You gotta see this (at least till it’s clickable).
Too much /pizza in a day makes forum mods nut.
While I’m at it I’ll link also a signature stolen from the FOH guild (after following Cosmik’s linkies):
That /pizza had drugs inside, I swear
Tag Archives: WoW
World of Warcraft
Somewhere else, it’s patch day (and pizza)
Due credit. EverQuest 2 pushed out today another minor patch as you can see if you check here. It’s the fifth if we consider just February.
This while World of Warcraft happily sleeps with the eyes open: “how to swim in the money without doing anything else”.
Who needs commitment to a project when it spills money on its own even in the worst scenario possible?
More informations can be found here (courtesy of Krones). I believe Blizzard’s philosophy is summed up in a post coming from Fangtooth, a moderator:
As soon as more information is ready we will send out Update #3! Until that time we can sing folk songs but adapt them to the World of Warcraft…
Take notice that “Update #3” isn’t the patch we are waiting but just an update to the “coming soon” web page.
Obviously it’s superficial to compare the number of patches or the amount of text in each. Some players already say that EQ2 is rushing to patch what WoW had already at release. The point is that I see commitment from SOE and zero from Blizzard (aside more moderators, more fluff information, more babysitting).
I sincerely hope that SOE will mantain this pace. I hope this isn’t directly the consequence of fighting for the first place and that it will actually improve over time. A true dedication will always payback, a sudden rush without a long term plan and dedication won’t.
I hope they aren’t running because they are behind. I hope they are running because they love to run.
As a related(?) news “Mattew Gallant” posted on Q23 a funny image:
War between titans – WoW vs EQ2, again
This entry is the result of a line of thoughts that spans various message boards and most of what I wrote on this site in the last days and also what I’m going to write for the next.
Again this is a (dry) analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of both games from an objective point of view (so without personal comments of preference). With the aim of looking forward though. Observing and learning what happens has no use if you don’t draw concretely useful conclusions for the future. And this is my goal.
In regards to the title of this article it’s rather obvious the link to what is written below. World of Warcraft already won the first round and probably also the followings. Smedley already congratulated Blizzard for the success, hiding the hostility and exhibiting a big smile. In a similar way Kerry did the day after he lost the elections against Bush.
What is dangerous, as I explain at the end, is the desire of emulation.
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This links directly to the discussion about WoW endgame because all the guidelines and the things I wrote on that thread reflect directly here:
Feltrak:
Nagafen will not speak to anyone that does not know the draconic language, so his giant buddy sends you on a quest to learn the language. The quest involves traveling throughout the entire world and finding 26 clickable items sitting around every zone. From city zones to level 20 experience zones to level 45 experience zones. Our guild spent about 2-3 weeks running all over the world, running our mouse over every thing that looked like a book, scroll, or bag on the ground. Some of the runes were placed in such insane places like on top of a tent in the Feerrott.
This is another demonstration of SOE focusing on Fun(®) gameplay. How can they claim that their aim is to deliver a fun experience when they blatantly use unfun, frustrating tricks?
Raph Koster:
We go into every game with the goal of avoiding grinds. :) Really, it surprises me how many people think developers are willfully ignoring everyone–it’s really not that so much as how easy it is to lose sight of what you’re trying to do.
This comes from a completely different discussion but it plugs here. They *know* that what they are going to offer is crap but they do nothing at all to avoid these elements.
This is, again, deliberate. No excuses.
Feltrak:
Guilds: The guild system is awesome. My guild is on their way to achieve magic carpets as a ride through Norrath via the leveling system. Leveling up your guild allows you to get items from status merchants, and lowered cost on other things. Also, there’s nothing better walking around through town and having every Guard salute you, or bow to you. Sony did this well, as it allows the end game to not only be raiding, but achieving guild status and prestige as well.
I underlined this “merit” on my website. It’s a direct advantage that EQ2 has over WoW where the guild layer can be directly ignored like any other form of community involvement.
This is why, in the other thread, I wrote:
“The point of an online game is to live in an alternative world to build something there. To have a sense, an impact. Maintain a presence. All these things happen (even if still weakly) in all the major mmorpgs.
But WoW isn’t a world in the hands of a community. It’s a single-player world with cooperative experiences. The type of impact is often just a form of griefing and communal goals are very loose concepts.”
Point taken for EQ2.
Raiding: Raids in Eq2 are very very well done. Some of the encounters that we’ve come across are amazing. The MOBS are flexible enough that multiple different strategies can work for them, but you have to perform that strategy flawlessly to succeed. With a 24 person limit to raids, you can’t just send in 50 people to slaughter a mob and hope you can do enough damage before it kills everyone (zerging.) Alot of strategy comes down to group setup and key classes, as most all of the traditional eq1 group buffs can not be distributed to other groups.
This plugs in the discussion about the difficulty. Again this underlines basic differences in the design approach of the two games.
In WoW everything is trivialized to be *accessible*. There are no group restrictions, powerlevelling is tolerated and encouraged to an extent, the monsters always drop their loot no matter of the gaps in levels, no restrictions in the access to the instances.
All these steps are founded on other basic elements, for example the “tagging” system allow higher level players to assist and babysit lower level players so that they can get their full reward even bypassing completely the difficulty of the encounter as it was planned.
In general there are no rules in WoW to prevent the players to bypass the difficulty of a goal. On the contrary, the powerlevelling behaviour is often encouraged and is probably the main purpose of a “guild”.
EQ2 is directly opposed to these concepts. I believe that this is *evident*. A few levels and a trivial mob doesn’t give you anymore experience nor loot. In a group the difference in levels directly affects the difficulty of the encounter and the relative reward. Encounters are locked and you cannot get assisted. Grouping between similar level players is strongly encouraged by the system, grouping players in a wider gap is penalized. The instances are strictly controlled about who can enter and how they are experienced. And so on.
Now can you see that they follow two, diametrically opposite, patterns?
WoW has its main keyword in the accessibility. Everything is possible, never impossible. The difficulty can be easily bypassed if you so choose, always. You have control over the rules. You have a direct control over the difficulty of the game. Everyone is allowed in.
EQ2 has its main keyword in the challenge. The experience is always aimed. The developers set standards and rules and the players need to go through a set condition and “win” it. It’s all about beating a difficulty, so it’s always about a challenge and a reward. The gameplay is the opposite of “accessiblity”. Why? Because EQ2 operates a selection. You can continue to play only if you learnt the lesson.
In WoW you can bypass a lesson at any time. Just call your buddy level 60. (again accessibility). In EQ2 you bump into “walls”. If you want to proceed you need to endure it and win the situation as it was set by the developers. This becomes often boring or frustrating because:
1- The lesson isn’t really interesting
2- The lesson is too hard
In WoW you can choose what is interesting, what is too hard (so you “cheat”), what you should repeat, what you want to jump etc…
In EQ2 the fun isn’t in the hands of the players and strictly depends on the Vision(â„¢) and the talent of the devs. If the content sucks you’ll directly hate the game because you have no control over it to adjust it to your likings.
With all this I just want to underline again that the two games are founded on completely different patterns and goals. One isn’t directly better than the other “by design”. As the development continues, they both have different paths to follow to become better games. What is *dangerous* is to not understand the nature and the scope of these game. Dangerous and harmful is when I hear that EQ2 is starting to move to “feel more like WoW”.
The biggest mistake is on this superficial point of view that will only damage directly the game when the aim should be about *consolidating the differences* to offer a different product, at the same time addressing those strongly UNFUN and broken parts of the game that every player continues to point out, like the one at the beginning of this message.
Warcraft pillages the Europe
Update for the “Subscriptions” category and again witnessing Blizzard in its conquest of the world:
Blizzard Entertainment
The Boston Marathon
Mark Asher on the overcrowding problems that the European players of World of Warcraft are currently experiencing:
Tim Edwards:
The launch of WoW in Europe has really brought this issue into focus. In popular areas (I’m thinking of Skull Cave in Durotar, for instance, where every Horde player will pass within the first days) we’re seeing hundreds of players crammed into a tiny space, bitching and shouting at eachother for a single monster. That’s not fun – it’s just stressful.Mark Asher:
This is just a temporary issue. It’s like the start of the Boston Marathon with thousands of people elbow to elbow. It won’t take long for players to spread out, and starting in the low to mid-teens the instances appear. It would be overkill to instance things like Skull Cave. In fact, after awhile instancing something like Skull Cave would be a negative – a few months down the road new players would go to Skull Cave and not find anyone to group with.
Rumors
The next patch for World of Warcraft should arrive for the first week of March.
The battlegrounds could be delayed.
This article doesn’t make sense
This article doesn’t make sense but I believe that if you have the patience to read through it you could discover, or at least focus better, some core elements of game design (sorry for the amount of text but I’d still be interested in feedback).
This is an article that I started to write with a few points to follow on my mind. Through progressive and direct simplifications I try to reconstruct World of Warcraft success from the perspective of game design and the theory of fun of Raph Koster. The “mistake” is that while writing all that I finished with completely different conclusions. So this is a comment about the article. I began comparing MMORPGs to ‘hot chicks’ and it’s where I did the mistake. An hot chick is a monolithic goal, it comes all together. The basic difference with WoW is that this game is fragmented into an infinite amount of mini-goals. It’s pulverized.
While I started to focus on the “lack of challenge”, I discovered, going on, that WoW doesn’t need any form of it. Because what matters for the game isn’t the depth or scope of a single goal. It’s not important the challenge factor of it. What is important is the sheer number. So we have a game shattered in an infinite amount of mini-steps where each is just slightly dispalced. None of these goals is out of reach, so none delivers frustration. It’s accessible. At the same time the pulverization allows the game to be vary, so with the ability to renew itself through what is the classic grind but perceived in a completely different way.
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MMORPGs are like HOT CHICKS! (or not)
The topic isn’t really a banalization, it’s simply true. Everyone knows, without me explaining, that a girl that doesn’t show interest for you may become way more attractive and appealing than a girl that is after you and it’s all over you all the time (well, maybe I shouldn’t write this when the possible readers are all geeks…). The reasons behind these behaviours aren’t complex, it’s about a ‘desire’. A desire, by definition, is something we do not have already. This is why we look a magazine with an hot chick, or dream about an expensive car, or like super heroes who can fly and blow things up. We desire what is there, but slightly away from the range of our actions. At the same time the object of the desire loses this quality when it comes too near. When it’s within the range of what’s already available, the object of the desire isn’t anymore so. It vanishes. The desire is fulfilled. Not so interesting anymore because we can desire only what isn’t already where we are. So it’s about a space. A displacement.
MahrinSkel:
For the first time we have a definition of “fun” that is useful in an engineering sense. We can use it to direct our planning and evaluate our results, we can agree on methodologies for achieving and measuring it, and so on. I’m just saying it can’t be complete, because there are forms of fun that it can’t account for.But it may point the way towards others, for example what he describes is ultimately an argument that the feeling we describe as “fun” is our brain’s way of rewarding itself for figuring something out.
The ‘jump’ I want to do is to tie what I said here again with the argument of Raph’s book. “The theory of fun”. The basic point where I completely agreed is that the pivot of the whole dynamic is “learning”. Learning is the core of everything. Learning is about a movement, it’s again a displacement, it’s an history. You were here before, now (and hopefully for the future) you are there and you’ll move again further. To describe all this I often imagine a man and an area. The man is at the center of this area but the area isn’t absolutely uniform. This area, from the center to its limits, is the space of possibilities of that person. The things that are “easy to do” are those near the center. They are at “arm’s range”, they are trivial, they aren’t compelling and lasting desires. As we move away from the center the difficulty increases, each new point will require an hard work, a commitment.
I believe that men are lazy. This is why the evolution needed a tool to push the men to do something, or they’d sit on their asses all the time. No really. This is a principle. The desire is simply a reward that makes the brain work. So it’s the fun. It’s the carrot on a stick. The carrot is there so that it keeps us moving to reach those points in our space of possibilities that are far away. The “Theory of Fun” of Raph plugs in here. I believe that something, to be fun, must be within the space of possibilities. The best fun possible is about something that IS possible. The best reward, for us, is to achieve those type of “conquests” that are near the border of our space of possibilities. It must be *hard*, but at the same time it shouldn’t move outside that space, or it becomes frustrating because we see it too far away (the perception of impossibility is equal to frustration, see the disclaimer of my site). The challenge of a game designer isn’t easy because peoples aren’t all the same. Something hard for me can be extremely easy for someone else and this is one simple reason why it’s hard to balance correctly the games. Even in the best case you need a ‘target’ that you assume as your audience. One of the reasons why the “marketing” isn’t completely to wipe as an element in the development of the game. The target defines the game because the target is the model on which you’ll calibrate the fun.
Now I link all this to discuss World of Warcraft again. This game lets you play it. It lets you love it and it doesn’t stab you whenever you do a slight mistake. Many have stated how easy is powerlevelling and I also directly attacked the trivialization of the content in the instances. Is it too hard? You can still call an higher level player and do it easy. This type of approach permeates the game. I already stated that this is directly a renounce. A renounce of challenge. If you set an objective without any form of rules, the challenge doesn’t exist. Because it’s a choice. You have to choose to enter an instance and NOT group a player high enough to do it easy. If you want the challenge you’ll have to deliberately group with lower levels characters and refuse to group someone a few levels higher. But this breaks the model because the challenge is by definition something you CANNOT choose. When you choose it you have control on it and when you have control on it you lose the property of a challenge because it is, again by definition, something that doesn’t depend on your direct choice.
So, again, words have precise meanings and “challenge” has the trait of “not a choice”. This trait becomes often a “rule”. By definition a rule is an imposition, something that comes before and you have to respect. In this case the rule is “not a choice”, so it’s about a rule NOT set by you. Where this leads? It’s simple. Challenge, in a game, is an imposed situation, within strict rules, that the players have to “solve”. They have tools and they have to use those tools to win. The more a developer has control on the situation, the more the difficulty can be calibrated. So the result is more or less fun as per above.
My conclusion is that WoW breaks many basic rules. The ease of powerlevelling and the lack of any form of restriction in the game makes the challenge a choice, so bland. It’s not how you do something, it’s that you do it “nonetheless”. The challenge in WoW is never an obligated path, it’s just a distance to cover, from here to here, from “x” experience and loot to “y” experience and loot. One-way, without returns (loosing progression is worst than frustration because not only it’s hard to learn, but you can also “forget”). The ease of the game made it insanely successful because what was before out of the space of possibilities of many players, now is within (like the ease of solo). But on the long term WoW is the type of woman that always please you, always says yes. It’s there for you, giving what you desire all the time. It’s easy. It’s at arm’s range. It becomes something you have already. Eventually.
It vanishes as a desire. This comment I’m writing is the result of the complaints about the endgame in WoW. What is a MMORPG in its true nature? A game where the players pay monthly. -> What’s the real purpose of a MMORPG? Keep the players in, so they keep paying on the long term. -> What’s the easiest way to keep them doing so? Take the gameplay of a single player game and stretch it so it will take a lot of time to finish -> a timesink.
Obviously I do not believe AT ALL that this is the only possibility but what I’m saying is that WoW is no different. We imagined it was but the endgame will reveal that Blizzard is still using a broken model. What happens when you are level 60 in a game world where the challenge is a choice and where the desires are always possible or accessible, eventually? That you need a type of gameplay where you HAVE to offer a real fun. The real fun is a real learning process and a learning process means a type of content that is always vary, always interesting on completely new premises. This is equal to -> an insane amount of work to pile up, reinvent and shape up the same standard mechanics of combat and encounters. The system cannibalizes itself because it devours the illusion of the timesink. There isn’t anymore an artificial boundary that prevents us to reach the next point. So WoW is more fun than a grind, a step forward. But to keep being fun in the long term it needs to avoid repetition and the repetition by recycling the same type of content is impossible, again by definition.
How many types of encounters based on the same mechanic they can possibly invent? How many different items they can push into the world? How many baits? This is where we finish at the end game. The 60 levels are indeed filled with fun content, at least if you tackle it at a right pace without an indigestion. At level 60, though, you’ll face what was pushed forward till that point: the lack of challenge. It has already been stated everywhere that all you do at level 60 is about hunting down that particular phat leet that drops in 0.1% of the cases. Guess what? Repetition. You’ll return here again, doing the same stuff a billion of times. Just to get the new carrot, again repeating the same mechanics.
The revelation is that they overstretched a model that didn’t fit in the beginning. It’s the best MMORPG to date but still founded on the same wrong premise done better. They just engulfed an insane amount of players that were out of the genre by tweaking the premises and following a plan that made sense. They made the game a possibility for those players that couldn’t play (hardware requirements to begin with). With a challenge based on achievement more than gameplay, but achievement that looks diverse through a well-thought quest system. There are so many steps, all these steps are accessible and vary. So fun. There are always more to achieve.
But the end? The end is a wall or an infinity. They are assimilable. It doesn’t directly matter. The point is that they didn’t solve the problem. A MMORPG is still an overstretched game. A game with an insane amount of content but still a game based on the same premises. A fat game but not a different game. The cliche’ returns in the end game. You’ll start to repeat stuff, you’ll see insane drop rates. Now they can rise the level cap, add tons of stuff to do but it will be again about overworking and overstretching. The game will become more and more fat and all the challenges will become less and less diverse. And back at EverQuest. Gaps between the players in a game with 100+ levels with better mechanics, better graphic, better atmosphere and all the rest, but still EverQuest.
So. Can a MMORPG really become a MMORPG? A genre with a specific quality that isn’t just about being fat? Offering a type of depth that isn’t about a timesink, a repetition or an infinite ProgressQuest? A real challenge? WoW is again a game that offers you all it has. It pleases you, it doesn’t trick you artificially away from the baits with the timesinks. So it’s more accessible because the desires within the game are always possible, more fun as a consequence of this and, so, more successful. But despite it does a step forward in the performance, it still does nothing to solve the “riddle”.
Or maybe there’s no riddle to solve. Blizzard found the perfect recipe through a pulverization of goals, all possible for everyone. The game sucks you in with just the pretence of leeching money for as long as possible. From as many peoples as possible.
And Yet It Moves
Only a few hours ago I archived a rant.
It had good points and Blizzard (Tigole) promptly provided feedback on a few core issues. Good work.
Going LD while in a Raid group (to be hotfixed)
Currently, on live servers in the US and Korea there is a bug which causes a player who goes LD in a raid zone to come back with the 60 second, “you don’t belong to this instance” message. The player gets booted from the raid zone once the timer expires.The bug was fixed yesterday. Unfortunately, the servers need to restart for this fix to go live. When the servers go down for regular maintenance on Tuesday, the hotfix will go live.
Apologies for having to deal with this bug for a little bit longer. We’re doing our best to get bugs fixed as soon as possible.
I am hoping to have an update on the Raid lockout issues for you as well. I don’t currently have one.
Raid Loot
We’re aware of the complaints regarding raid loot. We’ll be making adjustments in the next content patch to improve the loot tables as well as some of the items.Scholomance: Upcoming Changes
In response to player feedback, the following changes will be going live to Scholomance when the next content patch is available (note: not the localization patch, not server maintenance).
–Increased respawn delay to 2 hours on the majority of spawns. Only the crypt fiends will respawn in 30 minutes. This should make wipe-out recovery MUCH easier.
–Removed low health flee from all creatures in the dungeon.
–Removed triggered roamers in the first room. Previously, if you only cleared one side of the room, other mobs would wander over and take their place.
–Fixed a bug that caused the spell “Cloud of Disease”, cast by Diseased Ghouls, to do more damage than intended.
–Reduced the duration of Dark Plague from 3 minutes to 90 seconds.
–Blood of Innocents will now drop off both Doctor Theolen Krastinov (The Butcher) and Jandice Barov for players that have completed the Sarkhoff questline in Scholomance
–Shadow resistance now will be more effective at mitigating the damage from Unholy Aura. (This will also help with Eastern Plaguelands and Stratholme).Lastly, we’re aware of complaints about the loot in Scholomance and Stratholme. We plan on re-visiting the loot tables and items in the future. I can’t promise this by the next patch but at least wanted you all to know we’re aware of the problem and plan to fix it.
I feel that once the loot is set properly for the zone, people won’t see clearing to certain bosses as “work” but rather will enjoy the dungeon experience a bit more.
Feel free to post any additional comments or suggestions on Scholomance here for the dungeon team. We’re listening.
Ranting (not me)
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.
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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.