Mudflation and Obsolete Raid Zones

[AngryDwarf]

I touched on this in a previous thread a while back, but I think it's worthy of it's own topic.


It's inevitable. When new content is released and level caps are upped, older content starts becoming obsolete. I think EQ actually handled this well in it's hayday, after having learned what not to do after they saw what happened to Veeshan's Peak. Even up through the PoP expansion, most newer/casual guilds would start gearing up in the raid zones from two expansions prior - ToV/Kael, then move into Ssra/VT, then into the Elemental Planes, and finally PoTime. Some guilds completely skipped VT, true, but most of the guilds that I saw would spend at least a little time in VT before they hit the EPs. With WoW's first expansion on the horizon, are they taking steps to ensure that current content isn't going to be rendered immediately obsolete? I'm not so sure.

Blackwing Lair is the most glaring example. I don't think the quality of loot and it's relative power to that of which you can attain in MC will keep BWL as an attractive raid zone as new/casual guilds progress post-expansion. It just simply will not be worth the effort when you can get simliar quality gear much easier from MC then move onto bigger and better content in the expansion. This, of course, is assuming that folks won't be able to attain MC quality gear from 5 or 10 man dungeons in the expansion. A situation like that could render even MC obsolete.

I'm on the fence with AQ. This might end up being the only pre-expansion raid zone that guild's hit before their trek onto level 70 content. The gear is probably the most well designed yet, as the itemization guys have a little more of a clue as to what players actually want on their gear as compared to their cluelessness at launch. It will just depend on how much of a pain in the ass the zone ends up being. Are we going to start seeing guilds down Rag then start working on AQ, leaving BWL as "extra"? I don't see a gear desparity between MC and BWL that would prevent a guild from skipping straight to AQ in this manner. And we're talking just one content patch out from BWL, let alone a full expansion.

Having said all that, I'm not sure if there is a solution to the problem. It seems that this, along with the majority of WoW's problems, comes from a lack of foresight and is difficult to fix without overhauling a hell of a lot. The overlying concern about PvP balance and not letting raid gear get overly powerful is a major contributor to this problem. In EQ, they could just make the next zone so hard that you were required to have gear from the previous raid zone in order to survive in the new one. But that means having a moderate upgrade in character power as they progress from one zone to the next. There needed to be differing levels of gear so that raid encounters could be designed around having X gear, and be nigh impossible if you only had Y. However, these jumps in character power would completely unbalance PvP, as was shown in EQ.

Upgrades in WoW from one raid zone to the next are so small, because of this effort to preserve PvP balance, that any new gear introduced that makes, say, MC gear irrelevent will more than likely make ZG and BWL gear irrelevent as well. Is this acceptable? Are the devs content with the raid zones they designed "serving their purpose" per se, then becoming ghost towns as soon as new stuff is released?

I understand that mudflation will happen naturally. But EQ learned from Veeshan's Peak and the fact that no one ever went there again after Velious came out, and they adjusted in future exansions. A progression was created: Velious quest armor -> ToV -> ST/Ssra -> VT -> EPs -> PoTime. That progression encompassed three expansions of raid content. Are we ever going to see something like this in WoW, or are we just going to skip straight to the end?

[Goltana_R-Zek]

I think your point has a lot of merit. The things that bother me about BWL is that Razorgore and Vael - once you've started clearing the majority of BWL (guild is currently on Nef) - seem to really be the most difficult encounters just because how random they can be, or how much a few people dying can really hurt your chances. On the PTR I've only been to the 20man AQ instance, and it's definitely doable in MC gear for the most part, group never got to do Ossirus. Especially coming from a hunter's perspective, where the tier1 vs tier2 isn't a phenominal upgrade.

I think it's atleast nice that Blizzard is improving parts of the tier 2 gear, making it a bit more desirable. There's a few really *nice* items imho from BWL that will still make people go there, like Styleen's and the Shadow wing focus staff. Chrom x-bow etc.. I agree that Blizzard needs to keep in mind that for the difficulty of BWL, a lot of the loot isn't so amazing (minus the weapons - I think the weapons in there are insanely nice for the most part, Untamed Blade, Maladath, Askhandi.. etc).

From what I've heard, the AQ 40 man currently is a joke in difficulty, much easier than BWL, and Tigole has mentioned that they're still tuning the instance to make the end of it harder than bwl but at the present its easier. The level increase won't happen for another 5-6 months, I'm fairly certain guilds will still go to bwl if for anything, because of lack of something else to raid. If any changes are made, what I'd like to see is an improvement of gear from some of BWL (I don't think the tier2 'revamp' was much), and not a nerf of the zone because a lot of it is easy enough (Broodlord, Ebonroc, Flamegor..).

[WillzZz]

I wouldn't be surprised at all if BWL gets nerfed again before the expansion is released, to open it up to the casuals. I don't think t2 will get a boost in stats, though. If they leave them the same they can throw in new items at the same ilvl that have a much better spread of stats, and put them in a more difficult encounter, and call it new content.

[Cybsled]

Tigole stated that AQ40man, post Twin Emps, is supposed to be the "omfg" difficulty part of the instance. They're still adjusting the encounters, though.

I think it has been stated that it starts out about MC/BWL difficulty then rapidly spikes after that encounter.

As for unused raid zones...I think Nexus shards are a good step in the right direction. Obviously it is more effective to farm them in a raid zone that you can rip through and has a high disenchant rate because you've exhausted the supply of desired items.

[Elerion]

I beg to differ on the itemization in AQ being good. As a BWL geared healing priest, there are 4 upgrades for me in there. 4! That's just stupid.

[Cor]

Originally Posted by Elerion

I beg to differ on the itemization in AQ being good. As a BWL geared healing priest, there are 4 upgrades for me in there. 4! That's just stupid.

The data mined loot page obviously doesn't show every item. I've seen countless screens of items that weren't included on those 7 pages.

[Elerion]

That may well be, but I'd still like to mail a horse head to the itemization team. With the creation of ZHC, they showed that they understood the discrepancy in power between +healing and +damage, so they made it have twice as much +healing. When creating our tier 3 set, Oracle, they conveniently "forgot" this, making the set inferior to tier 2 to any healing priest.
If Oracle had twice as much +healing as it has currently, I wouldn't be nearly as annoyed with it.

[Cad]

Isn't the AQ priest set the first priest set that actually has +dmg on it? I find it hard to believe there are actually priests complaining about that.

[Elerion]

Contrary to popular belief, not all priests are shadow priests. I don't have any interest in +damage gear. I want gear that helps my primary purpose, healing. It's because of our healing priests that we cleared BWL, and will be tearing through AQ, not because of the wannabe mages.

I don't mind the fact that there's +damage on the gear, that doesn't bug me. What bugs me is that for a raiding priest, our tier 3 set is worse than our tier 2 set because of it. If they made it 48 healing power/24 spell power etc, I would be cool with it. It's not like people are complaining ZHC is overpowered because it has twice as much healing as damage.

[wamphyr]

So really sorry to derail but you you could please link me to the datamined AQ items i would really much apreciate it . Thanks

Edit : Whoa that was fast. Thanks a milion

[Elerion]

http://monastery.scarlet.nl/19/

[Cad]

Originally Posted by Elerion

Contrary to popular belief, not all priests are shadow priests. I don't have any interest in +damage gear. I want gear that helps my primary purpose, healing. It's because of our healing priests that we cleared BWL, and will be tearing through AQ, not because of the wannabe mages.

I don't mind the fact that there's +damage on the gear, that doesn't bug me. What bugs me is that for a raiding priest, our tier 3 set is worse than our tier 2 set because of it. If they made it 48 healing power/24 spell power etc, I would be cool with it. It's not like people are complaining ZHC is overpowered because it has twice as much healing as damage.

Sure, but it's somewhat bogus that all of the raiding sets for multi-role classes all pigeonhole you into one role. Priests = healing. Druids = healing. Warriors = tanking. Etc.

And a shadow priest isn't a wannabe mage, he's just a shadow priest. Doesn't mean he doesn't heal, doesn't mean he can't heal. The priest self-hate against shadow priests is 1/2 the problem.

[Arbitrary]

Originally Posted by Cad

Sure, but it's somewhat bogus that all of the raiding sets for multi-role classes all pigeonhole you into one role. Priests = healing. Druids = healing. Warriors = tanking. Etc.

And a shadow priest isn't a wannabe mage, he's just a shadow priest. Doesn't mean he doesn't heal, doesn't mean he can't heal. The priest self-hate against shadow priests is 1/2 the problem.

That's the one thing I don't like about gear in WoW, the lack of freedom you have caused by class specific sets. Maybe I don't want stam/int/spirit on everything, maybe I want some agi, or some +defense, or dodge. I sorta miss the piles and piles of all/all loot that EQ had. I actually felt that I could decide what direction I was going in instead of being told what direction I was going in.

[kasey]

My gosh ,wonder if this priest grief will ever change.Glad to i took off and screwed mine.
headlines 2010 CNN:
"After being ignored for half a decade a group of fanatical computer players commited collective suicde.The group called The Shadow Priests was dressed in robes and jumped of the top of a skyscraper after going berserk in the Blizzard HQ.Its unconfirmed wether they were a group of sexually motivated perverts or had actually serious concerns caused by Blizzard employers."

[Cor]

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

That's the one thing I don't like about gear in WoW, the lack of freedom you have caused by class specific sets. Maybe I don't want stam/int/spirit on everything, maybe I want some agi, or some +defense, or dodge. I sorta miss the piles and piles of all/all loot that EQ had. I actually felt that I could decide what direction I was going in instead of being told what direction I was going in.

Then don't get the sets, and get individual items instead?

Look at this guy -

http://wow.allakhazam.com/profile.html?464486

There are plenty of shadow priest items in the game. A set which has stats geared towards shadow priests, with a healing set bonus makes no sense.