I followed the link from N3rfed to a rant posted on World of Warcraft’s official boards. Since it’s interesting and it will vanish soon due to flakey archives I’ll paste here an excerpt.
He criticizes the lack of updates and the poor end-game content, like the poor itemization, horrible epic item graphics, encounter bugs, instanced session bugs and locked encounters.
—
I’m writing this post in a state of disappointment that was only matched by my viewings of early stage Luclin in Everquest. At this point, we are 2.5 months into the release of World of Warcraft. The content that has been added on includes the release of a cool instance – Mauradon – and a… wait that’s it.
The World of Warcraft end game is a complete joke at this moment in time. It is ridden with bugs and plagued with poor itemization and ridiculous time vs reward investment. A guildmate of mine uses the phrase “luck >>>>>>> time” to define the endgame itemization in this game. Why on earth are bosses in Stratholme and Scholomance not dropping better items than I find in Blackrock Depths?
This itemization is a complete joke! What happened to the “people will KNOW if you’ve killed Onyxia” babble that was being promoted by the devs just a month ago? Ya, people know that my guild has killed Onyxia by looking at people with her gear.
Congrats Lyte and Turnin on feathered turbans, and Tiberius on a headband that can’t even be seen! You guys want to know a funny story that accompanies Tiberius new hat? After being awarded the shiny new paladin set helmet from Onyxia!, the guild pleaded with Tiberius to put it on. After 30 seconds or so of non-stop pestering, Tiberius’ old helmet finally disappears. People continued to pester him to put it on, until he finally said “IT IS ON OK LEAVE ME ALONE.” Ya, that’s right. This awesome new graphic that “EVERYONE WILL KNOW YOU’VE KILLED ONYXIA!!!!!!” is a headband that can barely be seen past his character’s hairline. I sure feel proud of my accomplishment!!
Moving right along the list of endgame problems, we move to another thing that occurs at Onyxia. She fears your main tanks under the world! When we got her to around 25% health last time, she suddenly shifted agro and we weren’t sure what was going on, until our main tank said “OH MY GOD I AM STUCK UNDER THE WORLD, GET HER BACK TO ME”, which was finally done, but not until half of the raid had been wiped. Along the same lines, she often disappears herself under the world and begins to summon people to her one by one until her lair is all dead. A friend of mine’s guild had this problem, and after consulting with a GM, they were told “it is part of Onyxia’s script to feed under her lair.” Way to train your GMs guys, they’re right on top of things!
The whole post is worth reading, so I’ll archive it in its integral form here below (“read more” link). Follow the link to N3rfed and then to the WoW’s boards to give a look at the discussion that followed, there are more interesting bits.
Dear Blizzard – Fix Your Game
I’m writing this post in a state of disappointment that was only matched by my viewings of early stage Luclin in Everquest. At this point, we are 2.5 months into the release of World of Warcraft. The content that has been added on includes the release of a cool instance – Mauradon – and a… wait that’s it.
The World of Warcraft end game is a complete joke at this moment in time. It is ridden with bugs and plagued with poor itemization and ridiculous time vs reward investment. A guildmate of mine uses the phrase “luck >>>>>>> time” to define the endgame itemization in this game. Why on earth are bosses in Stratholme and Scholomance not dropping better items than I find in Blackrock Depths? On top of that, why am I forced to clear multiple hours with a high risk of some shade perma-evading and wiping my raid so that I can have a .03% chance at getting an epic Runeblade or spiffy horse?
Oh, speaking of good epic drops on trivial mobs, why on EARTH am I finding better drops in Blackrock Spire (Deathstriker) than on Onyxia?! Yes, Blizzard’s prized possession, its baby, is dropping inferior items to those found in Blackrock Spire raids!! In 2 kills, my guild has found an axe that is inferior to Rend’s Deathstriker, and 3 class helmets which are hardly upgrades over items found on Gandling at the end of Scholomance. This itemization is a complete joke! What happened to the “people will KNOW if you’ve killed Onyxia” babble that was being promoted by the devs just a month ago? Ya, people know that my guild has killed Onyxia by looking at people with her gear.
Congrats Lyte and Turnin on feathered turbans, and Tiberius on a headband that can’t even be seen! You guys want to know a funny story that accompanies Tiberius new hat? After being awarded the shiny new paladin set helmet from Onyxia!, the guild pleaded with Tiberius to put it on. After 30 seconds or so of non-stop pestering, Tiberius’ old helmet finally disappears. People continued to pester him to put it on, until he finally said “IT IS ON OK LEAVE ME ALONE.” Ya, that’s right. This awesome new graphic that “EVERYONE WILL KNOW YOU’VE KILLED ONYXIA!!!!!!” is a headband that can barely be seen past his character’s hairline. I sure feel proud of my accomplishment!!
Moving right along the list of endgame problems, we move to another thing that occurs at Onyxia. She fears your main tanks under the world! When we got her to around 25% health last time, she suddenly shifted agro and we weren’t sure what was going on, until our main tank said “OH MY GOD I AM STUCK UNDER THE WORLD, GET HER BACK TO ME”, which was finally done, but not until half of the raid had been wiped. Along the same lines, she often disappears herself under the world and begins to summon people to her one by one until her lair is all dead. A friend of mine’s guild had this problem, and after consulting with a GM, they were told “it is part of Onyxia’s script to feed under her lair.” Way to train your GMs guys, they’re right on top of things!
I am not even going to touch the whole incident with you guys wrongfully suspending Conquest for a few days. You guys really dropped the ball on that one, and now refuse to even acknowledge your bungle.
Bungle bungle, hmm, what’s next on the list of endgame bungles. Oh yes, raid lock bugging. I attempted to go with my guild on a 20 man farming expedition about 2 weeks ago in Molten Core (since there’s absolutely NOTHING else to do in endgame, we figured we’d farm trash mobs for 1 in 50 loot drops, of which you need 9-10 to make one slightly above par item, which you have to farm faction near endlessly to even be able to make.. for each person.. phew). Upon zoning in, I noticed I was alone! Oh no, the raid lock bug struck me. I was highly disappointed and simply hearthed out to go play another game for a while. When I tried to go to Molten Core with my guild *SIX* days later, after only having set foot in the zone for 3-4 seconds and not engaging any mobs in the previous one I was in, I was amazed to find I was STILL separated from my guild. This bug completely destroys the endgame, and forces guilds into extremely limited times in which they can raid, and also have to hope that the same people come back the next day so they can actually advance.
I think the worst case of the raid lock bug is what happened to my guild tonight in Molten Core (the incidents that incited me to finally write this long overdue post). We zoned into Molten Core only to find that Lucifron was not up. Strange, since the last time we were in Molten Core (4 days ago), he was up. After a few minutes, it finally dawned upon us that we were in a *PREVIOUSLY* spawned instance of Molten Core, one which we had spawned a full week prior nad killed Lucifron in. This was a huge problem, as 10 people that we had with us were forced into their own instance because they were not with us in the previous raid. After 4 days of not raiding because of this horrible bug, we were hit once again by it. Being the pain-loving troopers that we are, we continued in the zone anyway, spending an awesome 1.5 hours clearing high hp trash mobs on 20 minute respawn timers. Upon finally reaching Lucifron’s (cleared) area, our guildleader crashes. When he comes back, he discovers that he is in Ironforge! Yes, the instance forced him out and sent him to his bind point while he was linkdead! Awesome times. Having an already withered force, and now missing a paladin and our guildleader, we called it quits for the night. Another awesome night spent fighting bugs and pointlessly clearing trash mobs. We didn’t even get an epic crafting piece tonight on the awesome random loot tables.
These problems bring a few questions to my mind. Why has the raid lock bug not been hot fixed yet? Seriously, this bug has existed since the beta. Conveniently for Blizzard, it extends the end game content until the next (no ETA) content patch comes out, so people don’t get bored and quit. Sadly for Blizzard, it makes people who know what is going on extremely angry when they have to deal with these ridiculous problems day in and day out. *THE RAID LOCK BUG BREAKS THE END GAME – FIX IT.* Shelve Night Elf newbie cooking and address a serious problem which is destroying your endgame. Devote at least 1 person to actually looking at your ridiculous item tables and make it so that people aren’t spending days farming Stratholme/Scholomance/Onyxia/MC for items that belong in Mauradon. Your end game is broken. Fix it.
Game ruining bugs, poor itemization, poor implementation of content, bnet-esque frequency of patches, terrible community management, and bungling of worthless patches has caused half of my guild to not even bother logging on to beta test raid content anymore. I’m starting to get pretty disillusioned myself.