Okay, I played in vanilla but never started raiding until BC, so i don't know exactly what the raiding was like in vanilla. When I raided in BC is what quite casual, I did kara, eye, gruul, and i little bit of BT as we neared the end. Overall it was a good experience. WOTLK was good near the beginning, but ultimately fell downhill. This was because of two things I feel. One of the things being as Jeff had said the fact that there was not enough variety in the specs. For example my friend just asked me this week (as he had quit WOW during school) if destruction was out and demonology was back in. This to me was a casual question, but now as I think about it, it is quite sad. What is the point of having a whole tree of talents to pick from when there is only one "right" way to do so? This I feel limits the game.
I don't know the answer to this problem, but I do know that this same thing happens in every game.
- A fanatic ultimately finds how to perfect a certain classes dps, healing output, tanking efficiency,etc
- He shares it with the rest of the community and it becomes the "correct spec".
- Everyone copies this so called correct spec.
- From then on any other spec is wrong or stupid.
This same thing happens with any strategy game you can think of. For example, I play Dawn of War 2, and Warhammer 40k as well. Each of these games is a strategy game and each spec/race/class has been mastered. If you try to somehow stray from the "plan" and develop your own strategy everybody freaks out. You the person trying to perfect the game in your way instead of following the path set before you become the noob.
This I believe has to be changed.
The other thing that WOW has to change is this badge bull-shit. I played in BC and it was fine then. The gear purchasable by badges was better then heroic gear but not as good as raid gear so it was a fine median (near the ending with sunwell it got worse, I know). Then Blizzard decided in WOTLK that they wanted to offer more to the casual players and allow them to purchase normal raid equivalent gear from badges. Being a casual player myself I knew it was a farce because they weren't offering more to casual players they were offering more to noobs which was a large percentage of the WOW population during the beginning of WOTLK. The fact is that even normal raids are much more challenging to do than mindlessly running heroics so why reward them all the same? This path I feel has to be strayed from as well. I am in no way saying that they should take away badges completely because I feel the system is good, just flawed. Heroics and Raids aren't on the same caliber so they shouldn't be treated as such, even when new harder content is released keep the heroic badges the same don't switch them to accommodate casual players because than all you are doing is wasting the previous content you had released.
I quit WOW around 8 months ago (for other reasons) and decided recently that I would go on my friends account and check up on the progress. When I left they had just released ToC 25 so, people were still running naxx a bit, and ulduar as well. When I returned however those raids were no longer used and what was good content when I left just sat there to collect dust (or be ran for free weekly badges). In the end the mindless heroics had stayed alive while the raids had been left to rot.
To conclude my -quite lengthy and riddled with grammatical errors- comment this is just my take on the situation. It probably isn't the right one and it definitely isn't the only one, but it's the one I got and I am sticking to it.
I don't know the answer to this problem, but I do know that this same thing happens in every game.
- A fanatic ultimately finds how to perfect a certain classes dps, healing output, tanking efficiency,etc
- He shares it with the rest of the community and it becomes the "correct spec".
- Everyone copies this so called correct spec.
- From then on any other spec is wrong or stupid.
This same thing happens with any strategy game you can think of. For example, I play Dawn of War 2, and Warhammer 40k as well. Each of these games is a strategy game and each spec/race/class has been mastered. If you try to somehow stray from the "plan" and develop your own strategy everybody freaks out. You the person trying to perfect the game in your way instead of following the path set before you become the noob.
This I believe has to be changed.
The other thing that WOW has to change is this badge bull-shit. I played in BC and it was fine then. The gear purchasable by badges was better then heroic gear but not as good as raid gear so it was a fine median (near the ending with sunwell it got worse, I know). Then Blizzard decided in WOTLK that they wanted to offer more to the casual players and allow them to purchase normal raid equivalent gear from badges. Being a casual player myself I knew it was a farce because they weren't offering more to casual players they were offering more to noobs which was a large percentage of the WOW population during the beginning of WOTLK. The fact is that even normal raids are much more challenging to do than mindlessly running heroics so why reward them all the same? This path I feel has to be strayed from as well. I am in no way saying that they should take away badges completely because I feel the system is good, just flawed. Heroics and Raids aren't on the same caliber so they shouldn't be treated as such, even when new harder content is released keep the heroic badges the same don't switch them to accommodate casual players because than all you are doing is wasting the previous content you had released.
I quit WOW around 8 months ago (for other reasons) and decided recently that I would go on my friends account and check up on the progress. When I left they had just released ToC 25 so, people were still running naxx a bit, and ulduar as well. When I returned however those raids were no longer used and what was good content when I left just sat there to collect dust (or be ran for free weekly badges). In the end the mindless heroics had stayed alive while the raids had been left to rot.
To conclude my -quite lengthy and riddled with grammatical errors- comment this is just my take on the situation. It probably isn't the right one and it definitely isn't the only one, but it's the one I got and I am sticking to it.