content challengingly. Some examples:
- Can a lvl18 5-man group do WC?
- What is the lowest level where RFC can be soloed?
- What is the best duo combination to do RFD the lowest possible level?
- Can 8 lvl80 clear SWP? 7?
So why can't we see lot of people doing such content all the time?
(My answers tomorrow)
53 comments:
To level from 29-60, a friend and I two manned instances. We did SM from 29-35ish (SM was easy, he had 29 twink gear.), ZF at 43ish, ST to the 50s (Don't remember the exact level, I just remember tree form in ST), and BRD up until the room with a ton of mobs with low health/fast respawns. It was ridiculously fun. Slow exp, but we managed to two man a lot of dungeons as arms/resto druid (Warrior refused to respec prot). I often has to dps while healing with my amazing white melee damage, using the clearcasting procs to keep healing. Best leveling I've had in WoW, though. Wish I had frapsed it.
-Iluvsyou
meh, you have to think and work too hard to have fun on this game now. i'll stick to my NDS, at least it's instant fun.
My god... You read my mind!
I raid toc25/uldar25 regulary and have been looking for a change. Or alt least some interesting diversions by playing on alts.
Recently ive tried to get some 5mans (or even 4 or 3mans) running on a couple of my alts. (i have a L30something lock, 29 paladin (prot speced n geared) and a disc specced priest at 30.
The results have been nothing short of abysmal.
Even during peak times, LFG channel has nothing, spamming trade chat. nothing. Spaming various zones. ditto.
No-one wants to do 'classic' content anymore. its all zerg zerg zerg on the way up to 80.
When i do find people, no-one is remotely specced or geared heals/tank, or even know HOW to heal/tank even marginally well, or i just get tossers who aggro everything, or L44's wanting to do stocks, or people who are invited, then seconds later demand i invite an 80 for a drag through.
*sigh*
Im hoping the new cross server LFG helps a little, because Khaz'Goroth is DEAD.
Ellifain @K haz'Goroth
I lead a raid of 10 people into RFK once back in original wow. The tank was near level but I had everyone else several levels too low. Mobs where red to me just past the start.
It was very interesting and I thought it was fun. After we killed the first boss everyone realized that the xp was bad, they didnt get quest credit, and the gear was too high for them. It just fell appart on the spot.
It was more about breaking the mold and doing something just a little different for the fun of it. Everyone that joined me were pugs from general chat in the zone. Even though they bailed early, it went better then I thought it would.
On your WC attempt. As I like this instance very much I did some low lvl runs there.
- I did it 3 man 2x lvl 16 + 1x lvl 14. It took about 2 hours to finish and that lvl 14 was hunter doing quite nice DPS (pet did allmost only glancing blows).
- I tryed it as lvl 20 druid to solo and killed all but mutanus (haven't got that much experience as now).
- I soloed mutanus with lvl 21 shaman. (kiting)
- I also did some nice attempts to solo with low lvl mage but due to mistakes he allways killed me. (never get better attempt than 20% HP left)
I must say it was very enjoyable.
Hanibal from spinebreaker
Clearly it's because people don't want to overcome challenges; they want to overcome challenges that other people think are impressive. No one cares if you two manned WC, so (almost) no one will bother to do so.
Don't overthink it. The answer is "you get what you reward". Players follow the loot.
RFC.... 15 with pally in 3.2
TotalBiscuit's been criticizing these kinds of "achievements" for years. If difficulty is tuned for M&S, then you'll have to become one, even if you tell yourself it's just temporary. But if you want to be challenged because you want to improve yourself and perform at your very best, then this kind of "content" offers you nothing.
Also, this:
Don't overthink it. The answer is "you get what you reward". Players follow the loot.
I absolutely love the old content, but as had been said by other posters - it is next to impossible to get a group going for these instances. (Thank you Death Knights) This is the reason that I am very grateful for the new LFG system that will be implemented in 3.3.
Unhappy people are never satisfied and will find a negative spin on anything.
whats the reward though? average gamer is reward orientated.
to revitalise the wow grouping experience, there should be a buff to dungeon XP if your group consists of only members in the level range. That way higher level players can still run their lowbie friends through for an item, but people who want to group for the content at their level are aptly rewarded with significant rewards other than just some items.
say if you get a group for SM, clear Lib, Arm and Cath in 2 hours, you should be awarded with enough xp to ding twice or even three times.
What you must keep in mind is that this is an open ended game and some get enjoyment out of content that others find boring, and vice versa. I personally find low level/old raid instances terribly boring, having cleared them all numerous times at level early in wow's life. I find raiding at max level to be the most enjoyable, short of a few other activities here and there in game.
So why do people claim to have not enough content? Because they are usually right. If someone's bored with the game, especially someone who's skilled enough to fully clear ToC 4 times in two days, generally speaking that person isn't unaware of low level instances and class combos mentioned in your post; Rather, they are fully aware of such things, but uninterested in them. The more accurate thing that people complain about is lack of content that they enjoy.
I find challenging raid content and encounters that require min-maxing fun, and feel there is a lack of it. Would going back and 8manning sunwell be challenging? Sure, but would it be fun? Absolutely not. I've cleared that place enough to make my eyes bleed, and would rather attempt brand new fights at the hardest level available. Even easy fights like twins are more fun to me than rehashing old content or artificially extending the life of a burned out raid zone.
As Albert Einstein said: "Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him."
This is exactly what our guild is doing at the moment. We were all in a high quality guild and got fed up of standing in Dalaran doing nothing. So we decided we needed the fun back, we rolled on a new realm and started to level together. Soon enough we did some dungeons and after that we 3manned some dungeons. We had a blast trying to 3man Scarlet Monastery without a healer, especially the cathedral was extremely difficult but we managed to clear everything except the last boss, were our damage output was just too low.
To summarize, it feels extremely forfilling to kill a boss with just 2/3 man that is red/orange to you. I would say it is on par with killing a raidboss for the first time.
We report all of our happenings to http://ctrlaltexile.blogspot.com if you want to read some of our stories.
So you killed a low level boss with low level characters because you had nothing better to do. Congratulations. And you did this to prove .. what exactly?
People complaining about lack of challenges ingame are a minority, albeit a vocal one. The lurk on forums and cry on trade chat ... but they don't represent the majority of players. The majority hasn't finished Tribute to Insanity or Glory of the Ulduar Raider (and won't ever) and has lots of challenges to overcome before reaching a point where there are none left.
Devoting a post to poeple who complain is like answering to troll comments: Not worth the effort.
Two friends and I 3-manned the Nexus when we were level 76. No twinks, no heirlooms, these are our first WoW-characters ever. No previous experience, no reading up strats, just going in there and taking things as they come. To this day, still the most fun thing we did in WoW (we're only starting on level 80 content though), and by the celebratory shouts in Vent you'd have thought you walked in on a Yogg first-kill.
The reward? Flames and blames from the guild for nor having taken anyone else with us. When people say they want "challenging content", more often than not what they mean is a mild illusion of heroism while loot is shoved their way. Under-manning dungeons will be shot down as "inefficient", because it slows you down on your way to running out of things to do.
I have soloed the first 4 bosses of BFD with my level 24 hunter(in greens).
took a while, because i had to watch aggro, but it was fun and I got a couple of upgrades.
On my realm last week a message popped for realm first! (Algalon 25), Celestial Defender or something like this. We're an RP realm and following the "RP realm" fame we're not very "progressed and hardcore", but still several decent raiding guilds.
The response from my friend in one of the "realm's best" guilds? "They [the guild who downed Algalon 25] spent too much time in Ulduar and are weeks behind us in gear, while we farm TotGC25".
Yes, I admire the guild who did bother to acquire the realm first, to overcome a challenge no one did before on the realm. While others just say mockingly "weeks behind... no one cares about Ulduar... why don't you farm TotGC as any sane raider, noobs?!"
Yes, people already gave the answer about challenges "no one cares". As the joke about Gnomeregan goes: "hey, Gnomes, why don't you take Gnomeregan back from Troggs?" "why would we go there, the loot sucks!"
P.S. The loot from low level instances used to mean something, be better than your average leveller could get. And now? Heirlooms everywhere and craftables got a nice boost too. "XP sucks, loot sucks", that is what people think.
I used to like low level instances, but can't take it any more, people who play decently at 80 suddenly go with their heirloom-decked alt to wailing caverns or zul farrak and act as if they never knew what "aggro" or tanking is. Having played healer-hybrids (and I wouldn't refuse to heal like those "lol I'm dps spec" ones) I can't stand the abuse of ninja pullers and skillless poor excuses of a tank, it's always healer's fault. That's not my definition of "having fun in my free time".
P.S.2. Actually it's quite common on my realm people run old raids for "RP gear", usually about 4 people for Molten Core and 7 people for BWL and a number of "lowbies" dragging around. Soloing or Duo-ing vast parts of Zul'Gurub and Karazhan is quite popular too.
I suspect one of your answers will be that they're only in it for the loot. Or for the titles. Both connected to social recognition. If you create those challenges for yourself and can't easily make people go "ooohhh" about it, it isn't worth the effort in many players eyes. Unfortunately.
I think your adventure sounds just awesome. I just wish I had some friend like you to do it with. I guess that with my frostsaber mount done this will be my next challenge in the game - to start soloing as many instances as I can on my squishy mage. I'll start with the lowest ones - which aren't any challenge, I know, but I don't have the achievement for them ;)) and then work my way upwards, to see where I'll hit the non-soloable wall. It's not at all as fun as doing challenges in a group (yeah, I admit it, I'm partly a social), but it's better than nothing.
With the way the game has changed, you can 3 man everything at the level almost until northrend. My last alt was a warrior tank. I leveled her in prot since day one with my bf (he leveled a warrior arms) and a guildie who was a resto shaman/enhancement when he got dual spec. We 3 manned everything in outlands (boosted ourselves through levels 25-58 with the mains) with no problems at all. It was quite fun and we all learned a lot about our classes.
I wouldn't say it was challenging tho, but still a lot of fun because I was doing it with my friends and I was learning something new. That's what I enjoy most lately from leveling alts: when I notice I'm learning something and not repeating the same thing over and over (like an endless dps rotation, I hate being a dps).
Well said.
I've found that Vaelstraz in BWL is still quite challenging for a small group, such as 4 players. Alas, I can't get a majority of my guldlings to go back and see instances like BWL, and get to see Nef do his thing. (They even added a DK class call.)
"No entrance barrier".
There is a minimum level to enter instances which in some cases is too high, making the instance easy at entrance level. I've been leveling a character along with my friends solely doing instances, our setup varies from 3 to 5 depending on what folks have to do IRL.
From my experience the factor that sets the difficulty is basically the color of the encounters level. And unfortunately the gap between red and orange is huge. Red monsters takes forever to kill (due to misses and shit) and I think every wipe is due to the healers mana running out. A few times respawns has actually been the factor (trash pulls takes like 10 mins to kill if you´re 3 ppl on minimum level without twink gear).
I think your point is valid though, more should try the old shit out, but have in mind that it might be frustrating that there is rarely any decent difficulty - either it's impossible or it's too easy.
"I used to like low level instances, but can't take it any more, people who play decently at 80 suddenly go with their heirloom-decked alt to wailing caverns or zul farrak and act as if they never knew what "aggro" or tanking is."
^ This.
What I think may really be going on is that those people aren't actually good. they only play well at 80 because they do exactly what other people have told them to do, and that's good enough for heroics or normal raids with people who carry them.
But put them someplace where EJ doesn't tell them exactly what to do, because their abilities are different and they are lost. But they know they have lolBOA gear and so just walk over everything they see at their level outside an instance, so they take the same attitude in an istance. And usually, they aren't trying to do a dungeon at the earliest feasible level, so if there's a good player or two in the group, the dungeon gets cleared anyway, and if there isn't, they blame the healer, or the tank.
One thing most people don't seem to realize is that 80 tanks have a lot of abilities to help them deal with trigger happy dps, that level 20-30s just don't. My low pally can consecrate and judge, but until 30-something those were his only threat abilities besides ret aura and auto-attack. My low warrior is utterly dependent on rage to do anything but taunt every 6 seconds, but unlike at 80 where bosses hit hard adn generate plenty by themeslves, I can't get a bunch of rage just by having one mob focus me. dps actually have to hold back a little at the start of a ffight, or I'll be fighting them all the way.
That's true on 80 to a lesser extent, but the mediocre players don't notice it, because nothing will ever actually attack them for long, I'll just be working harder and moving slower through the dungeon (because I can never get clean packs for max aoe when I'm fighting tooth and nail or aggro).
At 20-30 play like that means things are constantly hitting people who are not the tank, even when the tank knows how to tank, unless said tank outgears/levels everybody.
Agreed 100% on the red/orange gap. solo leveling would be much more fun if it was feasible to tackle higher level mobs, but so many misses make anything more than 5-6 levels up a matter of luck (how often do I miss?), and even 3-4 levels up is kind of excruciating (long fights, more eating and drinking), while fighting things that are +2 lvls or lower is completely trivial with half decent gear, let alone boa gear.
The only fun challenge is fighting elites. But just when they buffed our chars to do so much more damage that most classes can realistically solo elites at level, they took 90% of the elite world/quest mobs out of the game (nerfed them to non-elite).
If mobs scaled like players for hits, it would be easier to look for challenges while leveling. (well, that and lots of quests would need to be available earlier).
I think that WoW offers so much content that you could never become bored in it.
I have a full 10 toons on my main server, all at various levels. When I get sick of Icecrown daily farming, I play a 60 something toon in Outland or a lowbie in old world...
sick of PvE content, then I play in the BGs or arena....
when I get sick of all that, I come on here and learn how to be a good business man on the AH and make tons of gold !
What is most important beyond all that is the connection with my RL friends and friends I have built up over the years in game.... that is what keeps me coming back day after day.... MMORPG's are social games. It doesnt matter what content I am running, if its with a friend of mine its fun !
What I noticed the other day on my new lowbies is that they removed the level requirement for tbc heroics. We pulled a few level 65s to heroic ramparts the other day (you just need reputation for the key and you are in). We had a lot of fun with a lvl 80 rogue struggling to tank the instance :D The experience wasn't better than the normal instance, and we ran it slower, but we had a few laughs wich made it worth the try.
@CrayonofDoom
If that was true, than the new Onyxia instance would be empty as everybody has done it before.
But it isn't empty because people want the items that drop from her now. Not for looks, or achievement since they could have accomplished that at any time.
No they do it for the gear that gives them upgrades.
If they just retooled Molten Core so that it dropped iLevel 245 versions of the same 40 man loot if you 2 manned everything than people would be jumping all over that.
Oh, btw, not only can an all lvl 18 5man group get through WC, that appears to be about the level the instance is designed for. The only reason you don't see <=18 groups running it successfully very often is that it's almost impossible to find a group of five people that level who both know how to play and are willing to pay attention for the 2-3 hours it takes for an at level group to do it.
I am leveling fresh hordies with my wife and to start with had no goblin help for twinkish gear, nor any BoA gear. (although I have rapidly built my capital to the point where I can now buy good gear if I want. I'm leveling a prot (now fury/prot at 40) warrior with her ele shammy. We did WC with me tanking at 16, and her healing at 17 (in ele spec), and got through 3 bosses before we had to log, even though our pug dps (all 15-18) was not great (either lower dps than my tank, or doing stupid shit). We did wipe a bit, but I'm confident that with a group of 3 good, paying attention lvl 16 dps and her still at lvl 16, we would have cleared it with minimal wipeage.
Once we both got to lvl 20 (water shield for her and cleave/stance mastery for me), we pretty much didn't care what dps we had with us as long as they weren't so willfully stupid as to be kickable with a clear conscience. With even a half decent group it was a walkover.
We could easily have done it with 3 players with a good dps as lvl 20, and possibly even just the 2 of us if we were heavily twinked out.
Last week, I sent an invitation to my friends to dust off a level 13-ish character to do Ragefire Chasm. None of them responded.
When I talked to them about it during our weekly dinner, one plainly said that it did interest him. Another was even more vicious, saying that I should skip it and do quests instead, I would be levelling faster.
My brother has much less play time than myself and will not come to these "nostalgia" runs because he wants to optimize his other characters. After all, one chooses what one wants to do with their playtime.
I do believe that everyone wants to optimize their playtime on WoW and for most people, the function to optimize is getting to level 80 and having better gear.
For other people, such as Gevlon and some commenters here, the function to optimize is to have something to write about.
The worse thing is saying what my friend said, that you can level faster by doing quests when asked if he would dust off a level 13-ish to do RFC. He didn't know my optimization function for that character and wrongly assumed it was to get to level 80 as fast as possible.
It is like trying to set up a group for Earth, Wind and Fire. The only reward is 10 achievement points, there are no gear, no title, no mount, no nothing. When I presented that to my guild, I had people that express interests, people that were indifferent and some vicious people that asked why I wanted to do it as there was no reward.
So I guess it all comes down to one's priorities, and finding people with the same goals.
And hoping the vicious people don't destroy the morale of those that might come with you.
I totally agree with you--I had a level 30ish Pally, and I had lots of fun soloing and duoing low level instances. I had never done WC or RFK, so it was a huge challenge going in blind. For extra challenge, I stayed away from walkthurs and offline maps. It was a blast, and a lot more fun than being "boosted" through ZF with someone's level 80 guildie.
I actually am a "casual" gamer--I have a challenging full time job, two small kids, and a non-gamer husband, so I don't have much time to play. I still like a challenge, and don't care about vanity rewards or what other people think. I take my time leveling (why rush through content if I am having fun) so I feel like I really understand my characters and spec. I am off WoW now (since I have so little time to play, I play free to play games like AO now) but I have never had problems financing my chars through selling stuff I pick up during my adventures or having fun with my pre-level cap chars. It seems a waste to pay for something and only consider a small slice of it "real" or worth doing.
My main is a geared MM hunter in 25 ToGc raiding guild. I leveld my hunter as my first toon and had no idea what I was doing until I was well into 80. I didnt know rotations or anything when I leveld so I am asuming, but dont remember that my dps was awful.
I wanted to do something fun. My bf has a level 61 hunter and I wanted to pimp her out. I respeced her to the same as me, well to the extent that I could. I got her some glyphs and tried to get her some crafted gear since she was wearing lvl 30 gear in some slots?
I asked in guild if anyone wanted to do Bf or Ramps with me. I got my friend who was leveling his boomkin, lvl 75, to dual spec and go resto for me. I didnt want him to dps because I wanted to compare myself to people of my level.
We got a group and did BF and ramps. Along the way I realized I missed Md and kill shot but was ok with it, I just aoed everything. My dps was average. On boss fights I would come out on top, but it was nothing to exciting. I was a little disappointed that I hadnt done better...
I went to the hunter trainer later and realized that I had not learn the higher ranks of my shot in the mm tree. Nub. I was using rank 1 shots at level 61. Now I got to go back and try again.
This is an example of something fun and a little different to do in spare time.
I think the best times I had in WoW was when we had a suboptimal group. Old Hillsbrad with a rogue tank (no wipes) and 3 manning HH with a rogue tank and our craptastic gear were the biggest achievements in my eyes.
At fresh 80s my daughter DK and my Disc priest when in Magisters Terrace to two man it. We had never been in or read any stratgies guides on what to do. Nothing like actually using your head on a boss when your blind to his attacks. On the last boss we wiped only once but loved it when we floated to the roof and had no clue what to do. We still laugh about it.
What I do now is use two accounts both open on the same screen. Challenging is going back and forth between the pally and druid on the same fights. Not for everyone but keeps me amused.
When I am bored but want a challange, I solo the BC heroics on my Prot Pally.
I get an achievement, some cloth and enchanting mats for my alt.
Even though T9 is making them a bit easier then they were a couple of months ago, I still find them heaps of fun. I love the design of the instances, and it's just a welcome break from some of the boring WOTLK encounters.
Duo'd Deadmines as a resto druid / arms warrior at 20. That was good fun and a fair challenge. SM graveyard too at 30 which didn't compare.
My group's take on this was doing OS 10 with as few people as possible (6 was our number). Sure, the tank and the healer are over geared (everything you can get from running heroics, and one or 2 pieces outside of that). One other player was familiar with the raid, but was not over geared, and the last 3 had never been in it, and ranged from fresh 80 to moderately geared.
It was a lot of fun, it was a challenge, it let our new players be introduced to a raid environment, and all together it was a lot of fun.
We also do the standard "Lets 2-5 man Kara" stuff, thoguh that is there because none of us ever really got to actually SEE the dungeon as it was the standard "rushrushrush" type of raid group.
I have been leveling up alts and going through all the old world content I never saw (As I used to always follow the same leveling path regardless).
there is content, there is challenging content, what people what is EXCLUSIVE challenging content, with exclusive rewards.
any one can roll up some lowbies and run WC. IT obviously takes time, skill, and dedication to DPS ToGC, right?
..."So why can't we see lot of people doing such content all the time?"...
1) It gives no "social prestige":
- Hey guys! I soloed WC at lvl 24!
- Who cares?
- Noooob! do some REAL content like ToC or Ony!
2) It's seemingly "pointless":
- Hey guys! I soloed WC at lvl 24!
- Why? It doesn't drop anything good.
- You don't need gear from there dude lol
- And you're gonna replace it before getting into heroics, so what's the point?
2.1) It's not necessary to accomplish the "real" goal of WoW:
*get lots of purpelz n crazy muonts 2 show off in dala font and wank ur epeen lol*
(Grammatical errors were intentional)
Sounds like fun. Heck, with the new BoA gear I managed to solo Uldaman on my level 44 arms warrior. It was fun as heck even though they were green to me because you had to watch every pull. Of course, if it was real raiding, I probably wouldn't have finished it as the trash mobs don't immediately respawn, so you can solo 2 of the robots in the last room, die and then solo the next 2, die and then you're done.
Nice article, and good creativity!
Grats!
Glad to hear you're having some fun. One of my all-time favorite dungeon runs was when Bellwether and I 2-manned RFC on our level 16 druids. Of course, half the challenge there was smuggling a pair of baby night elves into Orgrimmar....
"What I noticed the other day on my new lowbies is that they removed the level requirement for tbc heroics. We pulled a few level 65s to heroic ramparts the other day (you just need reputation for the key and you are in)."
Not true. There NEVER was any other requirement than the key. I could enter heroic slave pens at 62 in TBC, just to check if it works.
The "nerf" was halfway the TBC, lowering reputation needed for key to honored, so any lowbie can get it. For revered you had to run those Shattered Halls or Steamvaults and that was the barrier.
* * *
"He didn't know my optimization function for that character and wrongly assumed it was to get to level 80 as fast as possible."
When I started playing I heard everything the same as now, only it was "the game starts at 70" and now it's 80 (I play for 2 years now).
People assume you should rush to the newest content and everything behind is worthless.
Even end game works like this now, back then you had to do Onyxia before BWL and follow the TBC lengthy path of correlated attunements. Halfway TBC they scrapped attunement ideas, removed most of existing ones and never brought it back. They killed most reasons to go back to lower tier raids.
Once in wotlk I helped a level 68 Warlock with outland group quest... she pleaded for group in general chat and all she got was "skip it, go to Northrend, more gold". I got so angry at those responses that even though I wasn't really interested in that quest I went to help her just to counter those opinions.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me smile. I very much ENJOY the early content of WoW, and think more people should lose the "the game starts at 80" mentality.
Getting to the "finish" is a fine mentality for a single player game, but in an MMO, it's the birthing place of a lot of dissatisfaction.
"We cleared the whole game's content in 30 days! Now we are bored!" Well, whose fault is it that you decided you didn't want to enjoy the trip? Jumped on that shuttle-train and ZOOM! Done. Now, you can sit there and be bored or leave, or whathaveyou. Me? I'm on for the hiking trail. I want to enjoy the scenery. And next time (alt)? Maybe I'll walk a slightly different path. Sure, it's the same forest, same mountains... but it's a different place on it.
Keep it up, Goblin!
It would seem that a lot of people are missing the point. I've been coming here and reading your blog for a while now but never have felt a true desire to actually leave a comment yet. It's honestly things like this that make my day. As a player since day 1 release it's always the original content that I love more than the newer stuff. Remember everyone the only thing that dictates a challenge or that mystical word "fun" is your own perceptions. I personally find it fun and very rewarding to challenge myself in ways like this. I've seen ToC25, Ulduar, Naxx, and while they are fun and challenging depending on gear level pretty soon they just become a grind. And grinds are never fun.(or who knows they could be fun to some people). Too many people see Gear and Achievements as the only possible rewards, but the real reward are the memories and the experiences. Yeah I have gear on my 80 hunter, but I don't really see it was anything but an upgrade to further me into future content. The real reward from my hunter is the joy I had leveling him, experiencing all of the things Blizzard created.
The best time I ever had in WoW was years ago on my level60 MC geared shaman 3-manning the 60instances with my 2 best friends. And also all of the original exploration we did inspired by Nogg-aholic.
You can make challenge and fun in WoW in more ways than ever now, and people still bitch that there's no content.
Two manning Heroics back in 3.0 with my War friend, I was Spriest, that was fun.
Because people are unimaginative.
Honestly, WC with two level 24s with some twink gear is not really impressive at all. WC can be and has been soloed by 19 twinks of every class, the most difficult being rogue.
Not really the point of the post though. The post itself was great.
The general playerbase doesn't care, because WoW is no longer about skill.
It's about hours played, and dollars paid.
And since the average player doesn't want challenge but instead wants reward, the developers have tuned the game to that dynamic.
If you're looking for a meaningful, rewarding challenge you're looking at the wrong game.
Whenever I think of renewing my account these sorts of oldschool challenges come to mind as something to do. And then I realise playing just to see if I can do some low level content with one arm strapped behind my back and my head in a bowl of water only proves that I'm an idiot with too much time on my hands.
The answer why people don't do content like that anymore is simple. You get nothing that you can show of from doing things like that.
People see it as mundane and "boring" because what took you 4 hours to challenge your self will take someone else in their t9.258 gear 5 minutes to clear.
It's not social behavior to challenge yourself in old content with no shiny achievement or loot as a reward. So people won't do it and will complain to Blizzard en mass about no content. If blizzard where introduce a new challenging 80 instance with no loot (nothing, no gold or items) or achievement reward, I wonder how many LFG New Instance spams we'd see in trade.
One of these days i would like to see a Lvl 1 raid really figure out how to take on hogger muhahahaha
@tim
I would assume your right.. i think Gev's point though is that people play this game for the WRONG Reasons. They Play to be social as he calls it, they go for achivements so they can sit on the well in Dalaran on their Rusted Protodrake to some how proclaim that makes them better then you, What you dont know is that the GLeader wanted to Gkick them cause they can only put out 1.5k DPS :P
Used to be for some The excitement wanst in what you could get it was in what you could do, Server First to take out Ragnoros or some such,
I think its far cooler to be able to 2 man MC then ride a rusty old protodrake any ways.
We've been having some issues in our guild about getting a bunch of newer people who are not experienced and do terrible dps at 80...And the officers discussed and discussed, finally one 'figured it out'. We want to play with people who don't suck. It's not fun to have even regTOC a nail-biting skin of your teeth experience. Its fun the first time, but come on. When the officers play together, we're all vets, so it's alot of fun. No nobishness there. I think this is the key. My BFF and I would duo hunter instances like ulaman, and it was alot of fun. The mobs still gave us good xp and we didn't have any problems.
IMO the game is about fun, and if the people around you cant see that, get new friends. People like Gevlon would be at home in our guild.
I haven't played WoW for very long, and haven't reached 80 on my first character yet, but htere are a few things I've noticed when it comes to instances. I avoided dungeons until I hit Northrend because it seemed like everyone was only interested in going thru it as fast as possible to maximise loot/time ratio. I wanted to learn how to play, which meant trying to figure out rotations, what drew aggro and what didn't, etc. But every time I joined a low level dungeon group, they someone 20+ levels above the rest to come in and kill everything in sight while the rest ran behind, looting. So I gave up dungeons. And I still don't know how to play my first character properly - reading about something on Elitist Jerks isn't the same as working it out for yourself.
challenge?
Feral Soloes 41 Raid Bosses in 3 minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7UqkVTTUro
Just FYI to save you future trolls because I know English is a second language for you...
Analized isn't a word but if it was would mean something along the lines of giving someone anal over and over or vigorously.
The word you were looking for was analyzed, from the word analyze.
I hope you someone reads this though it is an older post, but I just found your blog. Some of the most fun I have had in game came from a recent run in Molten Core with three Level 80's. Myself, a DK, a Paladin, and a Shaman.
Our gear was 200-215ish and none of us had ever been there before. It was a total blast. It wasn't easy by any means we even wiped a couple times. But, the challenge and feeling of accomplishment when we did beat the bosses was far greater than ToC run #500. Overall great fun and a great challenge.
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