June News/Discussion

[Delc]

I don't get this comment. The original versions of the heroics, running them in the greens and blues that people had at the time, were quite a challenge. But they had to be nerfed because some of the mechanics were just stupid. At that level of gear, pre 2.1, you needed certain group compositions to run heroic Shattered Halls (considered the hardest of them all). Heroic Arcatraz's end-boss couldn't be done with just one healer unless you got very lucky with his choices of mind flays. And there were other stupid things like Underbog Colossi literally one-shotting a tank.

Yeah, heroics now are easy. They've been nerfed, and the gear people have trivilizes them. Nowadays I run around with +2550 healing, and when I was first running heroics, I had about +1000 healing. That kind of stuff has impact.

"Easy" and "hard" are very relative. Blizzard's learned a lot from TBC, and yes the game is getting more "casual" as we go, but when TBC first came out the end-game was pretty damn hardcore. Ask any guild that ran pre-nerf Magtheridon and Gruul what it was like back then, as hardcore raiders were quitting the game in droves because it was so stupidly hard it wasn't worth it.

BTW, nice seeing STSIs back again :)

-Bolty

I said nothing of the dificulty of the instances, I remember how hard they were (and I was fine with it). I just didn't like that the heroics were only the new instances. I got my fill of the new instances running them for gear once, I had no desire to do it a second time on the same toon. Whatever the difficulty level is, I want heroic SFK, deadmines, etc. Sure I can run them now with alts, but I think it would be fun to see heroic versions so they are a challenge.

[ima_nerd]

To be honest, that all depends on your server and whether you're in a guild or no. For the rest of us who just can't get access to a Party In A Can™, those elite areas were a huge levelling block. It's also no coincidence that all those blocks occur at pretty much the same level...

You can't call them leveling blocks when the real problem is just lack of quests. You might as well be blaming SM for having problems leveling 30-40. It wasn't soloable and took gathering four other people of certain role-fillers to succeed. The fact of the matter is that there was a serious quest shortage in the old world. Blizzard took elite content and made it normal to cheese some "new" solo content. Myself and a friend are leveling new characters and would love to efficiently play together but with everything being nonelite now, it simply is a waste of time to group and do quests.

[Mordekhuul]

You can't call them leveling blocks when the real problem is just lack of quests. You might as well be blaming SM for having problems leveling 30-40. It wasn't soloable and took gathering four other people of certain role-fillers to succeed. The fact of the matter is that there was a serious quest shortage in the old world. Blizzard took elite content and made it normal to cheese some "new" solo content. Myself and a friend are leveling new characters and would love to efficiently play together but with everything being nonelite now, it simply is a waste of time to group and do quests.

Any dearth of old world quests was completely solved (and then some) by the increase in quest experience gained.

I only hit about half the zones while going 1-60 recently, and didn't even do much instancing for experience at all.

In fact, I even skipped any quests that looked like too much running around, because leveling is so fast and easy now that you can just do the quick-hit quests in each zone you go to and you still end up skipping a lot of zones.

Converting the elites to non-elites was just overkill.

[Chesspiece_face]

Any dearth of old world quests was completely solved (and then some) by the increase in quest experience gained.

I only hit about half the zones while going 1-60 recently, and didn't even do much instancing for experience at all.

In fact, I even skipped any quests that looked like too much running around, because leveling is so fast and easy now that you can just do the quick-hit quests in each zone you go to and you still end up skipping a lot of zones.

Converting the elites to non-elites was just overkill.

I don't see the conversion of the elites as an addition to the larger quest experience but a response to it. Like you say with the added quest experience you can pretty much soar through the 1-60 content. If they left the elite quests as is nobody would ever do them anymore. by lowering them to non elite it just makes them viable leveling quests as opposed to content gauranteed to be skipped.

[Mordekhuul]

I don't see the conversion of the elites as an addition to the larger quest experience but a response to it. Like you say with the added quest experience you can pretty much soar through the 1-60 content. If they left the elite quests as is nobody would ever do them anymore. by lowering them to non elite it just makes them viable leveling quests as opposed to content gauranteed to be skipped.

I agree with that. On my priest I actually jotted up to the top Jintha'alor to complete my Mallet of zul'farak at the appropriate level, thanks to the mobs being non-elite, even though I skipped the rest of the Hinterlands altogether.

[ima_nerd]

I don't see the conversion of the elites as an addition to the larger quest experience but a response to it. Like you say with the added quest experience you can pretty much soar through the 1-60 content. If they left the elite quests as is nobody would ever do them anymore. by lowering them to non elite it just makes them viable leveling quests as opposed to content gauranteed to be skipped.

It's not guaranteed to be skipped. I would do it as a break from solo leveling, as would other people. They could make the quests have blue, or at least respectable green, rewards to make it enticing like an instance. Instances are no longer efficient for leveling but the rewards are good enough to make it worth it.

[NiteFox]

It's not guaranteed to be skipped. I would do it as a break from solo leveling, as would other people. They could make the quests have blue, or at least respectable green, rewards to make it enticing like an instance. Instances are no longer efficient for leveling but the rewards are good enough to make it worth it.

But by that reasoning, you have solo quests for solo levelling, and instances for group play and rewards. Sometimes, putting together a elite zone party together takes more effort than putting together a party for the local instance, and when you've actually got your group together it's awfully prone to interference (especially on PvP realms), which is a pretty big draw for instances. Instead of, say, doing Stromgarde, you could do Uldaman or pretty much any wing of the Scarlet Monastery, with the prospect of even better loot than the subzones.