Monday, April 22, 2013

Monday Random Thoughts

- I think last week was the longest I had ever went without a post since I started this blog.

- I guess not being happy with the game means I have little desire to talk about it.

- Even if I always complained it was because I like the game so I complain about the things I don't like in it.

- At the moment, I am not really enjoying the game, so no reason to waste my energy complaining about something I really do not care about is there?

- Not like I would quit.

- I still like the game and still like the people I play with.

- I am just feeling a bit fed up with it and blizzards desire to push everyone into raiding.

- Are they aware that the reason only 5% of the player base raided was because only 5% wanted to raid?

- There was nothing that kept people that wanted to raid from raiding except perhaps time.

- It takes an hours wait and many hours wiping to finish the LFR now, how does that fix the one issue people had with raiding, time?

- Making gear easier to get is how you make raiding easier for the people that time was an issue with.

- Forcing everyone into raiding is a bad idea.

- It is why the LFR is such a nightmare.

- Making people raid does not make them raiders.

- Just like making PvE players PvP as part of the legendary quest line does not make them PvPers.

- If anything, it makes their option of something they do not do normally even worse.

- I can't repeat here some of the things I have heard people say about having to do the PvP part of the legendary quest line in my guild.

- Ouch, those words scar the mind.

- Blizzard needs to work on making the content more accessible and then letting people walk into it on their own.

- That is how you make non raiders into people that raid.

- That is how you make non PvPers into people that PvP.

- Opening the door for them.

- Go back to 10 and 25 lock outs, and make normal modes easier.

- And start debuffs right away.

- 5% one month after release, 5% more every two weeks after until you reach 30%.

- You would see more server activity.

- You would see more pugs and more people running alts and helping new people into the raids.

- That is how you get the community raiding.

- Forcing them into content that was not intended for them just so they can get gear is not how you do it.

- I say screw you to the people that say gear only matters to raiders.

- I raid but it matters to me on my non raiding characters.

- Gear makes my rogue kill things faster so I can skin more effectively.

- Gear makes it easier for my DK to solo stuff.

- Gear makes it easier for my healers and tanks to stay ready in case they are needed even if raiding is not my main intention with them.

- I should not need to raid to get gear with them, they are not raiders.

- And they do need the gear even if they are not raiders.

- And that my friends is why there are so many bad players in the LFR.

- They are not raiders, they have no intention of ever being raiders, they are just players that just want gear to make whatever it is to do that they do easier.

- Please do not make those people come into a raid.

- They are not raiders and forcing them to raid will not make them raiders.

- That is why the LFR, and now locking valor gear behind a reputation from it, is the worst idea blizzard has ever come up with.

- That is why I am sick of the game.

- That is why I have not been writing much this last week.

- I needed a week away from thinking about it.

- I needed to not stress about the fact that blizzard wants me to quit.

- I did end up running them all on my main, over time this week however.

- It took me three times queuing up for the last one to complete it.

- Over an hours wait twice, near an hour the third time.

- I entered a raid that was on the last boss that first time that was already at 10 stacks and proceeded to wipe another 6 times.

- I entered another after a whooping hour and a half plus wait that was on the last boss at 7 stacks.

- I already did the last boss.

- I am already valor capped.

- Why the hell would I stay and wipe again for another 3 hours for something I have no chance at loot on, will get no reputation from, and can not get any valor from.

- Are they fucking serious putting me in this group?

- They really do want me to quit.

- If there is an insult to injury this is it.

- After the nightmare on the last boss I just had you make me wait an hour and a half for the same thing I can get no benefit from.

- What ever happened to if you did the last boss you will get in on a fresh run the next time?

- Third time I did get a fresh run and we one shot the first two bosses and I left.

- Sounds good right?

- Nope.

- Zone in, one tank leaves, wait 15 minutes for another tank, he zones in, he leaves.

- Two healers leave, we wait 20 more minutes to get out two healers and one tank but in that time, the other tank gives up.

- 5 minutes later we have our tanks and healers and pull trash.

- One healer DCs, we wait 5 minutes for a healer before boss.

- Down boss, both tanks leave, wait 25 minutes more for tanks, one zones out the second he comes in saying he wanted a fresh run.

- Over the next 20 minutes three tanks zone in, leave group.

- Finally down the trash to the second boss and the second boss.

- A nice clean run of the two bosses I needed.  No wipes.

- Still took three hours when you include wait time.

- So NO, it was not a good run.

- A good run is you wait 15 minutes to get in, zone in and kill stuff, hopefully collect loot and leave 30 minutes later at max when it is done.

- That is a good run.

- That is the absolute longest you should ever need to spend with random people to get random content done.

- BTW, Speaking of loot.

- Three bosses with a weapon, three bosses that did not drop a weapon.

- Three coins used, three coins wasted.

- One run with 4 other hunters, two had a 502 weapon, one of them had a 522 weapon and one had the 483 sha touched weapon all set up.

- All better than my 489 normal mode will weapon.

- Boss one, me 108K, the three that over geared me in every slot including weapon, 49K, 44K and 43K and the one with lesser gear and the 483 weapon, 66K.

- The lesser geared player deserved a weapon, I deserved a weapon, the game gives it to three horrible players that do not deserve it.

- And people wonder why I get frustrated with this game.

- I'll try not to think about it.

- Hope you have better luck then I do.

- Have a great day.

28 comments:

  1. My LFR runs went ok this week, surprisingly. Well, ok for LFR...

    Ton of crappy players, but got through anyway without it becoming a total wipefest.

    I was pissed when I got enough valor to buy my next upgrade because my rep isn't high enough... I need 3500rep to get to Revered...

    I'll probably have to buy the ring which isn't as good of an upgrade just to spend some valor next week. There needs to be a different way to earn rep.

    I got two side-grades this week. At least one is a tier piece that I can use when I get a 2nd tier piece.

    Did 3 out of 4 parts of the achieve for the Treasure Trove. Just left with the one for getting 10 chests. It's a pain.

    There needs to be something else to spend Elder Charms on. I keep having to buy Treasure Trove supplies because I'm always capped at 20 Elder Charms... Eventually though, I'll cap on those too. And running the trove, always earns me 10+ charms so buying supplies for running the trove is not an effective way of using them up.

    Been capping justice too. I'm converting it to honor since I still need the pvp mounts. Nothing else worth buying with justice. Heirloom upgrades are outrageously expensive. Next patch will fix that so I can start upgrading some of the heirlooms for my alts that I don't level...

    My desire to play the game has definitely lessened. LFR has gotten progressively worse. Went on a couple alt raids with guildies but ran into Ambershaper. Don't need gear from the old raids and pugging HoF is more aggravation than I need. Hit my goal of 1M gold so I've gotten lazy with my gold making. I'd like to go back and solo more things but it takes too much effort just to get valor capped. Doesn't leave time for doing fun things.

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    1. Actually, depending on the current gear level, there is a use for JPs that I only recently became aware of... convert to honor and you can buy i476 honor gear from one of the PvP vendors. If it's a toon who's earning JPs (ie. running heroics) there's a good chance that some 476 pieces will be an upgrade. Bought my hunter some pants a couple of weeks ago. Takes most of a full 4K JPs to buy that calibre of piece but it's better than nothing and better than most other things that can be done with JPs.

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    2. I did not have a hard time on my healer, whom I ran it on first.

      Doing it later in the week with my hunter was another story all together. Ouch.

      At least you can turn justice into honor and get some PvP gear in case you want to test the waters there.

      As the anon mentioned, it is also a great way to speed along gearing an alt now thanks to PvP 476 gear.

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    3. My iLvL is 504 so all I can use JP for is convert to honor or buy heirlooms.

      Anyway, apparently someone at Blizz heard my complaint about the rep:
      PTR notes from today say:
      "Shado-Pan Assault belts now require Friendly reputation to purchase, down from Revered."

      Of course, I'll be revered by the time 5.3 comes out, so it won't matter...

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    4. We will probably be exalted by then. Too little to late, always seems to be how they work.

      The shoulders for gold were a nice touch, but by you get to exalted you will most likely have better or a tier piece from LFR you won't change. They should have been something to buy at friendly.

      Oh well, as always, too little to late, the motto of blizzard.

      On that note, golden lotus reputation is no longer needed to do shado-pan and AG dailies. In 4.3. Way too late.

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  2. Ah I wondered where you'd gone. I check your blog everyday and missed having new posts to read.

    I echo your dissatisfaction with the gearing model. I'm now not playing my main at all outside raids. I don't like any of the valor gear, it's got poor stats on it. I haven't run into any gearing walls or even close. So I'm not capping my valor anymore as I have 3k and nothing to spend it on. Even if I bought what was available I don't have the rep to keep spending the valor. Part of that is I'm not running LFR on my main now either. It takes way too long, all I was getting was rep to unlock gear I don't want, so what's the point?

    I levelled my 5th character to 90, my warlock and I started gearing that which means joy of joys - LFR. I got in just scraping the 460 limit, now I don't know if everyone else was the same but I don't think that I should have been topping the meter first time there. I'm not that good, poorly geared. I was only doing about 45k which is bad I think. Still I got through MSV no wipes despite half the raid dying to Elegon's floor. I'm not looking forward to HoF/Terrace at all which I should have 470 for today or tomorrow. Terrace was a nightmare months ago with no-one dispelling, it's bound to be worse. Plus I loathe LFR.

    Seriously blizz I want to play, I want to gear but I do not want to be funnelled into LFR and have it be that or nothing. Well I suppose I could unlock all the reps and buy valor gear but that would take months and it's already superseded by valor gear that you need rep from LFR for. I don't want to run LFR. I'm really enjoying my lock, which is weird as it's dps and ranged, but it's a ton of fun. I want to play but the constant need for LFR sucks.

    Soon I'll just give up the gear treadmill full stop. Play my main only for raids then just farm mounts and pets in spare time, maybe achievements if possible. I'd run battlegrounds if it wasn't like a bad LFR 95% of the time. Have people never heard of communication and working together?

    Anyway a big I agree to your post and a huge wave of sympathy for your LFR experience. LFR I believe us putting all would be raiders off raiding. If LFR was your first 'raiding' experience would you continue?

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    1. What were people doing when there was no LFR? Say Wrath. Non raiders were stuck on what was it 232? And some frosties pieces of gear (3 pieces of 264 iirc). I don't recall non raiders complaining that they need those raiding pieces form 10m and 25m.

      So things like 'I want to play, I want to gear' boggles my mind. Sometimes I think that not having LFR would make people happier. I may be stupid, but I don't get it. You feel like you have to do it because it's there or why? Why do you feel the need to gear past a certain point unless you raid? Actually, why aren't you unsatisfied that you nee 541 iLvl items, why stop lower? That's good gear and it's gated. Why?
      At this point, I'm just looking to understand things, not commenting either way...

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    2. In my main I don't need LFR. I raid, I get better gear there. I raid to raid, not for gear but happy side benefit. It's all good.

      For the alt which I was talking about. I want to be able to solo some old content on it. There's some things easier for ranged than melee (Malygos springs to mind) and so the better gear I have the easier this will be. The same for the green fire quest and other such things. Could I do it with non LFR gear? Probably. However better gear would make it easier so it's understandable I think why I would like that better gear.

      For my alt I can't do real raiding on it. There are no pugs on my server, my guild isn't doing any non progression raids. There's open raid but so far T14 has clashed with my guild raids. So LFR is the only place outside outdated valor gear to get gear. I wish that wasn't the case.

      That probably makes me selfish and me wanting it to be easy. It's not that LFR is difficult though, it's the length of time it takes and the people in it that make it awful. I would just like another option or for LFR to improve.

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    3. Writing was just frustrating me more. I needed a small break from it. Glad you like my grumpy thoughts. :)

      I had a few older raids go horribly wrong this weekend when I went with some friends.

      Seems as time has passed the older raids have gotten harder, not easier.

      No one wants to do the HoF ones at all. They do MV and both HoF once then the last one and ignore the two HoF ones all together. I do not blame them. Even in the LFR, and more so now, they can be a nightmare.

      They need to ditch the gearing thought raiding model when only a tiny percentage of players raid. Whoever thought that up should be fired or at least demoted to cleaning bathrooms or something because they surely have no clue about human nature and how games are played.

      @James

      Why would people still run it? For gear.

      Why would people still want gear if they do not raid?

      Example. My rogue in all 438 and 450 gear. 25-30 seconds to kill one mob, skin, sit and eat.

      My rogue in all 496 and 522 gear. Pull six mobs, AoE them down, skin and keep moving while never barely getting scratched.

      See, not raiding on my rogue, but definitely loving that gear.

      Or perhaps my miner.

      Bad gear. Land, get attacked, takes 30 seconds to fight off mob, possibly lose ore to someone else.

      Good gear. Land, two shot mob, mine and fly away.

      Same for herbalism.

      Same for soloing old content.

      Same for just going around killing rares.

      Same for looking better to fit into pugs once in a rare while.

      Same for if I want to raid on it one day it is closer to raid.

      Same for having a tank and healer geared as back ups in case you need them.

      Same for a million and one reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with raiding.

      People need gear to make playing more enjoyable. It has nothing to do with raiding. It has to do with making your own personal progression.

      Without gear it is hit 90 and log off until next expansion comes out. Gear is what makes the game keep running.

      If you push all these non raiders into raid content, even as watered down as the LFR is, you are going to destroy the system you are trying to create. And it has for me. I am beginning to actively HATE raiding. Even on a normal once or twice a week casual level that I have been doing it on for years now.

      All thanks to the LFR and them forcing people that should not be in there into it just because they want gear.

      Let them get their gear outside of my content. If they do not want to be in a raid, and I do not want them in a raid, why is blizzard forcing it on both of us?

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    4. I think I have a solution: make LFR gear and raiding gear in general only usable in raids.

      Bam, done, folks who only raid for gear (with many of them not caring much about performing well due to that, and basically, well, wanting to be carried) no longer have a reason to do that.

      Yes, that would mean that LFR will be less populated than now. Yup. Maybe that's a good thing. If the number of people who'd do raids because they like to raid and not because raids drop gear that they want to use in dailies, etc, is small, then maybe, just maybe it doesn't make sense to focus the game so much on raids (addressing Blizzard here). Think about it.

      And they can always tune the health of the mobs on dailies down so that a person in quest gear can AOE those mobs alright. There is no need to compromise on convenience here. In fact, it's because they consider LFR to be available to everyone, that mobs on the Isle of Thunder have the amount of health that they do. /shrug

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    5. I feel bad for the unskilled person that enters the island on a fresh 90. Ouch. They can be painful for some people that have gear and do know their classes. And those solo scenerios, while I had no problem with them on most of my characters, my squishy ones that I am not great on, like a mage, had a little bit of an issue in a few of them.

      Now try doing that is lesser gear having just hit 90. You need gear to even do the quests. You are right, if they did not offer the gear they would not need to keep upping quest mobs meaning new people to 90 need the gear even more.

      It is a catch 22. You need the gear to do the quests but you can not do the quests without the gear.

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  3. It's hard for me to understand why people would LFR if they don't want to do it, unless not gearing up is gimping other people's efforts.

    Also, I think you're stressing yourself too much. Why even bother looking at what other people got? It's LFR. It's by design a lottery of sorts. It's not rewarding effort / skill.

    And from the pov of what you say, those poor dps players need the gear more than you do. You can already do things twice as effectively with the gear you have, why reward you? No, really, why?

    What should gear be, then? A help for those that need it to do their activities faster, whatever those may be? Or reward for effort / skill?
    This is all related to how you perceive things, though. My raiders need a required dps level to, say, down Horridon hc mobs fast enough. They need that gear because of the actual dps check. Absolutely need it, can't down the boss in blues no matter how you look at it. And this isn't even a matter of choice. It's not like it takes longer to kill the mobs without the gear. It's an actual road block. They can't do something unless they have that gear. Unlike, say, quests, where you don't need raiding gear to do them - it just takes longer. So need? Hardly. Improve their experience? Yes.

    But. How would a fair loot system look like, that wouldn't make people think some deserved loot and others didn't? Aside from removing gear completely from the game, that is.

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    1. I have to start with this...

      They do not NEED the gear more than me. They do not need it at all.

      If you do not know how to drive, you do not need a car. If you do not smoke, you do not need a cigarette lighter. If you can not DPS as a hunter, you do not need a bow.

      They do not NEED it more. They need it less. I can do something with it. It would be a benefit to what I am capable of achieving numbers wise and make my raid group all around better when I get better. I NEED it. They do not.

      /rant

      I like to look at others so I can see how I am doing in comparison. If someone does better than I do I poor over the numbers to see what they did that I did not. I want to know what gear the people around me that are the same class have because then I can roughtly get a feel for how they are/should be doing and thus how I am doing.

      I strive at every chance I get to do the best I can do. Even in the LFR. But I must admit I do not give 100% in the LFR. No flask, don't care about food or prepots. But I do everything I can otherwise. Is that really wrong?

      It is like that question I said to ask yourself. (not to you personally, to everyone)

      If everyone did what you do, would you down the boss? I love the be able to say yes on any character I play.

      As for a fair loot system, I mentioned it dozens of even hundreds of times here. Make people earn loot. No more luck involved.

      If you want the bow, you down 12 bosses, collect 12 tokens, turn them in for the bow. You earned it by downing those bosses.

      No more killing a boss 18 times, using a coin 18 times, and not getting anything when some other player that has only done it once wins it and wins another one with the coin.

      If we both needed to kill the boss 12 times to get it, it is a fair loot system. Remove luck. That is how you make a fair loot system.

      Make people earn their gear.

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    2. Agree that Grumpy maybe gets too worked up [but then again, it that's what it takes to get these wonderful rants, keep doing it, Grumpy! :-)], but disagree totally and completely with the argument that those who do more DPS need less gear than those who do less DPS. NEVER agreed with this, and never will. Once in a hundred times this kind of reasoning might help some raid of friends drop an extra boss, but in the ninety nine remaining times ALL this does is encourages slacking. So, no.

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    3. Exactly.

      If someone says, but I can do the bare minimum and they are happy with that then more gear means they have to do less to do the minimum. It encourages people to be bad in a way.

      I can slack off and still do good because I have great gear. Bad design and so much the design of this expansion when gear is more important that skill.

      I decided, for fun, to just auto shoot on one of the single mob trash pulls, just to see what I would do. Not even 1 shot that was not an auto shot and I pulled 38K on trash.

      How is it possible people are doing less than that doing full rotations?

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    4. I'm convinced a significant number of players, especially dps, aren't actually paying much attention to the game when they run LFR. They're watching TV or a movie, checking Facebook while tabbed out or on a second screen, etc. Even if just auto-attacking, if they aren't paying attention they won't be switching targets and will do less damage than you did.

      Even in LFR (any group content at all, really) I'll generally focus exclusively on the game, it's different for solo play but when I'm in a group, I pay attention. I'm quite sure not everyone - and possibly not many - do the same.

      Then again, I've seen anomalies... there was a 'lock in a Terrace run I was in this past weekend who did 22K dps on Sha using what, far as I could tell, was a half-decent rotation... they weren't just spamming a nuke. Yet, 22K. Maybe they were testing to see what dps they could do naked, or without a weapon?

      It's funny, though, most of the LFR runs I've had usually end up with pretty consistent dps results... 2 or 3 who are significantly (at least 5-10K, often more) above the next group, a relatively packed next group of about 8 or so, then you start to get tanks and Atonement healers mixed in with the rest of the dps in a steady dps decrease to whoever's the last place non-healer who sits at about 20K. Happens that way on almost every non-AoE fight (4th boss in HoF is an obvious exception, that one usually has a tank on top and a steady decrease below without any real groupings). I always expect that eventually you'll see more of the second pack moving up with the top folks as they gear up, or the bottom folks joining the second pack, but it never seems to happen... the numbers go up as gear improves, generally, but the distribution pattern stays about the same.

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  4. I can now sympathize a bit with your drop luck... hit 18 MV LFR bosses yesterday (3 toons), got 1 drop. Worst luck I've had in a while. Of course, it was my 3 least-geared toons (who are my least-geared toons for a reason, just wanted to get some casual playing in and MV is mostly a stomp these days) so no biggie, if that means better luck on my more important toons I'm all for it.

    If only it worked that way... was trying to come up with a way to nudge gear to particular toons via a preference slider or something similar in-game but couldn't come up with anything that couldn't be gamed somehow.

    I still haven't seen the first two bosses of the last quarter, both times in now I've only gotten the last boss. I've mentioned my 9 attempt one earlier, this time around it was a fresh run (including the trash, who weren't much fine... basically 1.5 trash wipes, second one was only not a wipe because people kept streaming back in to keep it going, most folks died at least twice) that nobody wanted to lead. I ended up doing it myself, something I'm not a fan of doing (the Anon tag can be seen as an indication of my desired level of involvement), and it went surprisingly well... could have been a two-shot, ended up being a three-shot. Generally a positive attitude run, too, I did my best to quiet the negative talkers. I think the key was that we had zero turnover between each attempt... so no need to advise incoming players on the strategy. If people just stick around, the kill will happen sooner than later as long as people are learning something each attempt.

    More below.

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    1. I'm still unsure of what my opinion is on gearing up in this expansion... I've geared up a full server of toons without a lot of difficulty, playing the toons I wanted to play and sure, running a few extra things to cap VP here and there but not being militant about it. 6 toons 480+ (one 500+ that I'd run in anything right now), 2 more 470+, 3 460+. Right now I have two "mains" (tank/dps, heal/dps) that I do run through most current LFR content each week for VP and occasional gear, other than that I play who I want and run what I want. I don't think it's that bad at all from that perspective.

      On the other hand, if I suddenly wanted to get one of my 460+ toons geared up to raid current normal content - or even ToT LFR - in a hurry, there's really no way to do that... crafted gear is in short supply or non-existant (I still haven't seen a Haunted Spirit on the AH on any of my 3 active servers), VP gear is still too expensive point-wise in this scenario (but is, I think, fair in the context of a toon who does generate VPs regularly) and as my 1/18 showing in MV this week shows, even an increased drop rate can still result in a dry spell. Then again, I got my rogue from i462 to i482 in a single week by getting something like 11 LFR drops, only 1 or 2 of which weren't useful (sidegrades or downgrades). It can be done, just not on demand.

      This is why I'm finding it hard to give an answer... for the long game, which is the one that I think Blizz is designing for, the current gear paradigm is fine. It's only the short game where it becomes an issue... but if they make it better for the short game, it'll kill the long game and I've personally known players who have taken a break once they got all the gear they could get from a tier (giving a chance to get someone else in who needs gear is the usual argument, I just find it selfish that we geared them up just to have them bail, taking all of that gear out of the group... different during farm runs but I'm talking progression runs, too). The longer that takes, the better for the game as a whole, I think.

      The one thing I would have done differently would have been to make the 489/496 VP pieces JP pieces in 4.2... same as in previous expansions. I'd have left the rep requirements in but added new ways to get rep... why can't failbags contain a +1000 rep BoA token like the new rares do? Failbags are still mostly fail, I get something about 10% of the time and it's usually just a few motes, occasionally a flask/potion and just once a piece of OS gear (nice piece, though, not complaining). As it is now, leaving the older gear behind a VP rep gating requirement, plus the VP weekly cap, does force people to run LFR to gear up (the intended result) but it also brings more RNG into gearing up alts quite a bit later than we've had to deal with before. Used to be that you COULD have a ton of toons ready to raid current content while it's still relevent by chain-running heroics (ICC days)... can't do that anymore. Maybe a bad thing, maybe a good thing. I did get really sick of those heroics.

      So, yeah. Not sure where I stand. I wouldn't complain about some tweaks or changes but I'm not sure they wouldn't do more harm than good.

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    2. Making it better short term worked for everyone.

      When there was a 25 and 10 man lock out. When the raid was easy enough that servers were pugging it left and right all day long.

      I remember getting a priest to 80 and in one day gearing up completely and killing the lich king.

      I even remember in cataclysm a hunter in guild hit 85 and geared up in one day and came in for a rag kill.

      Now try that? Not happening, ever, and that is the problem.

      The people with less time can never feel like they are advancing. With LFRs that take hours and hours on end, the casual will never have gear, and they need rep for that gear too, not just valor, so they have to do those LFRs like it or not.

      Horrible would be a nice way to describe their gearing system.

      With that said, I must admit, I like the idea of the gearing system. IF, and that is a big IF.

      If, there was a larger player base to make wait times much shorter for the random content.

      If, the player base was a lot better than it is, so that they can do it nice and easy like it should be.

      If, the people that played the game were decent people and not always out to verbally assault everyone.

      All ifs that you, me and everyone that doesn't work at blizzard knows is not going to happen.

      Their gearing idea is fantastic, near perfect even with the exception of bad RNG. It is the player base that makes it horrible.

      And blizzard has been in business long enough to know this would happen with their player base. They should have known what it would come down too. So even if the idea was nice on paper, they should have never added it to game.

      They need to learn to think and ask themselves this one question before implementing anything.

      How will this work with our player base?

      If they asked themselves that, there would have never been an LFR or at least one that had anything more than tank and spank fights.

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    3. You seem to be talking about my glory days with the 10 and 25 lock outs... early-mid Wrath. I spent a bit of time in Naxx and Uld but my first time as a "real" raider was in ToC...

      Looking back, in the days when I had a lot fewer toons than I do now, I was still running that place a LOT.

      * 10N and 10H with one group on various toons (I'd swap toons or roles once they were on farm).

      * 25N and 25H with another group on one specific toon that only ran 25s.

      * 25N on another toon with a different group.

      * 2 or 3 other random PUG runs each week as friends would ask me to come and fill a spot.

      I was basically running that place CONSTANTLY. I was sick of it within a month but ran it for a lot longer than that. I still want to strangle whatever designer came up with the Faction Champs fight and put it second on the list.

      ICC wasn't much better, the only saving grace was the gated entry with the areas being introduced slowly over time. By the time my main group had killed LK (after which we basically disbanded, everyone was tired of even ICC by then), while I was still running 25s (which ended at about the same time as the 10 group, people just stopped showing up), I started pugging runs... met some nice guilds and got some regular runs as a result that lasted most of the rest of the expansion. I'd also join full pugs occasionally. All of my toons were well geared by the end of the expansion.

      And lord, by then, I was TIRED of the content. Between all of the raiding and chain-running the heroics to gear up my alts so they could join my ICC runs at a semi-appropriate gear level, I had almost no down-time in game, it was all go, all the time.

      When they combined the raid lockouts so you could only run 10 or 25 on a toon, I may have actually applauded. Great change, I was tired of gearing up for 25s in 10s and I was tired of peeople in 25 gear coming in and stomping my ass on toons I only ran 10s on.

      Cataclysm was much of the same but had the advantage that I couldn't STAND the Zul heroics... if they'd been remotely enjoyable I'd probably have chained them for gear but they broke me of my compulsion to run heroics for gear. I'm still thankful.

      MoP is basically an extension of these themes, now it's even less critical to chain-run anything for gear, mostly because you can't. I've seen the other side of this and I'm glad that it's the way that it is.

      For those who do still have a compulsion to chain run, there are always alts. You won't get one toon up in a week but you might be able to get 4 toons up in 4 weeks. Same result, but with a bit more balance in the execution. I really don't think that's a bad thing.

      Speaking of bad things, has anyone come across a chat add-on that will filter out anything people post in LFR that mentions gold, bags or links a piece of gear? As annoying as the gold complainers are, the ones who link loot and bitch that it's the 5th time they've gotten it are infinitely worse.

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    4. Gold sellers in LFR, now? Jeeze, one would think that Blizzard was in cahoots with them.

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    5. The glory days of wrath are known as that for a reason. It was great. Those separate lock out might have made you feel like you had a lot to do but it made you feel like you had a lot you could do.

      It also made it so the community pugged as the best players were not locked on their mains they could do pugs and help others out.

      Doing those pugs was a great recruiting tool. A great way to meet people. A great way to learn the fights. A great way to gear up an alt. A great way to raid without your guild while still staying in the guild you wanted to be in. etc.

      They were surely the glory days. We need 2 lock outs back.

      It seems everyone complains about getting only gold. Except the jerk hunters that do 1/3 of my damage and say, darn 4th bow I don't even need. I hate them more than the gold complainers.

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    6. MY glory days, not necessarily the glory days in general. It was great at the time but it's not something I'd want to go back to again... I think most Vanilla and BC babies would have a similar reaction if they went back to when they were in their prime.

      Yeah, I do sometimes miss the pugging (and puggability) of Wrath. Sure, the top servers have enough talented, skilled folks around to have successful pugs but I haven't had that experience on my server since ICC. I made a lot of friends through various ways back then, most are gone by now and I haven't had much luck replacing them in-game, there just isn't much opportunity to.

      Still, I used to stand outside the 5-man ToC instance portal for HOURS on my mage to try and get a single run... there were dozens of dps in the looking for raid tool, no tanks, few healers. These days, I won't wait half an hour for an Oondasta group to get their act together, there's no way I'd wait hours just for the CHANCE to run a 5-man. I don't think the game would survive a return to those days and although you could argue that the game is quieter these day, the subscribed population is still holding relatively steady. I don't think that would happen if they got rid of LFD/LFR, it's just too convenient, if not necessarily enjoyable. I'd rather have a painful 2-hour completed run than a 2-hour wait for a run that might never happen. I think most people would agree with me on that.

      If you want to simulate the old experience, turn off general chat and go park yourself by Oondasta and wait for a group to form. Just ... wait. Sit there, with no actual idea if it will happen that day, or that week. Let me know how it goes. :)

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  5. Didn't you just tell us that getting tanks was no problem in Lfr and only the healers held it back? Our LFR went fine. Had to take control of the last boss had never do e it so we wiped 4 times. No one left no one got huffy kept a calm and positive attitude in raid chat and people responded in kind. No loot off course but got a few legendary drops so time well spent 10 minute wait time ( I que with one of my healers or I don't bother) def feel the shitty drop rates on my hunter he's still rocking a 463 one of the reasons I switched to the mage was the weapon merry go round hang in there roll protection is coming!

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    1. The tank issue is new. It might have something to do with people not wanting to queue up solo. I do not solo queue on my tank.

      Times change and now people do not want to tank them. Having tank them, I do not blame them.

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    2. tanks not tanking? what is the world coming too, oh my!

      well even if you are getting tired of the game, you gots lots to say still. between what you are writing and what I am reading at Tomes, I would say that LFR has become a joke for most. Oh my, Big Booty Trudy is on Miami Vice- later gator.

      -roo

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    3. not new its been going on for a while now just because you hadn't run into it doesn't mean its new. That's why back then GC specifically called it out.

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    4. I'm not tanking LFR anymore. I refuse, too much pain for pretty much zero gain. My 2 guild co-tanks are in the same boat. We don't get anything worth going for, perhaps now we're further into patch 5.2 we're getting the same problems that T14 LFR had. At the beginning of T14 my queue time would be longer as a tank than as a dps, at the end of T14 it was quicker to queue tank than healer.

      Mind you I went on my warlock on Wednesday and spent 95% of the time wishing I was tanking. I like the lock but it seemed to be my luck to get tanks that didn't know what they were doing. I'm not the best tank in the world but I do know the mechanics of the fights at least. I doubt I'll go as lock again, just swear off the whole PFR business as it's not worth it.

      WoWInsider had a post yesterday about blizz's biggest triumph and biggest mistake. I think their biggest mistake is LFR. Not the idea behind it as expanding the market to justify resources for raids to make them economical is good. However it's how they have failed to tune and market it for it's correct audience. In my opinion it should offer nothing of value to raiders, not just nothing of value to heroic raiders but just ordinary raiders. It also needs to be made a metric ton easier and perhaps even changed to using a flexi group model. Scenario queues are quick as it doesn't matter what spec you are, make queuing for LFR more like that and make the difference up with NPC's or buffs or something. Otherwise how can LFR be for people without time to raid when even with a healer or a tank it can take nearly an hour to get in and then a couple of hours to complete. 3 hours is normal raid progression time therefore your only difference is ability to choose when you lose those 3 hours.

      I'd like to hear your opinion on biggest triumph/greatest mistake Grumpy. It's been nearly a week again.

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