10-29-2009, 06:24 PM
Two issues with the current WotLK scaling raid design:
1) Gear resets with each raid release mean that interest in previous instances drops considerably.
2) Hard modes, which require great gear, can become increasingly inaccessible due to #1.
In short, doing easy-mode raids provides massive benefits with moderately little effort and allows the vast majority of players to see all the content (sans Algalon), which is great. But it's also a curse to those who want to see more, because the reward-to-effort ratio of doing hard modes becomes ever more steep.
In the old days, if you wanted to see AQ40, you had to really work for it. It took ages of raiding and gearing in Molten Core and BWL to field a force that could tackle it. This was the reverse of the problems of WotLK, and I'm not saying that was a better system. Gear never reset in original WoW, so a whole suite of problems arose out of that.
Northrend Beasts in hard mode is like OMFGWTFBBQdairyqueen. It's a lot like the old "block" bosses in instances in the old days that are tests of "you must be this good to enter." But before, where you HAD to beat that boss to continue and see/get new things, now you can just say "why bother?" The gear's going to reset anyway in the next patch...so what happens is that non-cutting-edge guilds have a hard time fielding raids for hard modes, and that just winds up extending from instance to instance.
If Naxx, Ulduar, and ToC worked the old way, there wouldn't BE an easy mode ToC and the only way you'd ever have a prayer of getting past Beasts would be to farm Ulduar hard modes for weeks, maybe months. If you're sitting there thinking "that friggin sucks," well, that was the old original WoW. :)
I wish I had a solution. I like the idea of gear resets so that people aren't locked out of content, but that causes as many problems as it solves. Unless you're in bleeding-edge raid guilds, you're not going to get to fight Algalon 25. Not because it's too hard to get to, but because of a general malaise of "why bother?" from a sizable portion of your raid force. When badge gear from the next raid instance beats the "ultimate" gear from the "super-ultimate" boss of Ulduar...where's the reward for most players? Why would they even want to bother beating Northrend Beasts heroic when the first boss in Icecrown will drop better stuff than in all of heroic ToC?
1) Gear resets with each raid release mean that interest in previous instances drops considerably.
2) Hard modes, which require great gear, can become increasingly inaccessible due to #1.
In short, doing easy-mode raids provides massive benefits with moderately little effort and allows the vast majority of players to see all the content (sans Algalon), which is great. But it's also a curse to those who want to see more, because the reward-to-effort ratio of doing hard modes becomes ever more steep.
In the old days, if you wanted to see AQ40, you had to really work for it. It took ages of raiding and gearing in Molten Core and BWL to field a force that could tackle it. This was the reverse of the problems of WotLK, and I'm not saying that was a better system. Gear never reset in original WoW, so a whole suite of problems arose out of that.
Northrend Beasts in hard mode is like OMFGWTFBBQdairyqueen. It's a lot like the old "block" bosses in instances in the old days that are tests of "you must be this good to enter." But before, where you HAD to beat that boss to continue and see/get new things, now you can just say "why bother?" The gear's going to reset anyway in the next patch...so what happens is that non-cutting-edge guilds have a hard time fielding raids for hard modes, and that just winds up extending from instance to instance.
If Naxx, Ulduar, and ToC worked the old way, there wouldn't BE an easy mode ToC and the only way you'd ever have a prayer of getting past Beasts would be to farm Ulduar hard modes for weeks, maybe months. If you're sitting there thinking "that friggin sucks," well, that was the old original WoW. :)
I wish I had a solution. I like the idea of gear resets so that people aren't locked out of content, but that causes as many problems as it solves. Unless you're in bleeding-edge raid guilds, you're not going to get to fight Algalon 25. Not because it's too hard to get to, but because of a general malaise of "why bother?" from a sizable portion of your raid force. When badge gear from the next raid instance beats the "ultimate" gear from the "super-ultimate" boss of Ulduar...where's the reward for most players? Why would they even want to bother beating Northrend Beasts heroic when the first boss in Icecrown will drop better stuff than in all of heroic ToC?
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.