Naxxramas

[Artega]

Luckly, the purples from AV are quite reachable.

Were.

Assuming both sides win in a reasonable amount of time and have a relatively even win-ross ratio, it's still going to take an unimaginably long amount of time for Warriors and other classes without effective AE abilities to gain the rep necessary to reach Exalted; with 1 rep per kill, we're looking at probably over 50,000 HKs necessary to reach Exalted. Lower that to maybe 28,000 if your team actually completes the objectives (e.g. killing the enemy captain, killing the lieutenants, destroying the bunkers.)

Don't know about you, but all the people on Mannoroth just run into the field of strife and run in circles. As a Warrior, it's almost impossible to get HKs - if I charge in and spam Demoralizing Shout (which puts me on the player's "threat list"), I get mobbed and die before I can benefit from the HKs. If I hang back where it's relatively safe, I get maybe two HKs per minute.

Blizzard has basically taken a giant, spiked, rusty iron pole and shoved it up the nether regions of all non-AE/ranged classes because they made the Exalted items entirely too powerful and they'd rather punish us for that than actually fix the mistake they've made.

[Concillian]

Don't know about you, but all the people on Mannoroth just run into the field of strife and run in circles.  As a Warrior, it's almost impossible to get HKs - if I charge in and spam Demoralizing Shout (which puts me on the player's "threat list"), I get mobbed and die before I can benefit from the HKs.  If I hang back where it's relatively safe, I get maybe two HKs per minute.

Blizzard has basically taken a giant, spiked, rusty iron pole and shoved it up the nether regions of all non-AE/ranged classes because they made the Exalted items entirely too powerful and they'd rather punish us for that than actually fix the mistake they've made.
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You'd think a PvP server would know better.

I got over 600 rep per hour when I went to AV with my warlock this last AV holiday weekend, and I did no AoE. AoE is largely pointless unless it's just to tag people, and playing AV just to tag people is also relatively pointless.

I'm glad the people on my server know that objectives are the objective of AV.

[oldmandennis]

For that matter the *first pull* in MC averages more upgrades per full-blue player than a full clear of every non-raid instance.
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I can't speak for all servers, but on my server atleast, those items are now casual/solo as far as I'm concerned. They are usually available for 1200-1500 each.

it's still going to take an unimaginably long amount of time for Warriors and other classes without effective AE abilities to gain the rep necessary to reach Exalted

Well, either I feel for you haveing to play on such an idiotic server, or you haven't really tried it since the patch. A lot of people on my server run a mod that auto invites people as they join the battle. If not, usually a /y Invite pls does the trick.

[MongoJerry]

You'd think a PvP server would know better.

I got over 600 rep per hour when I went to AV with my warlock this last AV holiday weekend, and I did no AoE.  AoE is largely pointless unless it's just to tag people, and playing AV just to tag people is also relatively pointless.

I'm glad the people on my server know that objectives are the objective of AV.
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No kidding. That's what I was thinking. If you actually try to, I don't know, *win* the match, you get a boatload of reputation along the way. I got Exalted in under two weeks and hardly got any rep from killing people. I mostly spent my time fulfilling objectives -- taking strategic points, helping to kill lieutenants and commanders, or (gasp!) doing PvE stuff like collecting ram hides and wolves. Plus, there are the blood, armor scrap, and flesh turnins. Plus, there was the rep I got for, you know, winning the actual matches. That helped a lot.

[Ashock]

I'm not sure this is a valid argument.  I could be silly and say that people who spend their 14.99 boping field mice on the head in Elwynn Forest get no epics at all.  I could also say that as someone who is primarily focused on raiding, I am "forced" to spend a lot of time acquiring gold for repairs and potions.  I am also "forced" to do DM in search of librams and class books, strath/scholo for shoulder enchants, my class quest for the trinket, etc.  I say "forced" because these things are part of the game and I enjoy them, but if you had a guild full of ZOMG raiders who skipped this content, they probably would not get too far.
I'm not sure solo is a viable play option in a MMORPG.  It's your money, you can play the game how you want, I'm just not sure developers and designers need to spend their limited time supporting a playstyle that goes against the very definition of the genre.  I know there were people who tried playing certain levels of Doom "buddhist" style - no killing allowed.  Are they entitled to have the rest of the maps altered to suit them?  What about people who liked base defense or DotA WC3 maps.  Are they entitled to a seperate B.net ladder?
OK, you are a warrior.  You get 4 purples from your D2 set.  Purple neck from DMF.  Unstoppable Force for a big 2h weapon, The Imoveable Object for a shield, Lobotomizer for an offhand.  Don Julio's for one ring.  Class book for one trinket, maybe Quel for your tanking main hand.  Field duty gives you a decent ring, back, purple bracer, and trinket.  Buy the MC belt.  I think the carapace xbow from strath is endgame gear until you have enough leaf drops that the strikers mark starts drifting down to warriors and rogues.  Voila, way more then 1/2 your gear is basically end game gear.
I have a little more sympathy for you here.  If you wander into AB or WSG every now and again with crappy gear and no voicechat, you will frequently get beaten down.  AV is a little different - the zerg is usually such a mess that gear doesn't matter a whole bunch.  Luckly, the purples from AV are quite reachable.
Some of them are worth it.  You may need to adjust your feeling of what is proper time/reward.  I'm sure its dissapointing to warriors and rogues, who are more dependant then others on thier main hand weapons... but it looks like those are in the 1/2 of the gear you don't get.
Sure, when the difficulty is the same.  When you have encounters that will stall the best and brightest sporting the best gear they can obtain for months, and has a combonation of lockouts and deep loot tables that will keep people coming back for upgrades for a year?  I hope this is what they are planning for Medivah's tower BTW.
The crafted items (and MC bracers and belts) can frequently be found on the AH of my server.  It is also not difficult on my server to find a guild that will take you along for Onyxia.  While that does require raiding, it's only 1/2 hour.
Maybe you should take a break.  If the new content like field duty and D2 isn't exciting enough for you, well I have seen nothing to make me think there will be alot more coming before the expansion.  If I was wedded to the solo/small group playstyle, I probably would have broken off somewhere in Sep-Oct or so.

Don't go away mad though - I'm sure you've had many more pleasurable hours with this game then you have had with just about any other.  Even if you throw in the monthly fee, if you devide by the amount of time you spend playing you have probably recieved an excellent value.
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In a 40 man raid, at least 1/2 the people there are doing jobs that require basically no real skills, just a monkey-like attitude. Even the other 1/2 is not completely comprised of "great" players.

As far as reaching the highest status in PvP.... C'mon now. It would take 5 times more time to reach it than to do some raids.

Top AH items - not even close to top raid items. If you do not see that, you are either blind or just refuse to agnowledge the truth. So, I need to spend thrice the time to GRIND for the money in order to get items that are still less powerful and in the case of weapons *a lot* less powerful? Yeh, that makes sense..... to a cow.

You are not addressing my main point. I do not complain about the fact that it is more difficult without raiding to get upper-end gear. My point is that it is competely *impossible*.


You know the game purely from a raider's PoV and nothing else. I see that now. So why should I bother arguing any more with you? Those with full bellies can never see life from the same point of view as those who are starving to death.


Have a nice day.



-A

[Mavfin]

In a 40 man raid, at least 1/2 the people there are doing jobs that require basically no real skills, just a monkey-like attitude. Even the other 1/2 is not completely comprised of "great" players.

As far as reaching the highest status in PvP.... C'mon now. It would take 5 times more time to reach it than to do some raids.

Top AH items - not even close to top raid items. If you do not see that, you are either blind or just refuse to agnowledge the truth. So, I need to spend thrice the time to GRIND for the money in order to get items that are still less powerful and in the case of weapons *a lot* less powerful? Yeh, that makes sense..... to a cow.

You are not addressing my main point. I do not complain about the fact that it is more difficult without raiding to get upper-end gear. My point is that it is competely *impossible*.
You know the game purely from a raider's PoV and nothing else. I see that now. So why should I bother arguing any more with you? Those with full bellies can never see life from the same point of view as those who are starving to death.
Have a nice day.
-A
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Oh, you're mostly correct, Ashock. The best you can do at a 5-10 man level is the Dungeon 2 set, which is close to as good as some things in the first half of MC, but not really either. T0.5 is a good description. Heroism is (very roughly) halfway between Valor and Might. However, there's a piece or two even I and a couple others who have raid gear are looking at and wondering if we might want to do the quests for......

TUF *is* about as good as *some* MC weapons. It's about the same as Earthshaker and OEB, and better than Shardstrike. You can get that from PvP. No, not impossible, but it takes a ton of work.

There's the Cenarion stuff, long grind,(nvm about the axe, AQ20 quest). Some of Avarice's raiders are working toward/have already gotten some of that. No, I have Mala, so I'm not going for it. It is definitely within your reach w/o more than a 5-man group, or maybe a pickup 10-man for a quick kill of one of the elementals. Not sure on that, exactly, but you're not talking scheduled 2-hour 20-man raid or anything, just getting together to kill something, perhaps.

But, by and large, you *are* going to top out at *some* stuff that's about what I'd call (very) early-MC quality. Any further than that, and you have to raid.

Edit; Added note: I have put in 3 months of 3-5 nights a week raiding to get what I have. You could have the Cenarion stuff easily in that time, and the D2 set, and probably the Awbee chestplate. I've spent usually 3 nights a week 3-5 hours per night in MC/BWL. Most weeks there's an Ony run, about an hour. And then I raided ZG enough to get Revered rep and get my chest/belt/bracers from there. I put a lot of time and work into it.

However, if you get said stuff....you're *way past* the average warrior on the server. (meaning the non-raid stuff I highlighted)

[Ashock]

Oh, you're mostly correct, Ashock.  [right][snapback]107949[/snapback][/right]

Well, I've been playing for only 2 months. Gimme 2 more months and I will be correct *all* the time :P ........................ I'm actually only half-kidding B)



-A


Edit: That is if I have enough patience for 2 more months. In my 1st month of playing, I was pushing my wife into playing also, her being an ex-semi-decent casual D1 and D2 player. I have stopped doing it lately.

[Mavfin]

Well, I've been playing for only 2 months. Gimme 2 more months and I will be correct *all* the time  :P ........................ I'm actually only half-kidding  B)
-A
Edit: That is if I have enough patience for 2 more months. In my 1st month of playing, I was pushing my wife into playing also, her being an ex-semi-decent casual D1 and D2 player. I have stopped doing it lately.
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It's not for everyone, but I think that if you play 3 months, you've probably gotten your 50+15+15=$80 of enjoyment out of it if you've built your first 60 by then. That's a LOT of hours of enjoyment for that price. Cheaper than smoking!

And if you play longer, good, and if you don't, it wasn't for you.

[Ashock]

It's not for everyone, but I think that if you play 3 months, you've probably gotten your 50+15+15=$80 of enjoyment out of it if you've built your first 60 by then.  That's a LOT of hours of enjoyment for that price.  Cheaper than smoking!

And if you play longer, good, and if you don't, it wasn't for you.
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I partially agree with you. The game *is* nice and engrossing. However, here is the problem(s). If you quit a game because of frustration and not because you did not like the game, that to me means more than losing the money. It is losing time, because a lot of that time was spent getting to a certain goal that as it turns out is unattainable. Time is more important than a few dollars. A game being right or wrong for a person, should not be primarily dependent of logistics, but on the gameplay itself. If you can't get to the meat of the content because of logistics, it is a game that was not properly thought out.
If you are bored by a game, it is not for you. If you suck at a game, it is not for you. I for example suck at FPS's and I am also bored by them. Clearly, they are not for me.
If you can't get to the most important parts of a game because you can't play at a particular time of the day, the game is poorly structured, plain and simple. D1 and D2 did not have that problem. A truly good game should allow itself to be built around the player and his/her schedule, not the other way around. Gaming is a part of RL, not the other way around. Healthy gaming, that is.



-A

[Monkey]

Don't go away mad though - I'm sure you've had many more pleasurable hours with this game then you have had with just about any other.  Even if you throw in the monthly fee, if you devide by the amount of time you spend playing you have probably recieved an excellent value.
[right][snapback]107904[/snapback][/right]

Oh I'm not angry. I used to get angry, but all my comments in that post were just trying to be realistic--For a variety of reasons, the endgame is a completely different game than 1-59. Once you think of them as two different games, the question you must answer is, 'Do I enjoy Game #2?'. If not and you're not interested in rerolling, then maybe it's time to cancel. /shrug

If anything these days, I just feel sad about the outcome of all this--my tight relatively hardcore 5-man guild had to become a raiding guild to survive. In the process, many of the original members drifted away to rerolls and other games. What we wanted was more small group content (ZG would have been GREAT if it had arrived 3 months earlier), not having to leap up to 40-man raids. But by the time ZG arrived, we were much larger and 4 bosses into MC and there was no turning back.

[Skandranon]

In a 40 man raid, at least 1/2 the people there are doing jobs that require basically no real skills, just a monkey-like attitude. Even the other 1/2 is not completely comprised of "great" players.

For Molten Core and even some of Blackwing Lair, you're correct.

Anyone who's fought the Twin Emperors knows it's not true of all 40-man raid content, though.

You are not addressing my main point. I do not complain about the fact that it is more difficult without raiding to get upper-end gear. My point is that it is competely *impossible*.
[right][snapback]107942[/snapback][/right]

It isn't impossible, but I agree that it's the next closest thing. I have no problem balancing out casual epics with additional time requirements, but Blizzard has taken the concept of timesinks to an entirely new level. Exalted with CC without going into AQ20 is a month or more of grinding texts. Epic weaponry out of the 5-man places requires running them for three to four months. Even Exalted with AV, which used to be a reasonably brief two to three week grind, is all the way up to month-and-a-half or more. Dungeon 2 is at least not horrifyingly timesinky, but you have to get the Dungeon 1 set first...so it's a significant matter of time to put it together, as well.

You can get gear that's almost as good as Molten Core gear without 40-man raiding (you may have to do some 20-mans). The problem is that much of it isn't hard - just long, and I'm not sure why Blizzard thinks that tons of people are going to go for that.

[MongoJerry]

You can get gear that's almost as good as Molten Core gear without 40-man raiding (you may have to do some 20-mans).  The problem is that much of it isn't hard - just long, and I'm not sure why Blizzard thinks that tons of people are going to go for that.
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Bingo! I'll agree with you there. I think a lot of the items that have been added lately for the casual gamer are very good items. My problem with the content for the solo/casual player is that it's mostly a boring repetitive grind. I do like some of the events that were added for the Tier 0.5 set, but really there needs to be much more for the casual level 60 to do out in the world. Like I've said before, this comes from the fact that Blizzard put so much time and effort into polishing the level 1-40 game that they didn't put much time or effort polishing the higher level game before release. My hope and expectation is that the situation will be much better in the expansion with all of this development time dedicated toward the high level game. However, I completely empathize with the casual level 60 player who wants to do more than grind mobs repeatedly to get a small reward.

[Ashock]

You can get gear that's almost as good as Molten Core gear without 40-man raiding (you may have to do some 20-mans).  The problem is that much of it isn't hard - just long, and I'm not sure why Blizzard thinks that tons of people are going to go for that.
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Why? Because Blizzard is catering towards those who have a lot of time on their hands, and not necessarily those that know what they are doing. The whole concept of large scale raiding in a way produces parity. You don't have to be an elite player to raid, just have a lot of time to kill. Blizzard's other games were less forgiving to those that were not that good. It is a shame that the trend did not continue.



-A

[Ashock]

However, I completely empathize with the casual level 60 player who wants to do more than grind mobs repeatedly to get a small reward.
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Precisely! I would rather quit than do that. I want to relax through gaming, not waste my time. Relax does not mean no nail-biting excitement (to those who would jump on me when they read this). It does mean spending time enjoying the experience. Being on the edge is exciting. The danger factor is exciting. Good teamwork in a tough situation is exciting. Teamwork clicking like clockwork is exciting. Accomplishing something solo that is considered next ot impossible is exciting. I've experienced all those in D2 and even more in D1. Grinding mobs for hours and hours for something relatively small is definately not my idea of exciting or ralaxing. I'd rather watch Caddyshack.... for the 20th time, or get some sleep. I can totally understand now what so many people playing Guild Wars were saying when the game just came out. They were talking about that game not being all about the items and raids. I did not understand that then but I do now. Too bad GW sucked.



-A

[Artega]

No kidding.  That's what I was thinking.  If you actually try to, I don't know, *win* the match, you get a boatload of reputation along the way.  I got Exalted in under two weeks and hardly got any rep from killing people.  I mostly spent my time fulfilling objectives -- taking strategic points, helping to kill lieutenants and commanders, or (gasp!) doing PvE stuff like collecting ram hides and wolves.  Plus, there are the blood, armor scrap, and flesh turnins.  Plus, there was the rep I got for, you know, winning the actual matches.  That helped a lot.
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Unlike Warsong, five good people cannot win an AV match for the others that want to farm HKs.

[oldmandennis]

Unlike Warsong, five good people cannot win an AV match for the others that want to farm HKs.
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Really? I find the opposite to be true. In my experience, even 2 people screwing around in WSG makes a huge difference. On the other hand, 15 people assisting eachother, healing, and picking off clothies can make a huge difference in AV, even if 5 are fishing and the other 20 are just mindlessly zerging.

[oldmandennis]

As far as reaching the highest status in PvP.... C'mon now. It would take 5 times more time to reach it than to do some raids.

I don't know about all classes, but for shaman at least, the blue pvp items are better for pvp then the MC set. I'm 7/8 1/8 but only use my T2 helm for pvp. Most of what I use for PvPing comes from PvP. Rank 8 is not that hard, I'm able to maintain it with 10 hr/week on a good week, but I frequently go on business trips and also that time goes down when we are raiding hard. I know some of the big time pvpers on my server, and spend maybe 1/4 of the time in organized groups.

So, I need to spend thrice the time to GRIND for the money in order to get items that are still less powerful and in the case of weapons *a lot* less powerful? Yeh, that makes sense..... to a cow.

Hey, it took 10 months to get where I am now. Drama, setbacks, defections, alliances disolving... and a lot of cash spent on repairs and potions. True, the purples are easy to get if you can get into a group that has MC or BWL on farm status, where most of the raiders have most of their set already. But if you add up all the time I have spent raiding and all the gold I have spent, I could easily afford 2k per slot for the best purchasable items. And I _do_ currently use several purchasable items, as well as situaltional blues.

You are not addressing my main point. I do not complain about the fact that it is more difficult without raiding to get upper-end gear. My point is that it is competely *impossible*.

I keep addressing it. I gave you a list of 14 or so items you could obtain that you wouldn't feel embarased facing Nef in.

You know the game purely from a raider's PoV and nothing else. I see that now.
[right][snapback]107942[/snapback][/right]

Well this is just a cop out. You don't know me. You have no idea how much time I've spent solo and in 5 man dungeons. You have been playing for 2 months. It has taken me a year and a half to go all purple. If you focus on the items which have been _repeateldy_ discussed here and spend another year playing you will be mostly as effective as I am now.

[Warlock]

I keep addressing it. I gave you a list of 14 or so items you could obtain that you wouldn't feel embarased facing Nef in.
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Many of which were surplus raid items. Equipping someone else's castoffs has never brought me much pride in achievement.

The gap from a late blue to a non-raid epic is bigger than that from the non-raid epic to an early raid epic, but the latter gap does still exist and there are many, many more raid epics available. I know I replaced many of my 'best non raid items' fairly quickly once I began raiding regularly. Replacing the Belt of the Archmage with a Mana Igniting Cord, for instance. And no, this wasn't riding the coattails of an established raid guild.

*shrugs* Neither side of this argument is likely to convince the other. Personally I don't think "that's just as good as my stuff, but it's a hard quest and I enjoy raiding more - maybe I'll get it on my alt" level gear would harm the game. Currently the best raid gear is around twenty item levels ahead of the best non-raid gear and it'll get further ahead when Naxx is released. Presuming appropriately difficult (MC difficulty for MC rewards, BWL difficulty for BWL rewards, etc) content existed, where do you raiders think small group, pvp or mixed-style players should cap out at?

[ZugzwangZeitgeist]

Right now the problem stems from a lack of foresight on Blizzard's part.  They stupidly put 3 raid instances into the pipeline without thinking "Maybe the other groups need content", then they rushed something out when they realized that 90% of the content in a year's patches was raid focused.

I'd hardly call that a stupid decision. At release, the game had a whopping one large raid dungeon to the 3 five-person instances [i forgot Blackrock Depths as well, which could certainly be considered an endgame instance, bringing the total up to four] and 1 ten-person instance.

On top of that, before any of that raid content got released a new 5-man instance was released in the form of Dire Maul.

There was a long dry spell in which no new 5-man content were released, but frankly I don't see why releasing more would have been a good thing: there are already 4 fairly diverse 5-man instances with a wide range of equipment. Meanwhile Blizzard has recently been working on fleshing out their raid content with a pair of 20-man instances and a pair of 40-man instances. Raid content is just beginning to have any diversity at all - half a year ago your only option for raid instances was a pair of extremely linear raid dungeons with no quests. I'm very happy that they're starting offering some diversity, especially since now even many "casual" guilds are starting to move on from Molten Core now.

[Warlock]

I'd hardly call that a stupid decision. At release, the game had a whopping one large raid dungeon to the 3 five-person instances and 1 ten-person instance.

On top of that, before any of that raid content got released a new 5-man instance was released in the form of Dire Maul.

There was a long dry spell in which no new 5-man content were released, but frankly I don't see why releasing more would have been a good thing: there are already 4 fairly diverse 5-man instances with a wide range of equipment. Meanwhile Blizzard has recently been working on fleshing out their raid content with a pair of 20-man instances and a pair of 40-man instances. Raid content is just beginning to have any diversity at all - half a year ago your only option for raid instances was a pair of extremely linear raid dungeons with no quests. I'm very happy that they're starting offering some diversity, especially since now even many "casual" guilds are starting to move on from Molten Core now.
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Progression, progression, progression. Raiders outgrew MC and got BWL. They outgrew BWL and got AQ. They're about to outgrow AQ and get Naxx. If you've outgrown Scholo, you've outgrown BRS and Strath and DM as well.

I think Blizzard, or at least key designers, simply thought everyone would want to move on to raiding, that everyone who finished with Scholo would go to MC as a matter of course. To me releasing five instances in a row for one playstyle without catering to any others seems shortsighted.