Raph Koster take on Leveling Services

[Witoubo]

Originally Posted by Laek

I look at it by what allows me to have the most enjoyment. One of the downsides of games with levels is how it separates people. The whole idea of leveling giving you skills for the end game is complete bullshit in WoW. It was basically the same in EQ also. How many people practiced their mad CH skills while leveling? Did it really take you 50 lvls to learn that a wizard couldn't start burning shit down the moment a mob was pulled? A good player doesn't need 6 months or more to learn how to play a class.

Obviously you never played an enchanter on a fear/hate break in back in the day.

Edit: To expand on that, there are two fear break ins that to this day stand out vividly in my mind. One was two groups going up to CR a bunch of people who were completely fucked. Things went really bad for them on the run to the wall, pulled every imp in the zone, didn't get a cleric camped. Our two groups zoned in and had a rolling fight that must have lasted 30 minutes. 30 minutes of mezzing, slowing, stunning, kiting, often with 6 or more mobs in camp. No clue how we pulled that off, but everyone played as close to perfect as they ever had.

Everyone demonstrated a lot of skill.

Situational awareness - Where are the pathing mobs? How far will they aggro from? How tight a circle can I kite? What mobs are pissed at me? Where should I stand so I have time to cast if a root/mez breaks?

Knowledge of the zone/mobs - How hard do these hit for? What are resistant to what? What is the kill priority? How many hp do they have?

Knowledge of your class - About how long are all my different CC effects going to last? How much threat am I generating with slows? How much mana am I using per second? How long can I sustain that rate of burn?

The complexity varies from game to game but in EQ, for certain classes in certain places it was enough to overwhelm incompetent players. Really competent players know the above information about themselves and can track it for their group/raid mates as well.

[redjunkopera]

Originally Posted by Cuppycake

Shit man...I once botted 5 clerics in a CH rotation for The Rathe Council. That was skill. *rolls eyes*

Yet people STILL fucked it up regularly.

My GF. Only game she ever beat in her life = Super Mario 1 for NES. Playing WoW for 3 weeks now will in groups sometimes comment "This guy is fucking retarded".

It may not take skill to be a cog in a CH rot, but a large percentage of the unwashed masses even lack that level of non-skill.


All these excuses about how "levelling whatever blah blah blah" are just fucking excuses. If consumables and repairs were removed from the end game of WoW those people would find something else to bitch about... until someone comes up with ever more creative ways to constantly make those people feel better about themselves constantly, those people will bitch.

Don't like the class you end up with at 70? How about thinking about your class selection for half a second somewhere before then?

Seriously. Talents are something that COULD have been set in stone. But they probably figured "well we'll be nice and let them respec for a cost"... but now people bitch about how they have to pay to respec, or about how "It sucks that you have to spec one way for PvE and another for PvP"; Hello! McFly! That's the fucking point!

Raph Koster is an idiot.

[Weritech]

Originally Posted by redjunkopera

"It sucks that you have to spec one way for PvE and another for PvP"; Hello! McFly! That's the fucking point!

No it isn't.

[Weritech]

Originally Posted by Zarcath

Like from 60-70, people who I raided with in Naxx that I thought were competant, some turned out to be complete idiots when it came down to 5/10/25 man content.

Yeah, it's telling when your 100+ membership boils down to 2 competent 5-man groups, one of which is clearly second-string. It's even more telling when next to nothing gets accomplished without at least 1 member of the first-string present in the other groups.

It's actually a bit frustrating...

I play a pretty casual guild, between myself and a few others we've been a part of virtually every Kara keying run to take place and now are expected to share raid spots with people who couldn't manage to complete Black Morass or Arcatraz without our help.

We've taken to forming up for Heroics while the rest wipe in Kara.