Mists of Pandaria discussion

[TheDragoon]

1) Levelling is too quick for the zone design.

Okay, yes, this is irritating. However, the overall benefits of fast levelling make it worth it for me. Besides, if you want (and I sometimes do), you can finish zones. It means you don't level optimally, but I'm fine with that. Is this a dealbreaker? More like a minor annoyance.

I would say it's more than a minor annoyance. Going through the quests and then having out-leveled the zone mid-way through the quests breaks the continuity of the questing. While you note that you CAN finish the zones, I wonder how many people actually do. Personally, I'm more of your mindset so I frequently would finish the zones even if I could skip past them to progress faster, but I think the majority of people just skip on to the next zone, often missing the conclusion of each area.

No matter whether you like to finish it off or just move on, the fact that the quest design doesn't mesh with the XP required to move on from the zone is one of those little details that indicates that Blizzard didn't think through what makes sense (which is to finish the zone with sufficient XP to move on to the next). I think that's the thing that Quark finds concerning.

2) They're nerfing content too fast.

I think that Blizzard has set the bar too high for the normal raiding content in Cataclysm. Prior to the nerfs, a lot of the fights have been too hard for the casual raid group to make good progress on. Heck, even some harder-core groups haven't been able to finish things before they get nerfed. Then, because the content is so much harder than what most people can handle, the fights get super-nerfed, resulting in the trends that Quark noted. Throughout Cataclysm, Blizzard has consistently over-tuned the normal versions of the raids which is pretty frustrating and leads to a lot of burnout on the casual end. Then, when the nerfs are handed down, the hardcore raiders get burned out because they've been spending so much time banging their heads into the wall only to see everything they've accomplished be handed to everyone else on a silver platter.

I wish that the raids were tuned to allow most raids to progress through the raid at a reasonable rate with the Heroic-mode encounters catering to the top-end. Unfortunately, that balance is tough to reach since the difference between fully casual, uncoordinated raiding groups and the hardestcore, top-end raiding guild groups is absolutely enormous. I thought that the increasing zone buff in ICC seemed like a great way to do this as it allowed everyone to make progress as time went on. Of course, if they did this again they should make the buff ramp up a bit faster since I don't think people would be particularly interested in another 6 month raiding tier that starts off so slowly, but the idea seemed to work very well.

I downright love the idea of the challenge dungeon, where gear is normalized. I've been saying they should do this for years.

I completely agree, I think this sounds like a great addition. This is the one thing from the announced content from MoP that thought would be really interesting.

Thought experiment: If I could press a button, get all the best gear, and block my characters from the content, would I press it? Of course not. But you seem to be suggesting doing exactly that, except the button is labelled "random heroics."

You wouldn't push the button and I wouldn't push the button (at least until I got sick of farming the same content over and over looking for the last 2 things I need) but I gather from Quark's complaints that he's been seeing a lot of people who would love to push that button. Also, it's not so much that it blocks them from the content as they can always just wait for the nerfs and then experience the content in a reasonable time-frame (i.e. no banging the head against the wall for 2 months trying to learn the same boss).