World of Warcraft XVII: Warlords Gone Wild

[Traab]

...I do not understand what your position on the dungeon finder--or anything--even is anymore, Traab.

It had its good parts, like being able to find groups at will, and its bad parts, less exploration done because you have no reason to head for the dungeons when the dungeon finder will just put you inside automatically. I suppose "fully approve" is a bit strong as it does have its negatives, but its far better overall than not having it.

[Kish]

Ah. That is a shame. The only thing you've said that I wholeheartedly agreed with, you have withdrawn.

[Guancyto]

I really enjoy dungeons. I enjoy exploration now and again. Also, I would play intermittently on a few different servers. I ran a hell of a lot of dungeons in Vanilla. I ran even more in BC. You paid attention to what you were doing. You noted down or friended the people who were competent, and you invited them back. Early Wrath was a lot like that too.

Now, 90% of those dungeon runs were on the same couple of servers, the ones where I had buddies (online buddies on the one, real life buddies on the other). The Dungeon Finder was a huge, huge boon on those servers where I didn't know anyone, didn't want to know anyone, and didn't care to know anyone. The Dungeon Finder is a huge boon if you just want to speed through, get your loot and get out without anybody getting friendly. Sometimes you wanna play WoW but don't wanna socialize.

Now, there are people who play the entire game that way. Actually kind of a lot of them nowadays. Here's the big, big, big bennie of Dungeon Finder: if you don't play with friends, or you aren't willing or able to make friends, LFD and LFR are your lifeblood.

Personally I think it's kind of sad to pay a subscription to play a single-player game occasionally interrupted by people cocking it up, but I'm not gonna tell anyone how to spend their fifteen dollars.

[The Glyphstone]

First Ghostcrawler leaves...now Bashiok is leaving Blizzard too. Sad day.

[Sylthia]

First Ghostcrawler leaves...now Bashiok is leaving Blizzard too. Sad day.

Sorry to see Bashiok go, GC on the other hand was a grade-A jerk and I don't miss him.

[Seerow]

Sorry to see Bashiok go, GC on the other hand was a grade-A jerk and I don't miss him.

GC was awesome, and apparently the only developer on the WoW team who had any idea how to communicate with players. I feel like too many people hold a grudge over the whole "dungeons are hard" thing, and ignore the good he did. Having seen how alpha/beta for WoD went without him, the lack of his presence was definitely felt.

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah, I miss GC. He could be abrasive, but who wouldn't be after years of dealing with the crazed mob that was the WoW forum population? He spoke our language.

[The_Jackal]

GC was awesome, and apparently the only developer on the WoW team who had any idea how to communicate with players. I feel like too many people hold a grudge over the whole "dungeons are hard" thing, and ignore the good he did. Having seen how alpha/beta for WoD went without him, the lack of his presence was definitely felt.

I'll second GC being awesome. He did an amazing job of communicating with the community and balancing the game, and while I don't agree with everyone one of the decisions made during his tenure, he at least tried to communicate WHY those decisions were being made, and given the turn the game has taken after his departure, I can honestly say the game is the worse for his absence.

And yes, lots of people wound up chapped when Cata came along and suddenly every Heroic was a wipe-party, myself included. But I don't blame that on him, I blame it on, you guessed it: The dungeon queue. Fact is, dungeons in Cata were not profoundly harder than those in Burning Crusade or Vanilla. What changed? The queue removed all incentives for teamwork.

[Traab]

I'll second GC being awesome. He did an amazing job of communicating with the community and balancing the game, and while I don't agree with everyone one of the decisions made during his tenure, he at least tried to communicate WHY those decisions were being made, and given the turn the game has taken after his departure, I can honestly say the game is the worse for his absence.

And yes, lots of people wound up chapped when Cata came along and suddenly every Heroic was a wipe-party, myself included. But I don't blame that on him, I blame it on, you guessed it: The dungeon queue. Fact is, dungeons in Cata were not profoundly harder than those in Burning Crusade or Vanilla. What changed? The queue removed all incentives for teamwork.

Honestly, its been so long since I was a forum goer that I only remember the names, not what they were like, but for the dungeon thing, yeah, it made the learning curve a bit more interesting when noone was interested in taking 30 seconds to explain to the new guy what to do and instead would start charging through the dungeons full speed in total silence. I dont recall it being wipe fests, but thats probably because I didnt do a lot of dungeon running early on in cata, so by the time I got into them, the rest of the group could run it with their eyes shut, so I just had to pay attention to figure everything out and /assist whoever everyone else was assisting, and stand with my fellows during boss fights.

[Shekinah]

GC has fans here? I thought he was a jerk with a side of smug. I'm glad he's gone.

Why is Bashiok leaving? Job opportunity at another company?

Also, excited for the news of a new expansion! Maybe I'll renew my sub for some roleplaying pre-expac stuff.

[Kish]

I'll second GC being awesome. He did an amazing job of communicating with the community and balancing the game, and while I don't agree with everyone one of the decisions made during his tenure, he at least tried to communicate WHY those decisions were being made, and given the turn the game has taken after his departure, I can honestly say the game is the worse for his absence.

And yes, lots of people wound up chapped when Cata came along and suddenly every Heroic was a wipe-party, myself included. But I don't blame that on him, I blame it on, you guessed it: The dungeon queue. Fact is, dungeons in Cata were not profoundly harder than those in Burning Crusade or Vanilla. What changed? The queue removed all incentives for teamwork.

Was the dungeon finder something someone else imposed on Ghostcrawler or something?

I liked the difficulty of BC dungeons. I would have liked the (comparable) difficulty of Cataclysm dungeons, had there not been an intervening expansion weeding out so many of the players like myself who liked tough dungeons that I was practically guaranteed, in any random group, to find myself with four people who would not be dissuaded from charging ahead full-speed by any quantity of horrible death. But while I give Blizzard credit for finally, eventually, trying to fix what they broke, it doesn't begin to make up for the fact that they broke it in the first place, and never ever acknowledged having done so. (Instead they're blaming the downturn in player enjoyment on...flight! Which is still a major "I couldn't make this crap up" moment that makes me laugh whenever I'm reminded of it.)

[Skeppio]

Guess who just got Draenor Pathfinder!

[otakuryoga]

now you can immediately start to fly!<sup>*

*</sup>once they get around to implementing it

[Ronnoc]

GC has fans here? I thought he was a jerk with a side of smug. I'm glad he's gone.

Why is Bashiok leaving? Job opportunity at another company?

Also, excited for the news of a new expansion! Maybe I'll renew my sub for some roleplaying pre-expac stuff.

Speaking as a balance druid I have ghostcrawler to thank for my spec not being a complete handicap in raids. Yeah he was abrasive but I'll take that over hybrid dps specs being noob traps.

[The_Jackal]

Was the dungeon finder something someone else imposed on Ghostcrawler or something?

I liked the difficulty of BC dungeons. I would have liked the (comparable) difficulty of Cataclysm dungeons, had there not been an intervening expansion weeding out so many of the players like myself who liked tough dungeons that I was practically guaranteed, in any random group, to find myself with four people who would not be dissuaded from charging ahead full-speed by any quantity of horrible death. But while I give Blizzard credit for finally, eventually, trying to fix what they broke, it doesn't begin to make up for the fact that they broke it in the first place, and never ever acknowledged having done so. (Instead they're blaming the downturn in player enjoyment on...flight! Which is still a major "I couldn't make this crap up" moment that makes me laugh whenever I'm reminded of it.)

Flight revocation did push away a lot of people, myself included. It wasn't the ONLY thing that got me quitting, but it was definitely a factor. Let me put it this way: When I left to try SW:TOR, flight was one of the things that brought me BACK.

As for Wrath dungeons getting too easy, it's not like they TRIED to make them easier, it was just the result of the increased power creep from adding more tiers to raiding. Remember, BC raids had one difficulty, so even in the top loot from Gruul's Lair or SSC, you still had to pay attention to what you were doing. Plus a lot more of the player population simply couldn't access 25 man raids at all. So in effect, Wrath heroics were a victim of the developers success in making raiding more accessible to the player base.

[Traab]

Speaking as a balance druid I have ghostcrawler to thank for my spec not being a complete handicap in raids. Yeah he was abrasive but I'll take that over hybrid dps specs being noob traps.

AGH! Hybrid hate! I still remember early on dealing with that kind of garbage on dungeon runs and even raids with my own guild! "Your cat druid cant get that item, the rogue could use it better! No, it doesnt matter that you have total crap in the slot while he already has epics, the 5 points of agi it will grant him is better than giving you 30!" Of course, the opposite was always fun, with hunters rolling need on virtually everything, spawning hunter hate that lasted several expansions before finally fading.

Of course, my favorite part was dealing with blizzards hybrid hate (not actually a thing, but it felt that way sometimes) where my shaman for example, could only be allowed to have heal bot gear for his sets in molten core and I believe the other vanilla raid dungeons. If I wanted to do dps, first off, no, not allowed, you have heal spells, therefore that is all you are allowed to do. Secondly, it required me to bid against any other dps class that wanted a slot filler till his class set dropped. And usually I wasnt allowed until ALL the "nonhybrid" classes got to loot one. Opening day in TBC sucked for my shaman because all his "high end epic gear" was raid drops meant for pure heal bot status, not for killing things. Luckily it only took a few quest chains of struggle to loot enough gear to replace it all with stuff that let me hit things hard. So yay for greens far superior to the epics it took me months to attain before I left the first quest hub!

Also also, the lack of caster gear for balance druids and elemental shaman. I could wear random greens, or cloth caster gear. And once again trying to get that cloth caster gear was fun because the "real" caster classes need to get it first. I think that continued into tbc didnt it? I seem to recall my balance druid wearing an interesting mix of cloth and leather gear for much of the expansion. I think they added in caster gear at some point but my memory is hazy. Maybe it was raid gear? I dunno. Im just glad the word hybrid seems to have vanished from class descriptions.

[Kish]

As for Wrath dungeons getting too easy, it's not like they TRIED to make them easier

Yeah it is.

I don't know if you weren't around during WotLK advertising, or if you were but you're looking at Ghostcrawler and/or Blizzard in general through rose-colored glasses that are obstructing your memory, but that was a big thing hyped when WotLK came out: "You'll be able to finish one of our dungeons in an hour now!" Right out of the gate, Utgarde Keep was a joke compared to Hellfire Ramparts, and it continued from there. The fact that they chose to throw massively more powerful gear at everyone whenever a new raid came out instead of recognizing that the new gear offered when Sunwell Plateau came out worked only because it happened only once for the very last raid near the end of BC's cycle, just aggravated a problem that they caused entirely deliberately, not recognizing as a problem.

Not that any of this addresses my question, so let me try rephrasing that question. You said you don't blame Ghostcrawler, you blame the dungeon queue. Is there some reason why Ghostcrawler was not responsible for the dungeon queue? Did a quorom of all the other developers force it through over Ghostcrawler's "This will wreck the game, I tell you!" protests? (If the answer to this was yes, I would forgive Ghostcrawler practically anything.)

[Delusion]

I actually like dungeon queue. Really beats sitting in a city and shouting "LF1M tank" for hour or so.

[The_Jackal]

Yeah it is.

I don't know if you weren't around during WotLK advertising, or if you were but you're looking at Ghostcrawler and/or Blizzard in general through rose-colored glasses that are obstructing your memory, but that was a big thing hyped when WotLK came out: "You'll be able to finish one of our dungeons in an hour now!" Right out of the gate, Utgarde Keep was a joke compared to Hellfire Ramparts, and it continued from there. The fact that they chose to throw massively more powerful gear at everyone whenever a new raid came out instead of recognizing that the new gear offered when Sunwell Plateau came out worked only because it happened only once for the very last raid near the end of BC's cycle, just aggravated a problem that they caused entirely deliberately, not recognizing as a problem.

Not that any of this addresses my question, so let me try rephrasing that question. You said you don't blame Ghostcrawler, you blame the dungeon queue. Is there some reason why Ghostcrawler was not responsible for the dungeon queue? Did a quorom of all the other developers force it through over Ghostcrawler's "This will wreck the game, I tell you!" protests? (If the answer to this was yes, I would forgive Ghostcrawler practically anything.)

Okay, that talk was about making dungeons SHORTER, which doesn't necessarily mean that it makes them less hard. I don't specifically recall Hellfire Ramparts being any easier or harder than Utgarde Keep, and in any case, early-in expansion dungeons are ALWAYS going to be hard to balance their power level, because the first people who engage them will have raid gear, but they still have to be beatable by people in scrub greens straight from Eastern Plaguelands. The short dungeon movement was in reaction to metadata showing how unpopular long, annoying, trash-heavy runs were. Now I do think how they chose to do that was a short-sighted mistake; BRD is one of the best WoW dungeons ever, and it's a sprawling, epic city.

As for blame, I don't pretend to have special insight as to how WoW's development ideas get proposed and approved. I do think WoW was better overall during his tenure than it is today. I don't think ANYONE thought that the dungeon queue was going to ruin the game when it came out. I certainly didn't. I loved the idea of not having to scrounge for hours to get paired up with a healer (main tank, here), only to have the group break up after one boss wipe and start the entire process over. A queue makes sense, and the pernicious effects of reward, challenge and enjoyment it has aren't immediately obvious.

At the end of the day, I like Greg Street because he's good at something that few other developers have done a good job doing: explaining the reasoning process behind development decisions. Now you might disagree with his reasons, and you're entitled to, but most developers can't even be arsed to talk to you, as it takes time from crapping out features and closing bugs.

[Seerow]

Yeah I dunno who said GC had no part in the dungeon queue, but knowing the sorts of features he did personally work on, I suspect the Dungeon Queue was something that he worked on implementing personally.

That said, I love the dungeon queue. Trying to run mythic dungeons this weekend has reminded me how frustrating trying to pug into a group through trade, or even the new group finder, is. I can understand missing big sprawling dungeons like BRF and BRS... but it seems like most people who hate group finder also hated those dungeons, and want something more like BC dungeons.

BC dungeons weren't hard due to tighter tuning than more recent dungeons, or harder mechanics. They were hard due to it being harder to outgear them, and due to class mechanics being less developed and there being less complete toolkits. If you ran Shattered Halls with a warrior, you weren't CCing just to prevent the tank from taking too much damage (though that was part of it, especially in some pulls); you were CCing mostly because the warrior didn't have enough AoE threat to hold more than 3 mobs against the group's DPS. You were forced to take every pull slow and single target down one at a time due to tanking being much harder. You had to be careful rather than bursting enemies down because you couldn't outgear the dungeon.

Go back and do MoP dungeons in ilvl 440-450 gear; or WoD dungeons in ilvl 600-610 gear. It's a totally different experience compared to doing them after even getting LFR quality gear. Seriously, WoD dungeons in the first month of the game were hard, especially when players were still trying to learn the encounters. Grimrail Depot and UBRS were dungeons I would just quit immediately after queueing into if I didn't have at least 2 friends who knew what they were doing with me, because they would be a total pain in the ass otherwise.

Ignoring all of that? I actually prefer the shorter dungeons I can steamroll through. I ran a bunch of heroic dungeons last night thanks to the event (yay free reputation!) for the first time in a couple of years. I chained like 7 of them. And you know what? I had a blast. I was tanking, and I chain pulled everything. It was great. No it wasn't a challenge. Yes, I ignored boss mechanics because I knew that even when the raven boss did his quills thing I could pop shield wall + enraged regen and not drop health even without any outside healing. But it was fun. It is a totally different experience from the take it slow, pull carefully, do CC with every pull experience of TBC, but that doesn't make it an invalid experience, or one that makes the game worse.

Finally, there is room for both types of gameplay. They introduced the mythic dungeon difficulty, and while I think the tuning is still a bit on the easy side (it's tuned for last tier's raid gear and provides 685 loot, so anyone with 695 apexis gear already outgears it and can stomp through it. And there's no real new mechanics added), it is the correct vehicle for the slower paced more difficult dungeon*. And for the people who hate the LFD queue, you have to actually go out of your way to form a group for it! Seriously you want tightly tuned 5-man content with no queue? They've introduced it, and this weekend is the ideal time to go try it out.


*as opposed to challenge modes, which are actually more difficult than mythic dungeons, and the gear scaling makes it remain a challenge throughout the expansion, but gives awful gear rewards and is set up as a time trial rather than a challenge, so a lot of people look at it from that perspective exclusively

[The_Jackal]

I actually like dungeon queue. Really beats sitting in a city and shouting "LF1M tank" for hour or so.

Yes, and this is where I point out that the LF1M tank problem isn't a 'queueing' problem, it's a 'role' problem, and the queue didn't actually SOLVE that problem. The problem you're actually having is not that nobody wants to play with you, it's that few players want to play a support class. Even now, with cross-server queues and extrinsic payoffs to get tanks and healers to queue, you can still sit waiting for a party as a DPS player for too long.

I've long agitated for MMOs to drop the trinity from their design vocabulary, because it a) doesn't really create mechanics that are all that interesting, and b) creates HUGE meta-problems for matchmaking and coop play. It would be far better to invest money into making a better, more unpredictable monster AI, and give all classes the tools to manage monster aggression. You can still have asymmetry, where some classes can duke it out up close, and some classes need to use avoidance or active defense (ie: crowd control). But the idea of a 'support class' needs to die in a fire.

[Traab]

The one thing that sucks about an MMO is, you cant please everyone. For example, I kinda enjoyed the challenge of TBC heroics. Having to have a strategy aside from "run in and kill them all" made things interesting and challenging. Someone mentioned brd when talking about long dungeons I think. Do you know thats the one old world dungeon I have never beaten? I keep getting lost in the dang place! I have yet to see the final boss, even though way back in the day, he had a rare drop weapon I was very interested in. Sad really. I cant even explain why I kept getting lost, but I seemed to either keep going in circles, or find dead ends and not be sure where to go or what to do. Do you still need a rogue to unlock doors there or something?

[Astrella]

You don't but the multiple levels do make it a bit confusing. (And it being split up into multiple parts)

[The_Jackal]

The one thing that sucks about an MMO is, you cant please everyone. For example, I kinda enjoyed the challenge of TBC heroics. Having to have a strategy aside from "run in and kill them all" made things interesting and challenging. Someone mentioned brd when talking about long dungeons I think. Do you know thats the one old world dungeon I have never beaten? I keep getting lost in the dang place! I have yet to see the final boss, even though way back in the day, he had a rare drop weapon I was very interested in. Sad really. I cant even explain why I kept getting lost, but I seemed to either keep going in circles, or find dead ends and not be sure where to go or what to do. Do you still need a rogue to unlock doors there or something?

Well, this is where I let out my inner elitist and suggest that what people say they want and what they actually want is rarely in alignment. The run-in-and-kill-everyone gameplay is BOUND to be repetitive, because it rapidly becomes unchallenging. Simply put, if you can't lose, winning doesn't really mean very much. Where life gets difficult is finding the right difficulty level. My preferred approach to this is a voluntary difficulty slider, much like how City of Heroes or Diablo III does things: As the difficulty increases, so does the rate of reward, but not the quality.

I spent a LOT of time in BRD, because I was trying to get enough Dark Iron Ore to max out my Dark Iron Brotherhood reputation, back in Vanilla. I'm also pretty good at dungeon navigation in general, so I was usually the guy telling everyone how to get to stuff. You didn't NEED a rogue to unlock doors for you, it's entirely possible to reach everything without picking a single lock, but there it does force you to take out bosses you might otherwise skip. There's also the issue of getting the Shadowforge Key, obtaining of which was a bit tricky, to say the least.

I've said it before, but the key collecting and attunement quests were important, because they REQUIRE engagement of your players.

[The_Jackal]

You don't but the multiple levels do make it a bit confusing. (And it being split up into multiple parts)

There's no QUESTION it's confusing, but that's WHAT YOU WANT. You don't get a perilous dungeon filled with fell enemies which is straightforward, well-lit and has clear signage. Heck, I've been in an Ikea more confounding and difficult to navigate than most WoW dungeons.

[Traab]

Well, this is where I let out my inner elitist and suggest that what people say they want and what they actually want is rarely in alignment. The run-in-and-kill-everyone gameplay is BOUND to be repetitive, because it rapidly becomes unchallenging. Simply put, if you can't lose, winning doesn't really mean very much. Where life gets difficult is finding the right difficulty level. My preferred approach to this is a voluntary difficulty slider, much like how City of Heroes or Diablo III does things: As the difficulty increases, so does the rate of reward, but not the quality.

I spent a LOT of time in BRD, because I was trying to get enough Dark Iron Ore to max out my Dark Iron Brotherhood reputation, back in Vanilla. I'm also pretty good at dungeon navigation in general, so I was usually the guy telling everyone how to get to stuff. You didn't NEED a rogue to unlock doors for you, it's entirely possible to reach everything without picking a single lock, but there it does force you to take out bosses you might otherwise skip. There's also the issue of getting the Shadowforge Key, obtaining of which was a bit tricky, to say the least.

I've said it before, but the key collecting and attunement quests were important, because they REQUIRE engagement of your players.

Im honestly torn on the attunement quests and such. I got lucky in vanilla and joined a raid guild formed from friends I made playing everquest, so we all knew about dedicating time and effort to moving forward. I did the onyxia key chain, I did the ubrs key quest, I even ended up doing the molten core key quest without the shortcut that I seem to remember skipped you right to the entrance inside brd I think? We ran it as a group through the dungeon just to get there. But the thing is, I would have HATED having to do it all over again for my alts. The onyxia quest chain was only partially bearable because I had my shaman running it and he has astral recall, which meant every step of the quest that told me to go to yet another far off and obnoxiously located zone then return was cut in half by being able to hearth 4 times an hour. The thought of doing it again and again? /shudder. I honestly think the most annoying part was just finding that bugger rexxar. Running around that massive path he walks on a 40% speed mount was not enjoyable.

If they made them account wide attunements, I wouldnt really object much, doing a key quest once isnt a big deal. Having to do it a dozen times or more if you want to gear up all your characters is annoying. But once again, its a delicate balance between too hard and too easy. And of course everyone has a different opinion on what too hard or too easy would be.

[The_Jackal]

Running around that massive path he walks on a 40% speed mount was not enjoyable.

See, I was very assiduous in building my cash when I played, I had a good trade going in bags and savory deviate delight. Upshot is that I had more or less enough money to buy my epic mount upon reaching level 60. I probably spent more time getting there, but it meant I could step right into the endgame when I got there, which was nice. I might have done things differently if I had it to do over again, but not vastly so.

If they made them account wide attunements, I wouldnt really object much, doing a key quest once isnt a big deal. Having to do it a dozen times or more if you want to gear up all your characters is annoying. But once again, its a delicate balance between too hard and too easy. And of course everyone has a different opinion on what too hard or too easy would be.

I agree with the idea of making attunements a one-time affair, or at the very least, making the process of attuning your alts much less onerous. As for 'hard vs. easy' I never found any of the attunements to be 'hard', they just required time and dedication. Now answer me this: Would you rather spend your time doing an attunement quest, or grinding Laughing Skull/Sha'tari defense forces? I know what my answer would be.

[Traab]

See, I was very assiduous in building my cash when I played, I had a good trade going in bags and savory deviate delight. Upshot is that I had more or less enough money to buy my epic mount upon reaching level 60. I probably spent more time getting there, but it meant I could step right into the endgame when I got there, which was nice. I might have done things differently if I had it to do over again, but not vastly so.



I agree with the idea of making attunements a one-time affair, or at the very least, making the process of attuning your alts much less onerous. As for 'hard vs. easy' I never found any of the attunements to be 'hard', they just required time and dedication. Now answer me this: Would you rather spend your time doing an attunement quest, or grinding Laughing Skull/Sha'tari defense forces? I know what my answer would be.

The thing for me was, my guild was all about getting to max level, farming the basic set of gear needed to start raiding, then raiding. Not a lot of time left over for farming cash. I got it eventually, it just wasnt really important enough for me to worry over. I mean, I still am moving faster, and most of the dungeons werent THAT far from the flight paths, so 100% was more for status than need. I got lucky and looted an epic item worth 500 gold while farming stacks of cloth and got my "epic" mount.

As for faction farming and attunement. I like what they did in pandaria where you can get that double rep bonus for your account after maxxing it out once. As for hard attunements, really the "hard" part for me was getting people together to do them. Lets take the onyxia key chain. That wasnt that hard to do difficulty wise, but getting people willing to spend the next hour or two roaming azeroth for each of the dragon spawns for you was a bit more annoying. Either that or you broke it up and had to get a different group for each one and that made it take forever. Its not hard with a guild of dedicated players, but without that, it can be a real pita, especially after the expansion has been out awhile so noone random wants to help. Which is another reason why once per account would be nice for attunements. Because later on, noone wants to run your alt through the process again.

[The_Jackal]

The thing for me was, my guild was all about getting to max level, farming the basic set of gear needed to start raiding, then raiding. Not a lot of time left over for farming cash. I got it eventually, it just wasnt really important enough for me to worry over. I mean, I still am moving faster, and most of the dungeons werent THAT far from the flight paths, so 100% was more for status than need. I got lucky and looted an epic item worth 500 gold while farming stacks of cloth and got my "epic" mount.

Yeah, that 'raid all the time, nothing else matters' mindset really always bothered me. At the end of the day, guilds are communities of people trying to help each other achieve their goals. Yes, raiding should be a big part of that goal, but not the ONLY part of it. Having been in both good and bad guilds, and run one myself, I know it's often very difficult to foster a good esprit de corps and get everyone engaged in your guild, compromising on schedules, content, and attrition. It's why I often wonder at the design choices behind WoW raiding. Certainly it can be very validating, WoW is one of the best team games ever devised, but by its very nature, it's also subject to a very problematic set of externalities. I suppose this comes under the "you can't please everyone" heading, but in many ways, I feel like the choice to focus on 10+ man content at the expense of dungeons and solo content is one that's primarily driven by the desire to rate-limit the consumption of content. Yes, balancing encounters for larger groups is easier because you don't have to account for as much atomic variance in class effectiveness, but I really feel like that's a cop-out reason. Part of the reason class balance is so hard is because gear scales so wildly within an expansion, specifically due to the difficulty tiering Blizzard adopted to solve challenge problems.

As for faction farming and attunement. I like what they did in pandaria where you can get that double rep bonus for your account after maxxing it out once. As for hard attunements, really the "hard" part for me was getting people together to do them. Lets take the onyxia key chain. That wasnt that hard to do difficulty wise, but getting people willing to spend the next hour or two roaming azeroth for each of the dragon spawns for you was a bit more annoying. Either that or you broke it up and had to get a different group for each one and that made it take forever. Its not hard with a guild of dedicated players, but without that, it can be a real pita, especially after the expansion has been out awhile so noone random wants to help. Which is another reason why once per account would be nice for attunements. Because later on, noone wants to run your alt through the process again.

Well, I think a more modern attunement would have a more considered set of objectives, much like the epic/legendary ring quest from WoD: It drives you to appropriate-leveled content, and by the time you've finished the attunement, you'll also very likely geared for the next step on progression. The problem with WoD progression is that the challenge level is upside down: Between crafted gear, quest drops and scavenger hunt loot, you can easily gear sufficient to queue for LFR, which is much, MUCH less difficult than Heroics, then dip back into your three required heroic dungeons to grab the ring, then it's all raids, all the time.

For the 'no one random wants to help' issue, you need some kind of extrinsic incentive to help players get their goals. <sarcasm>I seem to recall in BC and Wrath, dungeons gave unique, BOP crafting materials which encouraged people to run them.</sarcasm> In all seriousness, this is something I've been ranting on since WoD came out: Aligning extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, ie: Driving players to the fun with incentives. (Also, I'm the commander of the garrison, why am I the one who has to do the gardening and mining? What do I pay you people for?)

[Traab]

Yeah, that 'raid all the time, nothing else matters' mindset really always bothered me. At the end of the day, guilds are communities of people trying to help each other achieve their goals. Yes, raiding should be a big part of that goal, but not the ONLY part of it. Having been in both good and bad guilds, and run one myself, I know it's often very difficult to foster a good esprit de corps and get everyone engaged in your guild, compromising on schedules, content, and attrition. It's why I often wonder at the design choices behind WoW raiding. Certainly it can be very validating, WoW is one of the best team games ever devised, but by its very nature, it's also subject to a very problematic set of externalities. I suppose this comes under the "you can't please everyone" heading, but in many ways, I feel like the choice to focus on 10+ man content at the expense of dungeons and solo content is one that's primarily driven by the desire to rate-limit the consumption of content. Yes, balancing encounters for larger groups is easier because you don't have to account for as much atomic variance in class effectiveness, but I really feel like that's a cop-out reason. Part of the reason class balance is so hard is because gear scales so wildly within an expansion, specifically due to the difficulty tiering Blizzard adopted to solve challenge problems.



Well, I think a more modern attunement would have a more considered set of objectives, much like the epic/legendary ring quest from WoD: It drives you to appropriate-leveled content, and by the time you've finished the attunement, you'll also very likely geared for the next step on progression. The problem with WoD progression is that the challenge level is upside down: Between crafted gear, quest drops and scavenger hunt loot, you can easily gear sufficient to queue for LFR, which is much, MUCH less difficult than Heroics, then dip back into your three required heroic dungeons to grab the ring, then it's all raids, all the time.

For the 'no one random wants to help' issue, you need some kind of extrinsic incentive to help players get their goals. <sarcasm>I seem to recall in BC and Wrath, dungeons gave unique, BOP crafting materials which encouraged people to run them.</sarcasm> In all seriousness, this is something I've been ranting on since WoD came out: Aligning extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, ie: Driving players to the fun with incentives. (Also, I'm the commander of the garrison, why am I the one who has to do the gardening and mining? What do I pay you people for?)

Too be fair, the guild was specifically put together to raid. We had our fun too, but the entire purpose behind our guild, aside from being full of experienced gamers from everquest who al knew each other, was to raid. We worked our way up together. We ran all the regular dungeons up through ubrs so we could get everyone geared up. We ran tons of key quest chains and such so everyone was ready to go. We even farmed gold specifically for the respeccing needed at times back then. But since raiding was our big thing, and back then raids generally took several hours several times a week to run (im not sure what its like now) we didnt have a lot of spare time for profit farming. But we had enough to do what we got together for, so it all worked out. Also, drunken raiding got to be a ton of fun. Ever tried to raid end game content for upgrades while half the raid is blasted out of their minds? Its an experience, and ventrillo was a lot of fun to listen in on.

As for attunements that you get as your progress, I could see that working, so long as it doesnt turn into another case of, noone wants to go there anymore, they have all moved on.