Naxxramas

[Darian]

But if that's not possible (say, you're in an inclusive guild like The Basin), you can also create sub-classes of raiders within the guild.  For a while, The Core assigned people to the "A-team," "B-team," and "C-teams."  Basically, the A-team was the front raiders who consistently showed up and were willing to take the repair costs of learning new bosses, and were therefore guaranteed a spot in the "A-list" raids like BWL if they showed up on time.  The B-teamers could take up spots if for whatever reason some A-list people didn't show up and if the raid needed that particular class.  C-teamers rarely got to go on the A-list raids and were there mostly to socialize, PvP, and maybe go on some of the smaller raids.[right][snapback]107237[/snapback][/right]

It's funny you say this, MJ; I have become Satan himself to some people over on Stormrage for basically developing this exact idea and getting our council to tweak and approve it.

And ironically it's only gotten worse since we downed Nef Monday. :/

[Raelynn]

It's funny you say this, MJ; I have become Satan himself to some people over on Stormrage for basically developing this exact idea and getting our council to tweak and approve it.

And ironically it's only gotten worse since we downed Nef Monday.  :/
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I've been working inside the other alliance on Stormrage as part of BYS, and we implement a somewhat similar system which we call the "core system". We use a 90-day rolling boss attendance (or night attendance before the instance is on farm status) and use a certain percent attendance for determining core status. The cores are invited first and the rest get invited only following that.

Now this system has its good and bad points. The good points are that the people that work hard to learn an instance get the benefits of the loot from it for basically as long as they want. However, including this system in addition to a zero-sum point system means that non-cores are doubly penalized in terms of getting loot. Additionally, there is no longer a mechanism to get people into a raid if they had couldn't get in prior (at one point there was a list so if you didn't get in one raid, you were guaranteed to get in the next, but the list got too long so it was dropped). All this adds to people getting unhappy because they aren't core so they can't get in, but since they can't get in they can't become core.

In a more structured raiding guild that has just over the amount needed to run, it could work better. But when you start hitting the point where you have half again as many people that want to run a raid, you start getting more and more unhappy people that can't do anything to change their position.

[Raelynn]

The casual faction on the forums and their complaints on the WoW-Forums had always my deepest felt sympathy ... up to Patch 1.10.
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There are two distinct groups of people complaining about 1.10. For one I agree with you, for the other I don't.

The first group is the people that want easy loot. For them, 1.10 is bad because it is too hard. Granted, it is not helping that most of the people that say it is possible say "I did it with 4 other epic-geared raiding guild players and we used vent, but it should be possible for people in greens and blues". They're misrepresenting the group that this content was designed for, and personally, I don't think content should be designed with voice chat in mind unless the voice chat is integrated.

The second group is the group that wants NEW 5-man content. I am part of this group. Adding in epics for the casual player was one thing, but all they did was send us all back into the same instances everyone has been running since the game came out. It's a band-aid at best. People have been sick of the instances themselves. We need something new.

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.

It also doesn't help that the "solo and small group friendly" content in Silithus got ninja-changed into small raid quest mobs at some random point. :angry:

[Ashock]

Well, I'll take that as a compliment. ;) And, as someone who scrimped and saved for their mount,  I am truly impressed by your gold accumulating talents. (Still, given the real importance of gold in the game, I can't resist asking: Is this "World of Warcraft" or "Ages of Arbitrage"?) But I agree with many of Jarulf's comments in another thread. I do think WoW is really well done, and perhaps one shouldn't expect it to cater to an anti-social online game player such as myself,  but why not?

I really enjoyed coming across some of the out-of-the-way places (like Newman's landing off the coast of Stormwind,  or a little Murlock camp north of the Swamp of Sorrows with a treasure chest that never seemed to respawn) . Yet Bliz seems to have done so little to reward players who might be interested in doing something else other than 40-person raids  (not to say that people who enjoy participating in such raids shouldn't be rewarded), or even smaller instances where if it happens  you have to  leave in the middle,  you are ditching your group.

Anyway, it seems to me to that there is a lot more room in the game for all kinds of different players than Bliz has currently satisfied, but I'm not optimistic that they will explore it (unless the profit motive dictates otherwise, not that there's anything wrong with that).
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Yes, it was a compliment :D Your assessment was pretty much dead on.

As far as getting gold, it is no big deal. If some of the better items were accessible throguh the AH, I have no doubt that I would own them soon enough, but as you probably remember, they are not. Between what I have right now, my mount, my 2 blue swords and 2 blue items that are waiting for me (through the AH) and the lag accident that caused me to bid 50G on 5 Sup reds, I'd say I have about 800G at lvl 46. If I wanted to continue, I'd probably double my money by lvl 50 or earlier, but I see now that except a few semi-decent items, the AH is really not going to cut it, so I will stop actively trying to make money there. I could write a guide to the AH (to go along with the other AH guides out there (that mostly suck), but really... who cares about the AH. What is the point to try to get some money together, if a few trips to some of the end-game instances will yield better items than one could get through the AH...

Yes, the game is very well done and that is why I want to keep going, at least until lvl 60. At that time I will see if I could get into some instances late at night. If I can, well.... I do not need the *best* items, just something that will let me compete. I guess something in-between AH items and raid items will do. If not - I will be gone at least until the expansion, although I doubt it will offer the type of content that caters to those that simply can *not* spend their whole evening gaming straight through. That's the biggest problem. It is not the total time spent, it is the fact that it needs to be continuous. 3 hours/day is not a problem. 3 hours/day in one shot is. Funny, I thought I was paying the same 14.99 as everyone else is, so why am I only getting about 5.99 worth of content?

PvP is also nice, and I have spent some hours in the last 2 weeks in the Warsong Gulch BG which were mostly fun. Unfortunately, at the higher lvls again you need better gear, and ultimately at least to me the BGs are fun but only as part of the game, not the *whole* game.

The game is definately too biased towards gear and not skill. Yeh, there are skilled players out there, but their skill is often overshadowed by the quality of their gear, and those who are unskilled can get away with it as long as their gear is nice. This is annoying. In D2 and and especially in D1, you could play with someone and if they were good, you could feel it and see it. Here, you can see that they have nice gear and they are not incompetent, but that is all. This is also annoying. The game almost wants to achieve parity among the masses on the one hand, but through the fact that not everyone is simply available to raid, it fails to achieve that.

Anyway, I should stop the ranting. Besides, it has achieved it's purpose of fully waking me up ;)



-A

[Kevin]

There are two distinct groups of people complaining about 1.10.  For one I agree with you, for the other I don't.

The first group is the people that want easy loot.  For them, 1.10 is bad because it is too hard.  Granted, it is not helping that most of the people that say it is possible say "I did it with 4 other epic-geared raiding guild players and we used vent, but it should be possible for people in greens and blues".  They're misrepresenting the group that this content was designed for, and personally, I don't think content should be designed with voice chat in mind unless the voice chat is integrated.

The second group is the group that wants NEW 5-man content.  I am part of this group.  Adding in epics for the casual player was one thing, but all they did was send us all back into the same instances everyone has been running since the game came out.  It's a band-aid at best.  People have been sick of the instances themselves.  We need something new.

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.

It also doesn't help that the "solo and small group friendly" content in Silithus got ninja-changed into small raid quest mobs at some random point. :angry:
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Good coverage of the issues.

I don't care about the people that want easy loot they will always complain. Screw them.

I'm part of two very different guilds. Alliance side I'm in a group that has just killed Nefarion and Skeram in AQ40. I can get in 20 mans if I have the time to kill everything in ZG, everything in AQ20, everything in MC, everything in BWL.

Horde side we have a guild alliance that can rarely get 20 people together. We were wanting to hit ZG before 1.10 came out, we were mostly tired of scholo and strat and most people had finished all the 5 man quests in there. We would 10 man UBRS because we couldn't get 15 without grabbing pugs though when we started the alliance we could get 15. But when we saw the 1.10 changes (announced shortly after the alliance was formed) we started really trying to complet the T0 sets because we knew the upgrades would be good and cool and hoped for some fun challenges. We have people that just love the 45 minute Baron run challenge. It takes time to learn everything and get it down, one mistake and you fail, but it's kinda like the 40 man raids but on a much smaller scale. You have to learn the group and tactics and execute the script. It's great. We are pretty happy and we are in the gear designed for the people the content is aimed at. We haven't suceeded yet but we will soon. Even if a 5 man can push 700 DPS on a single target (and that is pretty high DPS for a blue/green group) it takes 10 seconds to kill that 7000 HP elite mob. Many of the pulls in there have 2 to 3 elites so you are looking at 20-30 seconds a pull at least. It's a challenge you do have to skip some stuff you do have to keep moving, but it is by no means impossible.

ZG is also doable as long as you have a core of about 10-15 you can PuG the rest and still be successful. So it does fit the smaller guilds, that are willing to bring in PuGs pretty well. We are considering doing this with our horde guild. Sponsoring runs that we fill in warm bodies from the PuG classes, we have killed a few bosses in there with just 15-18 people as is. Generally on a boss fight even a bad PuG player won't be able to hurt you more than they can help you. So ZG is more casual friendly than MC. It's much easier in a place like MC or BWL for one persons mistake to kill the whole raid. In ZG a mistake by one person will generally only kill that person and maybe a few others. Even an MT not putting an exploding bat in a good spot shouldn't kill the raid as the rest of the raid can move themselves easily out of harms way if they have any skill. So I think it fit in right where it should fit as well, though you do have to make sacrifices for it. Guilds that were just shy of critical mass for MC and BWL should have loved ZG and AQ20 as they could have full guild run the places right away, no PuGs needed.

I've been happy with the solo stuff I've done so far for the upgrade quests (I haven't actually collected any ectoplasms yet because I didn't have the bracers on my horde character that really wanted the upgrades and on my alliance characters I haven't really bothered yet because while for some the uprades would be a sidegrade or minor boost for some gear sets with mostly epics on 2 of the 3 of my capped alliance 60's there isn't a lot of motivation to do other than doing it and I'm saving it for the horde toon that will get the most benefit as that will maximize my initial enjoyment of the quest more).

So yeah, Blizzard made a step in the right direction. I would like to see more solo and 5 man content though.

The problem is though that you can't push content fast enough to constantly have fresh stuff out there. 5 mans got stale faster than raid locked dungeons for a couple of reasons. They are shorter, when you could raid them they were complete jokes so the content gets old faster. For players new to the game the changes to make them only be 5 man just stretched the life of those instances out because they won't get stale as fast. They will remain challenging for a longer time. My rule of thumb is that you need to kill a boss mob about 20 times before you will get the loot you want from it assuming that the loot isn't contested. For everyone one else that wants the same loot from that boss as you do, add about 10 more kills. So if you have 11 people in your guild say 2 warriors, 2 hunters, a warlock, 2 shaman, a mage, a rogue, a druid, and a priest. You can expect to run scholo, strat and UBRS 30-40 times before everyone has gotten their T0 sets, even though if you get really lucky you could be done with UBRS in as few as 11 runs. The problems happen when in a group like that say the priest gets his loot from UBRS on the first run but the hunter doesn't get the loot till the 35th run. The priest is going to be tired of the place. The hunter is going to want to keep going back. Guilds that work are ones where the priest realizes that the hunter has been going to scholo for weeks on end even though he has nothing to get from there and the hunter realizes the priest in only going to UBRS because the hunter still needs stuff. For me the burnout happens a lot less quickly when I keep this in mind. I also cheat a little and take the 60 that has the most to gain as long as it doesn't endanger the run winning (though with a feral druid who can tank Drakk or solo UBRS all the way up to the beast or keep up with the rogues on DPS, a paladin that has solo healed it all the way to the beast and MT'd it all the way through Rend, and a warrior who has MT'd or provided solid DPS many times I generally can take whoever I want and still contribute something that is needed). It's just a tip for burn out. Try to keep loot in perspective of the group not the individual and it can help with the whole "why the hell do I want to kill yet another big lizard?" oh so that this team that I work with can be even better geared. It makes it feel more like you aren't wasting your time either. Yep play that seems selfless is often quite selfish too. :)

[oldmandennis]

It's funny you say this, MJ; I have become Satan himself to some people over on Stormrage for basically developing this exact idea and getting our council to tweak and approve it.

Hail Satan! I recently hopped guilds, because the one I was in wouldn't do this, even informally. We pretty much had the system down for 40 man raids, but recently have had some drama with people doing semiexclusive 20 man raids. Now we have enough people in the system to do 20 mans frequently, but one of the leaders is much more experienced at the 20 man content then the others, and the people who feel left out of his crew are crying, even though there is pleanty of room in the other runs.

And ironically it's only gotten worse since we downed Nef Monday.  :/
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Ehh I don't think it's ironic, I think that's predictable.

[Warlock]

Yes, it was a compliment  :D  Your assessment was pretty much dead on.

As far as getting gold, it is no big deal. If some of the better items were accessible throguh the AH, I have no doubt that I would own them soon enough, but as you probably remember, they are not. Between what I have right now, my mount, my 2 blue swords and 2 blue items that are waiting for me (through the AH) and the lag accident that caused me to bid 50G on 5 Sup reds, I'd say I have about 800G at lvl 46. If I wanted to continue, I'd probably double my money by lvl 50 or earlier, but I see now that except a few semi-decent items, the AH is really not going to cut it, so I will stop actively trying to make money there. I could write a guide to the AH (to go along with the other AH guides out there (that mostly suck), but really... who cares about the AH. What is the point to try to get some money together, if a few trips to some of the end-game instances will yield better items than one could get through the AH...

-A
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Purchasable items are roughly as powerful as those which you'll get from the late game small group instances. If anything the best AH items are better; there are several craftable epics and a few raid Bind on Equips that can be often found on the AH. What you won't get is the range and variety; even with the best purchasable gear there are still a lot of desirable dropped or quested items.

[MongoJerry]

It's not that casual gamers should get to experience everything, it's that beyond Tier 0 (which I'm admittedly still unfamiliar with), there isn't currently an upgrade path for casual gamers. As Warlock pointed out, there is hardly* a part of the game where the 'best' isn't exclusively available through raiding.

I've often wondered, as with the Dungeon sets, why the epic sets didn't drop in a couple of different sized instances. For example, why didn't Blizzard make T1 bracers and belts as BoP drops off quest boss in UBRS? Or a hard-to-unlock BRD quest boss? Sure, then everyone and their kid sister would have easier access to those epics and it would be slightly less epic to have the whole set. Is that a really bad thing, though? Wouldn't flattening out the gear curve help other places a bit?

What's wierd with your complaint is that this is almost exactly what they've done with 1.10. Tier 0 sets are the blue sets like the warrior Valor and priest Devout sets that one can get in the normal 5- or 10-man dungeons like Scholomance, Strateholme, and BRS (lower and upper). These sets have been in the game since release and have long been outdated. Finally, Blizzard has has made a way for semi-casual players to upgrade that tier 0 equipment through a series of quests involving new bosses in these instances. Some of the new equipment, which has been termed "tier 0.5," is quite nice. I know some tier 2 epic'd out priests who look at the tier 0.5 boots and think they would rather use those for raiding than the tier 2 transcendence boots. Plus, the new stuff has +damage/healing on them rather than just +healing, so that makes them better for priests while they're soloing.

Of course, overall, the tier 0.5 equipment is not nearly as good as loot in BWL or AQ40, but that's to be expected, since the loot is doesn't require a well geared and coordinated group of 40 people to get. On the other hand, it is on par or better than much of the gear one would get in Molten Core, so it is still very good. When you combine that gear with some of the gear you can get in Silithus, solo and small group players can finally get gear that is very good.

It also doesn't help that the "solo and small group friendly" content in Silithus got ninja-changed into small raid quest mobs at some random point.

I don't know what you mean. The most difficult of the Field Duty quests require taking down the 5-man dukes. There are Cenarian Hold quests that require going into AQ20, but I don't think anyone has ever claimed them to be "solo and small group friendly."

Anyway, it seems to me to that there is a lot more room in the game for all kinds of different players than Bliz has currently satisfied, but I'm not optimistic that they will explore it (unless the profit motive dictates otherwise, not that there's anything wrong with that).

Since the majority of players aren't major raiders, I think there is some hope for this in that there definitely is a profit motive there. I think the problem at the end game stems from the fact that the game got rushed to market before that end game content got a chance to get polished. I am hopeful that the expansion will be better in that clearly all of the content and effort will be focused at the high level end game as opposed to the initial release whose development was focused at the low level game.

[Warlock]

Each Dungeon 2 set includes blues of ivl 60 to 65 and purples of ilvl 55 to 60, so all have inferior budgets to tier 1 or other raid gear. Depending on your class and preferred role, you may like or dislike the stat distribution; Deathmist's mix of Stam, Int and +damage is pretty good for a Warlock but my Druid is less impressed by Feralheart's mix of all stats that leaves it outclassed for both caster and feral use.

The set isn't aimed at casual players, but it's a good start for serious non-raiders. Those willing to grind Strath et al until the Dungeon 1 pieces they disenchanted long ago drop again and then run some more quests there, anyway. It's release at least shows that Blizzard is now aware that a substantial portion of their player base isn't satisfied by a constant stream of raid instances. Time will tell whether it's just damage control or the first signs of a real change of heart.

[Warlock]

The solo friendly/small group friendly Silithus content mentioned referred to Blizzard posts made well prior to 1.8. I can't speak for anyone else but the impression I had for a long time prior to it's release was that AQ would include at least one endgame 5-man instance along with the raid instances, that only the raid instances would need raid sized groups and that Silithus would overall provide significant opportunities for character advancement for stalled non-raiding players.

That turned out not to be the case, but on rereading the posts they were technically accurate. Call it hearing what I wanted to hear or call it misdirection by Blue, I still felt lied to. Caydiem's post responding to someone asking whether non raiders could obtain the then-forthcoming Druid weapon scaling item is another example.

[Monkey]

What's wierd with your complaint is that this is almost exactly what they've done with 1.10.  Tier 0 sets are the blue sets like the warrior Valor and priest Devout sets that one can get in the normal 5- or 10-man dungeons like Scholomance, Strateholme, and BRS (lower and upper).  These sets have been in the game since release and have long been outdated.  Finally, Blizzard has has made a way for semi-casual players to upgrade that tier 0 equipment through a series of quests involving new bosses in these instances. 
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The important word there is Finally--I realize my naming conventions for it might be incorrect, but the "Dungeon 2" gear from 1.10 should have been in the game from retail or soon after, just like Molten Core. And yeah, I know about the blue sets, I've been playing since Nov 2004 ;).

In the absence of the 1.10 questlines and full sets of Dungeon 2 gear, Blizzard should have made minor pieces (belts, bracers, etc.) of T1 available to people running BRS/BRD/etc. This should have been in the game at release, not 18 months later. As long as successive raid instances had a similar path for non-raiders, this could have kept raiding attractive while keeping the power curve from being so wildly divergent. Or how about a nice hard 5-man on a lockout with some 85% gear or something?

Now there's no unringing a bell, but one hopes that Blizzard won't make the same mistake twice. There's a great pre-release quote from one of the developers (I think it was Tigole) about how raiders and non-raiders will have access to similar levels of power from gear, Raiders will just get flaming swords with layzer beams or something. That hasn't proven out yet, but maybe it will in the expansion.

I also was agreeing, As Warlock pointed out earlier, that the 'best' stuff by a wide margin for every activity in WoW is available exclusively through Raiding. Which is a only a problem when non-raiders have to compete with raiders...like in PvP. :(

I'm also a little bitter that I like WoW for the solo and 5-man but WoW doesn't seem to like me back. Where's my uber hard 5-man sequel to Dire Maul? And no, the warlock mount quest event doesn't count.

[Ashock]

Purchasable items are roughly as powerful as those which you'll get from the late game small group instances. If anything the best AH items are better; there are several craftable epics and a few raid Bind on Equips that can be often found on the AH.  What you won't get is the range and variety; even with the best purchasable gear there are still a lot of desirable dropped or quested items.
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They are actually not. You *can* get a few that are compatible, but things like weapons are not as good. A few purples that *are* on par with the lower instance late-game items are over 1k, which makes purchasing them impractical. Even if they were however, that still leaves the better ones out of reach, no matter how much gold you are willing to spend.

It is understandable that those that play 1/2 the time that others do, should have worse items. What is not, is that instead of having roughly 1/2 of the good items as those that play twice as much, they have (and will have) none. You can't raid - you have a 0% chance of getting the higher end items. I see something wrong with that.


-A

[oldmandennis]

A few purples that *are* on par with the lower instance late-game items are over 1k, which makes purchasing them impractical. Even if they were however, that still leaves the better ones out of reach, no matter how much gold you are willing to spend.

I don't know, 1k sounds reasonable to me. A lot of people have spent as much on items, many people were happy to spend that much on Quel (yes a raiding item, but its not that hard to find a guild willing to take a warrior along) before the market dried up. On my server atleast, the price of MC BOE's are drifting close to the 1k mark. I think 1k was the standard price of a Chromatic Caraprice or Pristine HOTB too.

And I have purchased or farmed a few items in the 1k range, despite spending huge chunks of time raiding, paying the repair bills for raiding, and a pretty solid pvp effort. If I was to spend most of my time farming gold and crafting items, I'm sure I could afford 1k per slot.

It is understandable that those that play 1/2 the time that others do, should have worse items. What is not, is that instead of having roughly 1/2 of the good items as those that play twice as much, they have (and will have) none. You can't raid - you have a 0% chance of getting the higher end items. I see something wrong with that.
-A
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Well are you saying they should have 1/2 the good items? Call shoulders, legs, gloves, and boots the "Casual slots", and make sure there are craftable items in those slots on par with the best drops. On the rest of the slots, make sure there is nothing even close?

Or are you saying that there should be craftable/buyable/blue dungeonable items in every slot of 1/2 the power of the raid items? Cause I think for most classes there are : PHOTB/CC items, ZG crafted items like primal bat and tiger, BOE MC epics, DMF for your neck, AV for rings offhands and weapons, Field duty, Dungeon 2, Hide of the Wild, Devilsaur, DM trinkets/Quel, top end librams and enchants for all of this stuff.....

I don't know. I _really_ doubt there are a lot of players who have gone through _all_ of this stuff, and still need more casual content. I find it more likely that there is a large group of players who have just gotten tired of what's out there. Maybe they have just finished their Dungeon 2 set and are looking at a 2.5k bill for 2 MC BOE's, and have decided that a marginal upgrade isn't worth the time. I might be wrong.

Already many of the items I described are pushing very close to MC level items. I know if I could, I'd trade my Earthfury boots for 5 thunders (well maybe not with NXM comin soon).

[Ashock]

I don't know, 1k sounds reasonable to me.  A lot of people have spent as much on items, many people were happy to spend that much on Quel (yes a raiding item, but its not that hard to find a guild willing to take a warrior along) before the market dried up.  On my server atleast, the price of MC BOE's are drifting close to the 1k mark.  I think 1k was the standard price of a Chromatic Caraprice or Pristine HOTB too.

And I have purchased or farmed a few items in the 1k range, despite spending huge chunks of time raiding, paying the repair bills for raiding, and a pretty solid pvp effort.  If I was to spend most of my time farming gold and crafting items, I'm sure I could afford 1k per slot.
Well are you saying they should have 1/2 the good items?  Call shoulders, legs, gloves, and boots the "Casual slots", and make sure there are craftable items in those slots on par with the best drops.  On the rest of the slots, make sure there is nothing even close?

Or are you saying that there should be craftable/buyable/blue dungeonable items in every slot of 1/2 the power of the raid items?  Cause I think for most classes there are : PHOTB/CC items, ZG crafted items like primal bat and tiger, BOE MC epics, DMF for your neck, AV for rings offhands and weapons, Field duty, Dungeon 2, Hide of the Wild, Devilsaur, DM trinkets/Quel, top end librams and enchants for all of this stuff.....

I don't know.  I _really_ doubt there are a lot of players who have gone through _all_ of this stuff, and still need more casual content.  I find it more likely that there is a large group of players who have just gotten tired of what's out there.  Maybe they have just finished their Dungeon 2 set and are looking at a 2.5k bill for 2 MC BOE's, and have decided that a marginal upgrade isn't worth the time.  I might be wrong.

Already many of the items I described are pushing very close to MC level items.  I know if I could, I'd trade my Earthfury boots for 5 thunders (well maybe not with NXM comin soon).
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I was not saying that they should have items 1/2 the power. I meant they should on the average be in a position to own 1/2 of the good items as raiders do. You put in 6 hours/day, on the average you should own twice as many good rare items as someone who puts in 3. My point is that unless you can put in even those 3-4 hours/day in one shot and at a time when other you know are on, you are SOL.

Those who prefer to solo, are even in worse shape. Unless they like PvP so much that they do not mind getting rolled by the same lvl players with the same or worse skills, they should not even bother with WoW as it will just frustrate them. PVE content at lvl 60 stops *completely* for solo payers, and dramatically drops off for the non-raiders.

As far as 1k... I was just generalizing. 1k is when pretty good items on the AH start. Even then they are not *that* good. Bind on equip weapons for example are never even close. The best ones are around 45 DPS one handed, and there is only a handful of them. They are around 2k. It would take significantly more time to farm for 2k than to raid.... and even after that, the items are not even close.
Believe me, I know the AH pretty well, especially when it comes to warrior items. I've also familiarized myself with all the warrior items from various sites pretty extensively.

As I was saying before.... I believe I pay the same $14.99/month as others do.


-A

[Warlock]

AH gear doesn't approach raid gear. It can be better than anything from the five man instances - there are several craftable epics that no five man instance matches in power. Since you have nearly a thousand gold at 46 you'll probably be able to afford several ~1k items crafts by the time you're 60 - or farm the mats yourself and pay some pocket change for assembly. Yes, good weapons are notably absent. Sorting a weapon search on thott the best weapons non-raiders can reliably obtain are embarrassingly far down the list.

I believe that non-raid gear should be completely the equal of raid gear. Five man instances require a different set of skills to raiding, but it's very possible to make challenging fights; one of my many complaints regarding raiding is how easy (and therefore dull) the individual tasks are. If I did nothing but banish one mob in a five man boss fight I'd be seriously letting my group down, but it gives epics every time in a raid. Towards the end of my subscription I was paying more attention in strath than I needed to in MC.

[Zarathustra]

Towards the end of my subscription I was paying more attention in strath than I needed to in MC.
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MC is a poor example of the raid scene. It seems more than anything to be a learning instance where a guild may work on their organization. The fights are terribly straightforward, with Ragnaros being more gear-dependant than anything else. Having fought my way through MC, ZG, AQ20, BWL, and delving a bit into AQ40 so far, I can say that the Molten Core is not enough experience in the raid scene to adequately comment on it. The scripted encounters Blizzard released after the Core was done are more dynamic and require more players to be on their toes (or EVERY player being on his toes, as the Twin Emperors show).

The whole "equal difficulty" thing has been played to death. Those same people on the Blizz forums saying they want equal difficulty encounters to raiders are now lamenting how "impossible" the Dungeon 2 upgrade quests are; namely the new bosses.

[Concillian]

The whole "equal difficulty" thing has been played to death.  Those same people on the Blizz forums saying they want equal difficulty encounters to raiders are now lamenting how "impossible" the Dungeon 2 upgrade quests are; namely the new bosses.
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I do not think that is the case.

I think they are different people (I'm lazy and want free epix! vs. I want more challenging content) from the same subset (non-raiders).

If you look at threads discussion the upgrade quests, there is a clear distinction between people welcoming the new challenges and those whining it's too hard.

Calling them the same people is a case of severe ignorance. As someone who hasn't had opportunity to raid regularly and welcomes the additional challenges, I take direct offense at your comment.

[Monkey]

PHOTB/CC items, ZG crafted items like primal bat and tiger, BOE MC epics, DMF for your neck, AV for rings offhands and weapons, Field duty, Dungeon 2, Hide of the Wild, Devilsaur, DM trinkets/Quel, top end librams and enchants for all of this stuff.....
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TB, CC, and ZG crafted items require things from raid instances--Cores, Bloodvine, and Obsidian shards *only* drop in raids. Quel'Serrar requires a raid.

Even if we ignore that top-end materials only come from raids:

Highest ilevel BoE Main hand/One Hand sword is Blackguard
( http://thottbot.com/?i=40781 ). Compare it to a Brutality Blade ( http://thottbot.com/?i=37423 ) and to the highest ilevel BoP available to a raider, the Chromatically Tempered Sword ( http://thottbot.com/?i=44357 )

How about Cloth Hats?
Highest ilevel Cloth Hat is the Cap of the Scarlet Savant ( http://thottbot.com/?i=24269 ). Compare it to Prophecy ( http://thottbot.com/?i=37373 ), Felheart ( http://thottbot.com/?i=28095 ), or Arcanist ( http://thottbot.com/?i=37308 ). Also compare it to the best cloth hat available to a raider, Mish'undare, Circlet of the Mind Flayer ( http://thottbot.com/?i=51928 )

There's a real gap if you don't raid but maybe that's the point. As Ashock brings up--what do we deserve to receive for the amount we pay each month? Maybe WoW is ultimately a raiding game and folks who don't want to raid should just cancel.

Personally, I really enjoyed the game until it was time to 'Raid or die'. Raiding was even fun for a while and then it became a 2nd job instead of something to do to blow off steam after a long day. So I rerolled for the fourth (and probably the last) time.

[oldmandennis]

I believe I pay the same $14.99/month as others do.

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.

Those who prefer to solo, are even in worse shape.

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?

I meant they should on the average be in a position to own 1/2 of the good items as raiders do.

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.

Unless they like PvP so much that they do not mind getting rolled by the same lvl players with the same or worse skills, they should not even bother with WoW as it will just frustrate them.

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.

As far as 1k... I was just generalizing. 1k is when pretty good items on the AH start. Even then they are not *that* good. Bind on equip weapons for example are never even close. The best ones are around 45 DPS one handed, and there is only a handful of them. They are around 2k. It would take significantly more time to farm for 2k than to raid.... and even after that, the items are not even close.

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.

I believe that non-raid gear should be completely the equal of raid gear.

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.

TB, CC, and ZG crafted items require things from raid instances--Cores, Bloodvine, and Obsidian shards *only* drop in raids. Quel'Serrar requires a raid.

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 WoW is ultimately a raiding game and folks who don't want to raid should just cancel.

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.

[Warlock]

MC is a poor example of the raid scene.  It seems more than anything to be a learning instance where a guild may work on their organization.  The fights are terribly straightforward, with Ragnaros being more gear-dependant than anything else.  Having fought my way through MC, ZG, AQ20, BWL, and delving a bit into AQ40 so far, I can say that the Molten Core is not enough experience in the raid scene to adequately comment on it.  The scripted encounters Blizzard released after the Core was done are more dynamic and require more players to be on their toes (or EVERY player being on his toes, as the Twin Emperors show).

The whole "equal difficulty" thing has been played to death.  Those same people on the Blizz forums saying they want equal difficulty encounters to raiders are now lamenting how "impossible" the Dungeon 2 upgrade quests are; namely the new bosses.
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I agree that Molten Core is a beginner raid instance - I said as much in the notes I wrote for my guild - and yet it drops far better loot than any 5-man. For that matter the *first pull* in MC averages more upgrades per full-blue player than a full clear of every non-raid instance. (This might not still be true, the 1.10 notes claimed an improved drop rate but I don't know significant it was).

Oh, and count me out of the free epics crowd as well. Not being interested in any more Prussian drill is not synonymous with wanting things handed to me on a platter.