5.1 - A Return to Cataclysm

I am not sure if there would be a better way to explain what I think of 5.1 than to say it is a return to cataclysm.  Cataclysm was a series of good ideas implemented badly.  That is 5.1 my friends.

Lets not even talk about all the stealth nerfs that are not in the notes like changing the how many golden lotus you get from a spirit from 3 to 2.  It would have been nice to get some notice here because I usually buy 300 a week, now I can only get 200.  Thank you blizzard for effectively screwing me out of 100 golden lotus.

They could have mentioned it was being changed, they could have left it as was because it was fine, they could have at least given us a reason for a change that was not needed, asked for, or desired by anyone.  This is just one in a series of changes that blizzard, in the infinite wisdom, decided not to tell anyone about.

Trust me, there are a lot more of these little changes that are unnoted.  Not just the golden lotus nerf.  I won;t ruin all the ones I've found just now, I'll let you find some of them yourself and get pissed off over them.

This is cataclysm design, doing stupid things for stupid reasons.  5.1 is a return to that concept of game design.  Didn't blizzard notice that cataclysm was the biggest failure they ever had and if they had noticed it why follow the formula of bad design into what has started as a fantastic expansion this far?

I could go on and on about the nerfs to hunters in PvP but I won't go on about it too long as I am not active on the PvP front enough to care more than knowing blizzard was 100% wrong to do what they did.

One short, really short, patch that hunters where powerful and they felt the need to not only nerf them but to overnerf them to the point where they are useless in PvP again.  The bestial wrath / lynx rush combo was too powerful in PvP so they had to screw them both up.

How about you tell people to get better at PvP instead of nerfing something that did not need to be nerfed?  Anyone that is even a half way decent player would hit a defensive cooldown when the hunter does their BW/LR combo and take little or no damage from it with the knowledge that when that is over the hunter really has no ability to burst them down again

So instead of telling people that they need to, you know, actually play better, they nerf the only burst that hunters have in PvP.  Mages have been insanely over powered in PvP and PvE for what, 5 or 6 years now, and they have never seen a nerf.  Hunters are OP, against bad PvPers only, for 2 months and they have to nerf it ASAP.  Nice way to tell a class to bend over because they are getting a surprise.  Did a hunter offend you ghostcrawler and this is how you are getting your revenge?  More bad ideas here.

Speaking PvP how about them new dailies.  As if we did not have enough of them already some might say, I welcomed them.  I was done on my main with all the others for a month already so it is a nice addition to feel as if there were dailies worth doing again.  Or lets say they could have been a nice addition.  Except blizzard in their infinite wisdom screwed the pooch on this one again but being we are returning to the cataclysm era of screwing up every good idea, what else is there to expect.

I know that the intention of mists is to being the war back to warcraft but lets face it, a large portion of the player base does not PvP and many are like myself, drawn to the game because they are lifelong fans of the genre and not for PvP.

For many of the lesser skilled players and players that do not understand the battle design and what can flag them for PvP the new dailies mean they will spend their entire day walking from the graveyard thanks to the fact that the quests are so close to flagged NPC that will cause them to be flagged.  People from the opposing faction sit waiting for a PvE player to accidentally get themselves flagged and land for a quick and easy kill.  On a PvP server this is an awesome area and it makes me wish I had a max level character on a PvP server but on a PvE server this is a place for griefers to have fun doing what they do, griefing others who accidentally got themselves flagged.

You can't always blame the player either.  You walk into an area with enemy NPCs and get yourself flagged, that is your own fault.  Man up and fight.  Hearth and wait for the flag to wear off.  Or die and wait until the flag is gone before reviving.  You made your bed, you lie in it.

However, that is not the problem, the problem is in game design.  Back in BC they made a change to coding where if you were doing AoE and were not flagged it would not hit flagged targets and flag you.  In cataclysm, yes, the worst expansion in warcraft, they broke that.  What do you expect, cataclysm broke everything.  Now you get flagged for anything that might hit the enemy, even if you are not flagged.  Have your pet in tank spec and it does its thunderstomp, better hope there is not a flagged person around because you are now going to be flagged.  I've seen people stand on top of pets waiting for the pet to do something like that just to flag the person.  Has not happened to me yet because I know how it works and I single target in areas where there are flagged people running around, but I have seen it happen to others.

The makers of the game need to understand PvP is fine on PvP servers but on PvE servers things like this are not as welcome.  When I want to fight I flag myself, when I want to quest, I don't.  They should not have me have to watch everything I do out of fear of accidentally flagging myself.  I am there to do dailies, not to fight and the majority of people on PvE servers are the same way.  If you are there to fight you should man up and switch to on a PvP server where you would be facing people that want to fight and not jumping people from behind that do not want to fight, do not know how to fight and are already in battle and at low health to begin with.

There were flagged people standing on top of all quest objective mobs hoping someone would accidentally hit them or do an AoE and get themselves flagged and they would kill them.  These PvP heroes, players that like to play PvP but are not good at it so they roll on a PvE server and kill the only people they are capable of killing, pure PvEers, like to go around and grief the people because they know they will not fight back as all they want to do it go about their questing.

Blizzard has given these PvP heroes the ability to grief these people by making incidental AoE flag them.  Thanks blizzard.  I guess I need to write an article on how to effectively not flag yourself when questing in these areas now, because if yesterday showed me anything, most people have no clue.  I was watching people get flagged accidentally and seeing dozens of people on them in a matter of seconds.  They were griefing non PvPers because they were flagged due to bad design, not because of a desire to PvP.  Yeap, that is cataclysm all over again, good idea, bad implementation.  PvP because you want to is good, PvP because it was accidental while doing a quest is not.

How about those quests you can get from turning in commendations, are you enjoying them?  I will go out on a ledge here and say your answer will be an astoundingly loud hell no.  I wrote about bad drop rate quests yesterday and said that for the most part blizzard has gotten much better with these.  Leave it to blizzard to make me wrong the day after I post something.

I did all three of the quests you can buy and it took me two and a half hours to get them all done.  I had no time to do anything else, did not even do my other dailies, run LFRs, anything to cap out my valor like I normally do on tuesdays because I spent two and a half hours on these quests that have drop rates that are not quite as bad as the old moonsaber ones but they sure as hell bring back memories of that.

Few mobs, many people doing it, extremely low drop rate, does not equal fun blizzard.  Back to cataclysm design, good idea, bad implementation.  Having 3 additional daily quests you can buy and start with commissions is a great idea.  Having those three dailies take me longer to complete then it would do do every other single daily in the game is a bad idea.

Do you want the real kicker to these horrible new dailies that take all day to finish?  No reputation.  No F'N reputation.  I did all of this to get the new faction up as fast as possible for nothing?  What?  Who decided on this retarded idea?  Who wasted my entire time to play last night for no reason what so ever?  Well, this time it was me that wasted my time but I assure you will I never do these quests again.  They should have said I would not get any reputation from them, that would have been nice of them.  How the hell do you offer three dailies for a faction, that you have to buy at that, and they do not give you any reputation?  Back to cataclysm's motto, if there is something we can screw up, we will and we will screw it up even worse than you expect.

Top that all off with the new addition of the brawlers club and the ticket system that benefits the people with no jobs and people that play on off hours.  I wrote a post a short while back about all the things that are wrong with it and guess what, blizzard did not fix any before they released it, they are all things that are still wrong with it.  So people that have no jobs will be able to get the tickets first because they can be on all day to get them and people that play on off hours will have the ability to wait 15 minutes to fight when I, playing at prime time, will probably have to wait hours, if I can even get a ticket to get in.

I wonder how they decided on doing things like this.

Idea Man: "I've got a great idea, we can make something like fight club where people sit around and watch others fight"
Naysayer Man: "It is a great idea but it is a bad idea to make people wait to play.  Lets phase it so everyone can do it when they want to do it."
Bad Idea Man:  "But we can do something with it I am sure, it is a good idea, maybe if we make people have to buy their way in and put those things in limited supply on the black market auction house."
Worse Idea Man: "And don't phase it so people are forced to watch and wait hours to fight."
Ghostcrawler:  "Nice work guys, but can we make it worse?  It is still too good for these people."
Naysayer Man:  "Do you really think it is a good idea to make people wait hours to play a game?  What are you all smoking?"
Ghostcrawler: "Naysayer man, you're fired.  Maybe you will learn to never bring up logic and common sense into game development on your next job."

They took a good idea and bounced it around until they destroyed it.  How does a company with this much experience in the gaming industry decide on something like this?  Now more than ever I wish I played on off hours.  At least if I want to do this.  It would be easier to win a ticket, it would be a shorter wait to get into a fight, it would be a little closer to how it should be.  As it is, as a prime time player with limit time, it is a horrible idea and being most people play at prime time, hence the reason it is prime time, this design is a bad idea over all.

5.1 is a return to cataclysm.  A return to good ideas implemented poorly.  A return to changes that were not need or asked for or even understandable why they were made.  Cataclysm was the worst expansion ever, why are they trying to emulate it so soon after such a fantastic release of a new expansion.

5.1 wasn't all bad however, there were some good changes and additions.  And it could have been worse, they could have remade AQ 20 and AQ 40 and made them incredibly hard for the average player and made it so we had to grind only those two over and over again, but I guess they will save that sort of horrible design for a future update, just to prove they can make things worse.

Being able to enter old raids without being in a raid group is good.  Having some old raid bosses drop pets is good.  Having those items be on use and not soulbound is good.  It is not all bad, but in the end it was not good either.

My Opinion of 5.1: 
Rating: One and a half stars
Comment: 5.1 was an extremely poor excuse to break addons for.