World of Warcraft XIV: Fish Felreed, and the Reed Pond fish

[The Linker]

A sort of raid related question("sort of" because it's about one of the old level 60 raids); is there any way to solo Prophet Skerem on a character other then a warlock or hunter?

I've soloed him lots as a Feral Druid. I just... beat him up in Cat Form. It was no big thing, and this was at 85. He didn't mind control me or anything. He just kind of died, really easily.

[Togath]

How do you avoid the mind control?

[Karoht]

Thanks to anyone who tuned in to the stream, we managed to learn and kill Elegon in 6 pulls? Maybe 7? Yeah.
Will of the Emperors progression on Sunday, but it's easier. We'll probably finish up with Blade Lord in HoF if we have time.

[Traab]

Speaking of mind control, I am now remembering old shadowfang keep, back when the final boss arugal would turn you into a worgen under his control. Heh, that was the most annoying fight ever to try and win solo as he would wolf me, then we both, (as I counted as an npc for the duration) would deagro and regen to full, the effect would break, and the fight started all over again. Or at least he would, I dont recall for sure if I did as I was doing it as a shaman and could just heal myself easily enough. But yeah, never ending boss battle until I eventually did enough damage fast enough to kill him before he could recast the spell. Yay for old school windfury procs!

[The Linker]

How do you avoid the mind control?

Have you actually fought him? Sometimes bosses just won't mind control you or use other abilities that would just end the fight when you're the only person in the raid. I'm assuming this is one of them.

If he is mind controlling you, well, I don't know. Bad luck? Or it was changed since Cata?

Edit: Just killed him again. He has as much health as a tougher normal level 90 enemy (just under 600k), and I just stood there while he earth shocked me for a good few minutes. There's seriously nothing to this guy.

Now, Twin Emporers, those guys were impossible to solo, but I heard they changed him in some way. I'll have to see about him.

[Antonok]

Now, Twin Emporers, those guys were impossible to solo, but I heard they changed him in some way. I'll have to see about him.

They changed C'thun not twin emps. His stomach doesn't one shot when your by yourself now.

Twin emps you can just out dps the healing now.

[The Linker]

They changed C'thun not twin emps. His stomach doesn't one shot when your by yourself now.

Twin emps you can just out dps the healing now.

I could sworn that I read that the cooldown for their heal went up a second or two, but I can't find any evidence of that now.

Regardless, I just killed 'em anyway. Even though I forgot I had to clear the hall beforehand and so had to fight like fifteen adds. Their heals were nothing compared to my damage.

[Lord Raziere]

hey, does anyone know why mages have a teleport to Stonard?

it just been bugging me: if you wanted a teleport to an outpost near the dark portal, there is already one in Orgrimmar that goes nearer to it. but if you wanted a teleport to some outpost where you could strike on the alliance, wouldn't it make more sense to use someplace like Kargath where you could strike easily on both Stormwind and Ironforge? plus if you want extended horde transportation through Eastern Kingdoms in general, why not Kargath? more central, more wide and such.

its just been bugging is all cause Stonard is just an outpost while all the other teleports are major cities and whatnot.

[The Linker]

It was added before the Blasted Lands portal existed.

As with Theramore, it's presumably designed to help Mages cover the entire world with at least one vaguely-near portal location.

[Daverin]

Yeah, if you look at it, both Stonard and Theramore are places that pretty much sorta cover the areas away from the capitals on those continents. Also noticeable is that those are the continents with less capitals for the faction with that port (pre-BC, it would've only been 1.)

Kind of interestingly, once you include Ancient Dal, the Alliance has slightly better coverage through porting than the Horde; then again, the comparable port would be, like, Winterspring or something, which is far less of a trip for the Horde than the northern kingdoms are for the Alliance.

[Traab]

Oh god, all this talk about old ports is bringing back traumatic memories of the old days. Anyone here play in classic and remember when you had to manually click on each separate leg of a flight path trip to go anywhere? You couldnt be in say, undercity, and fly to booty bay in a single click, no. You had to memorize what flight paths went to where and fly from one to another to another, because not all flight paths are connected. And it got even worse if you decided halfway to 60 to finish up leveling on the other continent. You had to not only leg it to whatever zone you wanted, you also had to make sure to go out of your way and snag ALL the zone flight paths, because there were always a couple of vital hubs that linked the north end to the south end of the landmass. God what a nightmare that was. Oh yeah, and all this was usually done at best with a 40% mount, since 100% travel required you farm 1000 gold in a time when that was a buttload of cash.

[Togath]

I actually do remember that(came in about a year before WotLK).
I do still sort of wonder why they decided to price the +100% mounts sound high originally.

[Traab]

I actually do remember that(came in about a year before WotLK).
I do still sort of wonder why they decided to price the +100% mounts sound high originally.

Because that was decided before blizzard said, "&^%$ it. Lets let everyone have everything with the least amount of effort possible." Back when the game had some actual challenge to it. You got the 60% mount at level 40. You got the epic mount at 60. Then when tbc came out, they tossed in an epic flight mount just to give us a bigass money sink. Its original price was NOT an easy one to meet unless you were a big time auction house trader or had some obscenely rare item you could make with tradeskills. Heck, even the basic flying mount wasnt all that easy to buy unless you planned ahead and saved, 800+ gold I think for training and mount at 68. Oh, and it was a 60% speed mount too.

Im not sure exactly when they gave in to the whining masses who think its unfair they have to put in some effort to get the very best things, but I never really approved. I figure it will take one more expansion at most before we just get the full set of mounts as we level for free. With MAYBE the epic flying mounts still costing some money. As someone who has played from the very beginning, I have argued against almost every change made from the start. I didnt think they should put in dual specs, or make respeccing cheaper. I felt that when you chose a path for your character, that should have been it. The first few respecs are cheap, that lets you play around till you find what you like. It wasnt put in place so people could have a solo pve spec, group pve spec and pvp spec and be able to switch between them for pocket change at most.

I was against giving both factions paladins and shaman, I liked that each side had a unique class, it added some depth to things, it even made for alternate raid strategies for horde and alliance to compensate for each class' differences. And aside from some mostly imaginary pvp balance issues it worked really well! I was against the fairly standard dungeon nerf cycle. New content comes in, the hardcore raiders cream it, the people with some decent skills pickup run it, then the crappy players whine and get it nerfed so you can run it blindfolded and dead drunk. This was a HUGE problem in tbc. People had heart attacks at the very thought of heroic dungeons being HARD. God freaking forbid that running through the dungeon on hard mode be. . . I dunno, HARD?!

ugh, sorry, when I look back at how bastardized the game has gotten over the years due to whiners with absolutely no ability to play mmos getting their way, it makes me ranty.

[Lord Raziere]

heh, actually, I played back when WoW first launched, but I left around the time of BC coming out. I remember a time when mounts didn't even exist.

I remember when Ahn Qiraj came out. I wish I could've participated in it.

kinda miss the old quests and zones…. the new ones don't feel chronological- they don't lead to Outland and such, cause they are all after the Cataclysm.

but the new ones are better made…. and I do level up faster….and now I have like…..31 mounts last time I checked. that and no more soulshards is a great burden to shed for a warlock player like me….

[Seerow]

Because that was decided before blizzard said, "&^%$ it. Lets let everyone have everything with the least amount of effort possible." Back when the game had some actual challenge to it. You got the 60% mount at level 40. You got the epic mount at 60. Then when tbc came out, they tossed in an epic flight mount just to give us a bigass money sink. Its original price was NOT an easy one to meet unless you were a big time auction house trader or had some obscenely rare item you could make with tradeskills. Heck, even the basic flying mount wasnt all that easy to buy unless you planned ahead and saved, 800+ gold I think for training and mount at 68. Oh, and it was a 60% speed mount too.

Im not sure exactly when they gave in to the whining masses who think its unfair they have to put in some effort to get the very best things, but I never really approved. I figure it will take one more expansion at most before we just get the full set of mounts as we level for free. With MAYBE the epic flying mounts still costing some money. As someone who has played from the very beginning, I have argued against almost every change made from the start. I didnt think they should put in dual specs, or make respeccing cheaper. I felt that when you chose a path for your character, that should have been it. The first few respecs are cheap, that lets you play around till you find what you like. It wasnt put in place so people could have a solo pve spec, group pve spec and pvp spec and be able to switch between them for pocket change at most.

I was against giving both factions paladins and shaman, I liked that each side had a unique class, it added some depth to things, it even made for alternate raid strategies for horde and alliance to compensate for each class' differences. And aside from some mostly imaginary pvp balance issues it worked really well! I was against the fairly standard dungeon nerf cycle. New content comes in, the hardcore raiders cream it, the people with some decent skills pickup run it, then the crappy players whine and get it nerfed so you can run it blindfolded and dead drunk. This was a HUGE problem in tbc. People had heart attacks at the very thought of heroic dungeons being HARD. God freaking forbid that running through the dungeon on hard mode be. . . I dunno, HARD?!

ugh, sorry, when I look back at how bastardized the game has gotten over the years due to whiners with absolutely no ability to play mmos getting their way, it makes me ranty.

You going to yell at us all to get off your lawn next, and complain about how you walked uphill through the snow both ways to your flight paths?

Because seriously classic WoW is not something I would have wanted to play. It's not about easy or hard, it's about senseless grinding and timesinks for no reason except to make things take longer. If you want a MMO that feels more like a job, I am sure there are a number of them in the Korean market that are much more to your taste.

[The Glyphstone]

All those damn casuals ruining WoW for the real gamers. We would have been so much better off if they'd never subscribed, never given their money to Blizzard, never driven the game to get four+ expansions. That way WoW could have stayed small, just one of the many MMOs glutting the market. No need to share our hours and hours of grinding trash mobs for enough silver to pay raid repair bills with the lowly peons and peasants who didn't understand how important it was to run Molten Core for months on end before the one item of dozens you wanted dropped and you managed to outbid/roll/bribe the other half-dozen people in your group who still needed it. We could have enjoyed the same graphics until the servers were shut down, without having them tainted by the ability of incompetent noobs to look at new water effects and textures. We could still savor the glorious and scintillating bastion of educated conversation and intellectual commentary that was Barrens Chat.

Man, that would have been awesome.

[Alarra]

I don't miss classic at all....and when I whine at Zeb about how hard we used to have it, having to memorize where stupid flight paths connect with each other is one of the first things I cite.

[Karoht]

Streaming in just a few moments
MSV 10 man with my guild Rejected on Area 52 Horde
www.livestream.com/karoht

@Traab
I'll comment tomorrow. Or not. It's kind of a silly topic really.

[Krazzman]

Well... I have to say this: I lost my Raidspot.

Well not only me but our Mage, Paladin(tank) and my GF too.

How does it come to this event? Well we were planning on switching to 25-man raid, had long long talks about 25-man and such and for me it was clear that I would leave avoid either in the coming weeks or in january... which sort of is the same thing... if things don't change.
Sadly they did but the other way round I thought. To list the problems will take some time...
Spoilered due to rantiness:

Spoiler

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We had a abyssal-bad loot system. Actually our Rogue (Guildlead) and our Lootmaster worked on a concept. They even thought about factoring Bonus Loot into it. The problem with this was... this system fueled egoism more than anything. I remember me thinking: "if I let the warlock have this ring... he will have less points than me when we kill elegon!"
Speaking of Egoism... I might've told it already but our Arrogant-Druid healer took the off-hand from feng. So far no problem, he had more points. But now comes the catch... this was 3 ID's ago and he still wears his not-upgraded 463 Two-Handed Staff. He's not running any heroics for a mainhand or anything. Only LFR.
Another thing was... we got a pretty awesome Heal-Paladin CHest recipe. As thus we said: Crafting was Healer/Tank first. As such I dissed the stuff I couldn't need (galaxyfire girdle as bonusloot from elegon) and stored the Bloodspirit in the Guildvault. Now I saw that the Rogue crafted himself the chestpiece...
Attention. Yes this was missing while raiding in some guys... especially our Feral Tank would often ask who said something while we explained TACTICS. Our Warrior watched TV while raiding and paid more attention.
Also we killed the windlord on our 45+ try. A few of those wipes were because of a Random-DD we had to take with us but the last ones were because our two druids didn't have their CD's up for his Rain of Blades. The one druid wasn't assigned to that and would've had his cd ready for his assigned moment the arrogant-druid did not.

So... since our Mage talked to them about not returning after his Holiday so that they could find others to fill up for us, we were all kicked out, my GF and I are labeled as cowards (although I would prefer deserter more as this was my old "fun-rank" in another guild I was in) and... well we didn't talk to them because we were absent. But I don't know if it would've been better/not as hard/etc. if we told them directly and why.

But now that chance is over and from Monday on we will be in a new Guild. I'm feeling a bit sad for them but we won't lure away the others unless they speak to us first about switching.

[Karoht]

First off, thanks to anyone who tuned in yesterday to the stream.
Wiped a few times on Elegon, called it for the night.
Tonight Elegon will fall, and we'll probably get some pulls on Will of the Emperors.

@Krazz
Harsh man.
Yeah, I'm a big advocate of well managed loot council with roll offs to settle disputes. I've seen point systems come and go a dozen times, they all suck.
DKP tends to just screw people one way or another.
EPGP isn't as bad as DKP, but it can be if your guild doesn't manage it well.
Sorry you lost your team.


@Traab
Throwing my responses under spoiler tags just for length, feel free to respond without spoiler tags.
Is gold actually a measure of player skill or meaningful 'work' exactly?

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Oh look you have lots of gold. It means one of three things. You bought it from a gold farmer (and thereby violated ToS), you played the auction house with auctioneer, or you ground your face off.
"Oh yes, I'm a millionare who got rich by winning the lottery, by all means shower me with praise and respect as you would with someone who got rich by inventing something or winning the Nobel Prize."
Not one of those three things has anything to do with player skill, and the 'contribution' from those things aren't very meaningful to the game, either from an economic standpoint or from a community standpoint. So why should they gate a major reward like mount/epic mount? It's arbitrary and completely meaningless. Gold prices on mounts really isn't that big a deal, and the only reason they were costly in the first place was to act as a gold sink, and NOT a marker of how good or commited a player was. Which, over time, became less and less necessary, hence why they got cheaper and cheaper. That's economics speaking, nevermind a conscious decision by Blizzard to ease the reins a little. By extention, why would respec costs really be relevant unless the cost was absurdly high?

"I have argued against every change from the start."

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Great. The changes you are complaining about made the game better. Dramatically so. Go have a word with some of the top guilds about dual spec. They will tell you that without that feature, they would have had to bench many perfectly qualified players over the years. Dual-spec not only provides some convenience, it actually opened up raid compositions dramatically. Without it, raids would have been even more exclusionary, for yet another arbitrary reason. 40 man died for excellent reasons, 25 man would have "died" a long time ago without dual spec, and 10 man raid comps would be a serious mess without dual-spec.

Paladins VS Shaman

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Wow, I won't even begin to go into the PvP imbalances this caused (and I guarantee that had they remained you would be complaining about that too), but your quote of "it even made for alternate raid strategies" is pretty short sighted (ah, how the rose tinted glasses make people forget really terrible aspects of this game), and part of why I never believe you when you claim to have raided in that era (at least I *think* you claimed to raid in that era, hard to keep track some times). It made for "You don't have this class? Yeah this fight is going to suck for you. You have this class? Welcome to faceroll town." Twin Emps. Paladins were all but required for that fight for the swap. Using a Shaman for that role just resulted in a dead Shaman any time the melee guy swapped over. Several other AQ40 bosses had similar problems. Princess could be charge-kited using totems, practically taking her out of the fight. Lets not forget to mention the Class Call abilities of Nefarian in BWL. And in Naxx40 if you didn't have a Paladin to MT heal, chances are you weren't going to be able to keep tanks up on the end of quarter bosses, never mind Sapphiron and Kel. Shaman MT healing was no where near as good, so I hope you brought extra Priests (thereby messing up your raid comp) to keep your tank up. In fact, that descrepancy was exactly what lead to one guild on horde side using 6 tanks on 4 horsemen instead of 4. Which means that 2 competent DPS were probably benched for that fight as a result, especially once that strat became popular.

And before you spout about work or effort, show me any of your heroic mode only mounts you've acquired while they were current and then talk to me. I've got a Dark Phoenix and a Life Binder's Handmaiden that say work and effort are still a major part of the game. Not to mention my Rusted and Ironbound Proto Drakes and my Bloodbound/Icebound Frost Drake which I did while current. Or how about my Glory of the Cataclysmic Hero which I completed before they nerfed 5-man Heroics.
Say, have you even set foot in a Challenge Mode dungeon yet?

[iyaerP]

You going to yell at us all to get off your lawn next, and complain about how you walked uphill through the snow both ways to your flight paths?

Because seriously classic WoW is not something I would have wanted to play. It's not about easy or hard, it's about senseless grinding and timesinks for no reason except to make things take longer. If you want a MMO that feels more like a job, I am sure there are a number of them in the Korean market that are much more to your taste.

This so much. You know what I don't miss? Spending an entire raid just casting the same buff over and over and over again all through the 40 man list because it only lasted 5 minutes, and by the time you had gotten the last person buffed, you had to start back at the beginning again. Oh, and if you had any spare time left over? yeah, go be a healing bitch. What, you want to tank or DPS? roll up a warrior. There are no other tanks. Or a rogue. Those are the only "real" dps. And then after they added greater blessings? There was 1 MAYBE 2 holy pally slots for MT healing, all other pallies, come stand outside the raid, buff up everyone who actually gets to play, and then just sit there for hours. If you don't do this and go do your own thing after rebuffing, say goodbye to ever seeing the inside of a raid again.

Or howabout grinding blasted lands mobs for hours on end to get the repatable quest drops that gave you potions that you NEEDED to have to be fully buffed?

It wasn't until BC that you could even pretend to have multiple speccs for each class, and it wasn't until 3.0 and wrath that pretty much any spec was viable. I remember countless times when I woul be instantly dropped from a group because paladins "couldn't tank" or "couldn't dps". Hell, a lot of the fights simply weren't doable with a paladin tank. Maiden of virtue in kara required me to go OT because the constant silencing meant that I would be crushed to death in seconds because I couldn't keep holy shield up.

Oh yeah, thats another mechanic that NOBODY EVER should miss. Oh, cool, a new tanking piece dropped for me? AWESOME! But wait, I cannot wear it because it has .3% less parry with the same amount of dodge, so wearing it means I would be crushable and die like a bitch on any boss. Every piece of gear required bringing out my calculator and doing math to see if I was still uncrittable and uncrushable.

As for things being "better and harder" in the good old days? Not so much. That is pure nostalgia. Everything was more grindy and time intensive to be sure, but there are now and have been for multiple expansions, 5 man boss encounters more complicated and difficult for the appropriately geared than anything short of Cthun and some of the hardest stuff from Naxx40.

So yeah, is it easier to get epics and see content nowadays? Of course it is. But that is because the playerbase is much more skilled and experianced, and blizzard has moved away from the everquest style design of punishing the players to a design of rewarding the players. There is nothing wrong with that.

[Kish]

hey, does anyone know why mages have a teleport to Stonard?

For raid groups going to Karazhan.

They just didn't take it out when WotLK came out and Karazhan lost its status as the most popular current raid.

How do you avoid the mind control?

He won't mind-control if there's only one person there. It's actually much harder to solo him as a warlock or hunter with an active minion or pet; when I used to duo the Temple with my then-fiancee, one of us would stay outside until the other one had downed the Prophet.

[The Glyphstone]

For raid groups going to Karazhan.

They just didn't take it out when WotLK came out and Karazhan lost its status as the most popular current raid.

He won't mind-control if there's only one person there. It's actually much harder to solo him as a warlock or hunter with an active minion or pet; when I used to duo the Temple with my then-fiancee, one of us would stay outside until the other one had downed the Prophet.

Pretty sure Horde mages had Stonard in Classic, before Karazhan was ever released. It was just the mirror-image to the Alliance Theramore teleport.

[Kish]

Half right. Both the Stonard and Theramore teleport/portal abilities were added in patch 2.4.2.

[The Glyphstone]

Shows how much I remember about playing a Mage back in the day.

Man, I miss Karazhan. Best raid ever, except possibly Ulduar.
"I will not move when Flame Wreath is Cast, or the raid blows up...."

[iyaerP]

Man, I miss Karazhan. Best raid ever, except possibly Ulduar.
"I will not move when Flame Wreath is Cast, or the raid blows up...."

Kara was awesome. Torment of the Worgen was awesome. Chess was awesome. Nightbane's urn quest and the fight itself? Both awesome. Opera event was one of the most fun bosses the game has ever had. RUN AWAY LITTLE GIRL! RUN AWAY! Netherspite was a load of fun, even if it was tough.

Maiden of virtue though? yeah, screw her. I already mentioned the woes of trying to pally tank her, but 1 bad boss out of like ten isn't bad at all.

[The Glyphstone]

Maiden was teh suck, and worse, she didn't have anything to do with the rest of the dungeon. She didn't even have anything to do with her own trash mobs.

[Karoht]

Healing Maiden was hilarious as a Resto Druid.
Layer the raid in Rejuv's and time my Lifeblooms just right.
Silence/Stun goes out. Aaaaand a few seconds later, right as everyone is spreading out from the consecrate patch that woke us up...
bloom, bloom, bloom, bloom, bloom, bloom.
Raid = topped off.

I think that was the first ever fight where I would top the healing meters by leaps and bounds. Other healers be all like "oooooooooh" and it got me noticed as a healer.

[Traab]

First off, thanks to anyone who tuned in yesterday to the stream.
Wiped a few times on Elegon, called it for the night.
Tonight Elegon will fall, and we'll probably get some pulls on Will of the Emperors.

@Krazz
Harsh man.
Yeah, I'm a big advocate of well managed loot council with roll offs to settle disputes. I've seen point systems come and go a dozen times, they all suck.
DKP tends to just screw people one way or another.
EPGP isn't as bad as DKP, but it can be if your guild doesn't manage it well.
Sorry you lost your team.


@Traab
Throwing my responses under spoiler tags just for length, feel free to respond without spoiler tags.
Is gold actually a measure of player skill or meaningful 'work' exactly?

Spoiler

Show

Oh look you have lots of gold. It means one of three things. You bought it from a gold farmer (and thereby violated ToS), you played the auction house with auctioneer, or you ground your face off.
"Oh yes, I'm a millionare who got rich by winning the lottery, by all means shower me with praise and respect as you would with someone who got rich by inventing something or winning the Nobel Prize."
Not one of those three things has anything to do with player skill, and the 'contribution' from those things aren't very meaningful to the game, either from an economic standpoint or from a community standpoint. So why should they gate a major reward like mount/epic mount? It's arbitrary and completely meaningless. Gold prices on mounts really isn't that big a deal, and the only reason they were costly in the first place was to act as a gold sink, and NOT a marker of how good or commited a player was. Which, over time, became less and less necessary, hence why they got cheaper and cheaper. That's economics speaking, nevermind a conscious decision by Blizzard to ease the reins a little. By extention, why would respec costs really be relevant unless the cost was absurdly high?

"I have argued against every change from the start."

Spoiler

Show

Great. The changes you are complaining about made the game better. Dramatically so. Go have a word with some of the top guilds about dual spec. They will tell you that without that feature, they would have had to bench many perfectly qualified players over the years. Dual-spec not only provides some convenience, it actually opened up raid compositions dramatically. Without it, raids would have been even more exclusionary, for yet another arbitrary reason. 40 man died for excellent reasons, 25 man would have "died" a long time ago without dual spec, and 10 man raid comps would be a serious mess without dual-spec.

Paladins VS Shaman

Spoiler

Show

Wow, I won't even begin to go into the PvP imbalances this caused (and I guarantee that had they remained you would be complaining about that too), but your quote of "it even made for alternate raid strategies" is pretty short sighted (ah, how the rose tinted glasses make people forget really terrible aspects of this game), and part of why I never believe you when you claim to have raided in that era (at least I *think* you claimed to raid in that era, hard to keep track some times). It made for "You don't have this class? Yeah this fight is going to suck for you. You have this class? Welcome to faceroll town." Twin Emps. Paladins were all but required for that fight for the swap. Using a Shaman for that role just resulted in a dead Shaman any time the melee guy swapped over. Several other AQ40 bosses had similar problems. Princess could be charge-kited using totems, practically taking her out of the fight. Lets not forget to mention the Class Call abilities of Nefarian in BWL. And in Naxx40 if you didn't have a Paladin to MT heal, chances are you weren't going to be able to keep tanks up on the end of quarter bosses, never mind Sapphiron and Kel. Shaman MT healing was no where near as good, so I hope you brought extra Priests (thereby messing up your raid comp) to keep your tank up. In fact, that descrepancy was exactly what lead to one guild on horde side using 6 tanks on 4 horsemen instead of 4. Which means that 2 competent DPS were probably benched for that fight as a result, especially once that strat became popular.

And before you spout about work or effort, show me any of your heroic mode only mounts you've acquired while they were current and then talk to me. I've got a Dark Phoenix and a Life Binder's Handmaiden that say work and effort are still a major part of the game. Not to mention my Rusted and Ironbound Proto Drakes and my Bloodbound/Icebound Frost Drake which I did while current. Or how about my Glory of the Cataclysmic Hero which I completed before they nerfed 5-man Heroics.
Say, have you even set foot in a Challenge Mode dungeon yet?

1) Epic mount cost alot because it wasnt necessary. Kind of like how 310% flight cost just as much for a 30% speed boost as it did to go from 150 to 280%. You dont need it, its an intentional money sink just there for people who DO want to grind enough to go get it. Its like high end raid gear. Not everyone is going to get it, and whining that you cant get it because you dont want to raid/farm shouldnt mean blizzard caves and puts the stuff on vendors for 50 copper a slot.

2) Ok, "every" change was an exaggeration. I argued against a lot of changes that served no purpose other than to water down the game to the point where my 6 year old niece could solo level up to 50+ with no idea what she is doing. (Yes, my niece was around 6 years old when her first character hit 50+) Maybe im crazy for enjoying a game with an actual challenge. With dungeons that you actually have to pay attention to in order to clear. With some quests that require a little freaking thought or some help to complete.

, I agree the old 40 man setup was bulky and unwieldy. And yes, I did raid, briefly, tier 1-2 stuff never went past mc/onyxia/bwl. I joined a guild of people that played everquest on my old server and since they raided, I raided. I never much liked it as after the first few runs it got annoying and boring as hell. And yes, being forced to heal bot as a shaman sucked. My point on the spec issue was that I always felt your spec choice defined what kind of game play you wanted. And for those who really wanted to do it all, they had the respec option. This from a guy who would do his healbot spec, then respec after it was over to go do his enhance shaman fun. So it cost me 50 gold a pop, big deal. It wasnt really that hard to earn. Oh, and if they never added dual spec, they also wouldnt have designed raids around groups made up of people who could switch specs at will, so that point is honestly moot.

3) Meh, I always felt the pvp imbalance was exaggerated. The main whining from paladins was that they didnt have dps to kill stuff, which was true, but always ignored their effectively 3x as large hp bars with all their get out of death free cards. I played both sides of the fence, and I will admit I liked my shaman more, but thats because im a dps fiend at heart. But being able to survive insane amounts of time while under attack was great in group pvp. It meant my team was free to slaughter them while they wasted crazy amounts of effort trying to take me down. But whatever, everyone has their own view on that and its not like it matters anymore as they have been changed into a very different class.

As for what rare mounts I got while current, I think the only one I got while new was the bronze protodrake from cot heroic strat. Any others that are buried somewhere on my list of mounts I probably got later. /shrug I am not really all that into staying on the bleeding edge of content. I more tend to mess around and if an opportunity slaps me in the face ill take it then. Does getting an epic land mount count if I got it when it was the 900 gold? :p

[Seerow]

As for what rare mounts I got while current, I think the only one I got while new was the bronze protodrake from cot heroic strat. Any others that are buried somewhere on my list of mounts I probably got later. /shrug I am not really all that into staying on the bleeding edge of content. I more tend to mess around and if an opportunity slaps me in the face ill take it then. Does getting an epic land mount count if I got it when it was the 900 gold? :p

So wait, you complain about things not being challenging enough while ignoring the challenging segment of the content?

How does that even make sense. If you want challenge, then go do the bleeding edge of content. Leveling a character to 50 is doable by a 6 year old, yes. The problem isn't that that is possible, but that you see it as a problem to begin with. Why shouldn't the most basic form of play not be available to children?

If your 6 year old niece were out downing Heroic Sha and completing the tier 14 meta achieve, then yes I'd agree we have a problem. As it is, WoW offers a solid array of content for people of every skill level. That isn't watering down the game, it's broadening it, making it more accessible. Given your described playstyle, if they had maintained all of the things you have argued against, and kept the very elitist mentality of early MMOs, I highly doubt you would still be playing, regardless of what you say.