What I am Not Excited For

I while back I made a post about things that are going to be in mists that I am excited for.  Now it is time for the other side of the coin, what I am not excited for.

The Black Market Auction House:
From my standpoint there is absolutely no up side to this.

People get things by buying them instead of working for them or lucking into them.  Mind you, I am no fan what so ever of the luck system, but if I had to run something for three years to get a mount and that mount is still in game and still attainable the way I got it I believe people should need to get it the way I did.  Maybe they will get lucky and get it on one run or maybe they will have to run forever to get it, but at least they earned it.

Before anyone says I only think that because I want to be special for having it I should point out that I have mounts, armor and weapons that are no longer attainable in game and I have no problem with them being attainable.  There is no way to get them, so adding a way for newer players to get a piece of the past does not bother me.

It is just that I believe if something is still attainable in game you should have to get it in game.  I don't think anything that is in game now should ever be offered there.  You should need to get it the way it is intended to be attained.

Then there is the other way around.  I've been farming the drake that drops from UP for many years.  Probably been soloing it since ulduarish time in wrath when I was first capable of soloing it.  While I have not done it every day I would say I have easily run it 300+ times and never seen that drake drop.  When I get bored or am looking for something to do or have a little time to kill before a raid, I run UP and hope for the best.

When I get it, there is one less thing for me to do in game.  As much as I hate the random number generator for not letting me win it, I like that it gives me something to do having not won it.  Having something like that to do adds a little fun to the game.

I will be tempted, heck, I will buy it if it pops up on the black market auction house.  I have the gold and I need the item, so I will buy it.  I do not have the self control to pass it up.  If I see it I will get it and it will take something away from the game from me.

I will lose my little something to do whenever I have that free time.  I will not have that excitement of finally seeing it drop when it does.  It will take away something from the game.  I think having little things like that to pass the time is a good thing and selling the items we do those things for removes the need for doing them.  In a way, selling stuff on the black market auction house is removing content from the game.  As in, if I buy it, I no longer need to run UP.  It removed that content from the game for me.

Then we have the elephant in the room.  Gold sellers and the buyers that love them.  Something like the black market auction house will mean there will be more gold sellers in the game.  It means there will be more gold buyers in the game as well.  The thing most people miss is that this will not only effect the black market auction house it will effect the entire balance of the game.

People will buy gold to get that expensive mount or raid gear on the market and then buy more so they can get that new craftable belt or power level a profession and they will buy more and more and the prices on everything will go up in the process because people have become more comfortable buying gold.

Not to even mention what the added gold sellers to the game will do.  More people getting hacked is only the tip of the iceberg.   They will also be around gathering meaning more competition for what can sometimes be pretty competitive to begin with.

Nothing good comes to the game from gold sellers being around and having a part of the game that requires people that want stuff, including heroic raid gear, that costs a lot of gold you are giving the gold sellers a damn good reason to be around.  It was blizzards way of putting up a sign that says gold sellers welcome here.  I don't like it, not at all.

No Valor for Gear:
I want to know who the genius that thought this one up was so I can send him a nice thank you bomb.  Just kidding of course but really what is the logic behind this one?

I don't know about others but for myself I use the valor gear to at least semi gear up alts so should I need them I can just bring them into the mix and they are not completely out geared.

Take my priest for example.  I used her at the beginning of the expansion and felt her healing was weak and switched to my shaman which it was a lot easier healing T11 and T12 with.  So my priest, after just a few runs in T11 sat on the shelf for a long time.  She did however stay geared up.  By running randoms I was able to keep up with buying valor gear and when T13 came I did not need to play catch up, she was already geared and ready to roll day one having not even raided since those first few steps into T11.

How about my rogue which was oddly enough my second 85 this expansion.  He had never raided, ever.  I think I took him on one of the weekly raids back at 80, maybe two.  He was my crafter for my hunter.  As a leather worker his entire life was lived just to make gear for my hunter.  However, since I could get gear with valor I was still able to keep him geared, even if only minimal as he did not even run dungeons much.  When T13 came out and I was capable of getting in there to start the legendary quest line it was not like playing a game of catch up, he was appropriately geared for DS even having never raided before in his life thanks to valor gear.

Or my warlock, the character I really hate playing this expansion and my only class that I do not have at least one of with a 390 item level or better.  Thanks to valor BoEs and justice BoEs I was able to give him a nice little jump start.  The same way I gave every character a jump start when they first hit max.  I like that my characters can help each other like that and without having gear for valor that means no gear BoEs for valor either to give myself a jump start.

Speaking of BoEs that is a whole topic of its own when it comes to the valor and justice gear.  Are you aware how many people make the bulk of their gold selling them?  I never really have but there are many people that make their gold that way and that is probably the easiest way for people that are horrible at making gold to make gold and being they apparently want people to all have a ton of gold, see above, taking away an easy way to make gold is not a good thing.

I know of many people that have a whole slew of alts but only one main.  They gear up their main and run their alts to sell the valor BoEs for big money in those early weeks.  I feel bad for them but it also works both ways.  What about someone that has the extra gold and wants to gear up a little faster, they no longer have those people selling that they can buy from.

Removing valor gear is changing something, a lot of things really, that we have all become used to and accustom to.  I do not like the idea of just upgrading gear with valor.  It is a horrible idea.

What are we going to do when we upgraded everything?  Is all that valor now useless?  At least now you can buy some valor BoEs with that useless valor and make something.  From the various servers I play on the current valor gear sells from 800g to 4000g even still all depending on server economy.   I am not sure about you but I would prefer 800g to useless valor points any day.  Gear for valor just makes sense and having one or two of those pieces be BoE make even more sense.  I am not looking forward to upgrading gear with valor and that is all we can do with it. 

Mind you, I am not saying I dislike the idea of upgrading armor and weapons, I actually love that idea.  I am just saying that removing gear for valor and replacing it with the upgrade system is a horrible idea.  They could make valor gear you can buy and upgrade gear.  But that would make too much sense and it would make valor more useful for a longer time.  Why would they ever do anything as stupid as making something useful for a longer time.

Cross Server Zones:
Oh my god I don't even know where to start.

Lets start with basic and simple.  What if someone likes playing on a small or medium server?  Cross server zones basically means you are forcing them into a high population server.  On my main server if I go to level an alt I can be fairly sure that I can quest without anyone else in the zone and even if there is someone else their might be one or two.  On another one of my servers where I recently leveled another character every zone I stepped into was filled with people all over the place.

I like both of them.  Some days I want an area all to myself and others I like to see life around.  And I am just one person and like both ways.  I am sure there are others like me in that aspect and I am sure there are many that like it quiet all the time.  Some people choose to be on low population realms because they do not want people around all the time.  A cross server zone takes away that option and forces them into a high population realm basically.  So much for giving people choice huh?

This also makes for the trifecta in messing with the economy.  Add a black market auction house to screw with gold, take away BoE valor items to screw with gold, and make gathering a multi server thing instead of a single server thing to screw with gold.

Way to go blizzard, you hit the trifecta in screwing with the economy.

Lets take the small server for example.  You have one guy that does laps in winterspring for icecap and sells them 50 gold a stack.  He does an hours worth of picking and can usually farm around 10 stacks and all is well for him.  He is happy with the money he makes and the server is happy with the price because it sells at that price easily.  A good supply and demand balance has been reached on that server.  Enter cross realm zones and he goes to farm and now has 100s of people there, many of them competing for those same herbs.

He can no longer get 10 stacks in an hour, he can only muster up one and a half with that type of competition going on.  If he is intent on making 500g for his hours work that means he will need to sell those for just a bit more than the 50g a stack he usually did.  In this case a little bit more means roughly 375g a stack.  There is no market for 375g a stack.  So it does not sell, and he does not farm them at all any more.

It could work the other way as well on a higher population server, with a cross server that means there is an increased spawn rate, if the game is designed the way they say it is at least, and on a higher population server where they sell for 13g a stack and there are always many people there it will now sell for 6g a stack because there are more people there and more farming causing faster respawns.

For the low pop server with few people farming, they will lose out on materials for their server and the price will go up in the process.  For a high pop server that normally had a fair deal of people there it will now have more and there will be more in the mix because of the higher spawn rate meaning the prices will go down.  Crossing realms chances the balance.

Lets not even think about the balance of the players, lets think about the balance of the bots.  Lets say a server has someone running a bot on it, they just have that one bot to deal with.  But if you are using the cross server zones then if 10 servers are there together and 5 of them had bots now that one area has 5 bots.  For the bot runners that is awesome.  Five bots mean faster respawn rates, again if it really works as they say it does, and that also means you, the human player now has to contend with 5 bots beating you to the node instead of just one.

Gee thanks blizzard for making me have to compete with 5 bots now instead of 1 when I go farming.  That was so nice of you to think about me like that.

Lets not forget about questing.  Some people like the low population servers because they can just do their thing.  The one mob they need to kill will be there because no one is there to kill it.  On high population servers you often find yourself and a few others going for the same quest mob or mobs and if they are not nice enough to group with you guess what?  You are stuck waiting for respawns.  There are some quest mobs in some areas that are barely enough for one person to finish the quest and have a dismal respawn rate.  Welcome to the full world where there are now 10 people looking for the mobs that there were not even enough for just you.

That makes me think about us poor hunters.  The only class in the game that needs to hunt for an ability, as in a spirit beast.  How do you think a warrior would like if he had to hunt for his charge and other people could kill it before he got it, or a priest would like to hunt for their greater heal that others wanted to kill to grief them?  If a BM hunter wants a spirit beast which is the best for them in most situations they need to hunt for it.

For someone like myself, with 7 max level hunters and having have never even seen a spirit beast even if I am always looking for them this is already frustrating.  What is worse was the fact the first spirit beast I ever saw in my life I had to kill for frostbitten.  No thank you blizzard, I do not want even more competition for something I should not need to compete for to begin with.  Do not cross server zone any zone that has rare spawns that a hunter needs.

Or how about any zone an achievement hunter needs to get things in?  Frostbitten and bloody rare are hard enough as it is when you are one of few looking for it.  How do you think it is going to be if 100s are looking for it?

And how do they plan to handle spawns?  What if terror spinner had spawned on server B 20 minutes ago and server B is the server you throw me on when it was due to spawn on my server in a few minutes?  Lets say I go back over and over looking for it and always get unlucky and thrown into a server where it spawned 20 minutes ago.  I might never find it.  Now I need to fight the random spawn thing and fight the system that could very well put me on a server it is impossible for me to get it on every single time.

Word to the wise.  If you want frostbitten or bloody rare, get it now.  It will be damn near impossible and require a lot more than time investment and luck come mists.  It will involve double luck.  You need to be lucky enough to be in the right place and lucky enough to get thrown on the right server they decide to make for the cross server zones.  Nothing good can come from this.

Don't Have Group, Won't Travel:
Blizzards official stance on this is that they are removing it because they want people to get out in the world more.

I am almost speechless, good thing I am typing this and there is no need to talk.  I have never heard a more erroneous statement in my entire life from them or more proof that no one at blizzard plays the game.  How does removing something that gets people out in the world more often get them out in the world more often?

I just can not grasp that concept.  I can just imagine the brain storming on this one in the offices.

Clueless Designer 1: We need to find some ways for people to get out in the world more.
Clueless Designer 2: How about we remove have group will travel?
Clueless Head Designer: Don't people use that to get out in the world more in pvp, raiding, and helping others quest?
Clueless Designer 2: Yes, but if we remove it they will have to fly there so they will be out in the world more.
Clueless Head Designer:  Do you think that will work?
Clueless Designer 1:  It has to, people will be forced to go out if they can not summon people.
Clueless Head Designer:  Okay, lets remove it.

It was probably something as simple as that and they removed it and once again completely forgot who their player base was.  They forgot that the reason people do not go out is because they are lazy and have group helps cure lazy in some cases.  They forgot that have group made it easier to get people around so people used it to get around more often.  They forgot that instead of needing two people that where not lazy to go to a summoning stone you only needed one person which effectively made it twice as easy to get a group together to get out.

It also made it easier to get people to help you if you needed help.  Lets say you where leveling and at the amphitheater and needed help.  You would say, could anyone help me for 5 minutes and while most would love to help you it would take them 20 minutes or more to get there if they where not already local and then they would need to head back to what they where doing before hand taking more time so they do not help.

With have group they say, sure, have group me, you get there, you kill the mobs, you hearth back and go back to what you where doing.  No one wants to waste 20 minutes flying to help someone unless they where bored to begin with but most people, decent ones, if they are not doing anything pressing would help a guild mate for 5 minutes if they could instantly get there.  Gone are the days of using have group to get someone somewhere to help you.

How about doing PvP defenses when horde is trying a two phased attack in multiple cities?  Have group is king.  My guild is not a PvP guild and most do not even like PvPing but with have group we go out to defend because it is only a matter of saying, have group me there and then suddenly we have 16 people that were sitting around doing nothing out in the world doing something.  All thanks to have group.

I can not even begin to tell you the number of times we kept inviting everyone that popped online and have grouping them to us and doing some world PvP.  We used it for tram fights.  We used it for attacks.  We used it for defenses.  We used it for molten front skirmishes.  We used it for open world fights that originally started as a two on one and ended up a 10 on 10.  All this from a guild that does not even have one guild rated battleground win because none of us PvP.  All thanks to have group.

Once we even took out a double attack in stormwind and darnasses at the same time thanks to have group and some good timing.  It was all thanks to one mistake in timing from the horde and some good use of have group and my small group of guild mates, 16 in total, wiped two 40 man raid groups at once.

We saw them coming in stormwind so we assembled in the kings chamber waiting when we got an inside tip that the group attacking stormwind was only a distraction it was mostly the PvE players and people that already had the other achievement, the serious PvPers and ones that wanted the achievements were going somewhere else.  So all of us that had alt mages popped on to our mages, ported them to another city and went back to wait being we did not know what the other target was yet.

We destroyed them in stormwind really quick, with outside help from others around there of course, and while we where finishing we saw they where going to darnassas.  I had my mage in the building, I switched characters, hit have group, and the full PvP group walked right into all of us ready for them.  They never saw it coming, we took them by surprise completely.  We took out the entire group in roughly 90 seconds, it was pure slaughter and probably the most exiting PvP moment of my game play life.  It was amazing, it was exciting, it was great fun and it was all thanks to have group.  Of our group of 16 people only 2 were PvPers.  The other 14 would have never even joined in on the fun if it had not been for have group.

It is the moments like that people remember.  Things like that make people love the game.  It is the feeling you get from doing stuff like that which makes you want to do it more and play it more.  It even inspired a couple of those players to get a little more involved in PvP.  Have group did what it was supposed to do.  It got people out more, it got them to do new things, it got them to have fun, it got them to experience something that could be addictive, something called fun, something the game needs more of.  So it only make sense you would want to remove something like that right?  Well, to blizzard it does.

I can list example after example of how have group has made people get out in the world more than they have in a while but apparently it seems my experiences are unique.  I seem to be the only person in the entire game of over 10 million people that got out more because of have group because blizzard has all the numbers and they say that no one goes out any more.  They are saying that nothing like I described has ever happened for anyone but me.  Blizzard is all knowing.

Removing have group is not horrible.  We never had it before and we did just fine so we will live just fine without it.  The thing is, to say you are removing it to get people out in the world more is the worst lie ever.  It got people out in the world more.  It did exactly that.

I would love to know the real reason they are removing it and not the lie they tried to feed us.  Blizzard must think everyone that plays the game is a fan boy that will listen to everything they say as if it were gospel.  Sorry blizzard, some of us know better and we know it was not removed to get people out in the world more because people where getting out in the world more with it.

If anything all it did was save time and as I have said a million times before, I am all for saving time.  I would rather spend 20 minutes playing instead of 20 minutes traveling to play.  It seems blizzard really wants us to spend that 20 minutes traveling because removing have group has made us do just that.  Instead of being out in the world playing we will be out in the world traveling.  Thanks... no.

So how is removing have group supposed to get me out more when it got me out more to being with?   As I said, proof that no one that makes these decisions plays the game because apparently they have no clue how the player base uses have group.

Well, that is all I have for now.  I do have another header I wanted to address but I am not posting that on purpose because I feel it needs a topic all its own.  I also feel it is something that is high priority to me and people like me that like to grind stuff and farm stuff and look for more involved game play.  So that is left out, but the above things, those are things I believe everyone could agree with.  Or at least I think everyone would to some extent.  They are things I am not looking forward to at all.