[WoW]WotLK

[Antoine]

IMO the main reason the key quests were seen as unique in vanilla wow (and even tbc) is because none of the other quests really led up to the zones you were getting keyed to. In Wrath, that's been changed. The quests in the zones kinda introduce you to characters you'll see, and storylines you'll be familiar with. You do the whole Thorim questline and you know him, hodir, and possibly the other guardians of the abandoned temples in storm peaks. The only difference is that killing Loken for the last quest doesn't give you an invisible aura that opens the ice wall in front of Ulduar.

[darksensei]

Originally Posted by Antoine

IMO the main reason the key quests were seen as unique in vanilla wow (and even tbc) is because none of the other quests really led up to the zones you were getting keyed to. In Wrath, that's been changed. The quests in the zones kinda introduce you to characters you'll see, and storylines you'll be familiar with. You do the whole Thorim questline and you know him, hodir, and possibly the other guardians of the abandoned temples in storm peaks. The only difference is that killing Loken for the last quest doesn't give you an invisible aura that opens the ice wall in front of Ulduar.

This is an interesting point, the positive argument for key quests (creating stories) can be done without having the rigid structure of attunement, and could indeed be accomplished with just more quests. And as long as they're not required, they could involve 5 mans to create more a story for the bosses and settings as well.

That said another slightly positive aspect of SIMPLE key quests is that it breaks up the initial congestion on a patch day. Some could be outdoors preventing the instance servers from getting destroyed.

[JeydaX]

Originally Posted by darksensei

That said another slightly positive aspect of SIMPLE key quests is that it breaks up the initial congestion on a patch day. Some could be outdoors preventing the instance servers from getting destroyed.

Kind of like they did with BWL? Ya that really worked out fantastic when you had every idiot and their down-syndrome brother trying to get past Razorgore for the first 3~ weeks of release after doing the "simple" key quest outside.

The content in the so-called endgame raid portion of the game that is supplied to the masses right now is so downtrodden to the people who actual know what the fuck they're doing and so easy for the average Timmy I see no reason for a three part solution for Ulduar. Of course this will never be implemented, but at least Blizzard and company could meet the "hardcore" people half way on some points.

1) You should have to beat the current "hardest" content to get keyed for Ulduar. Obviously Sarth 3D in 25 is easier than 10 but according to the ilvl of gear rewarded the 25 version is harder. Anyways the requirement for getting into Ulduar is killing Malygos, KT, and Sarth 3D (or possess the Twilight Zone title, whatever.) What's wrong with this? Makes perfect sense to me. If you can't beat current content, Timmy, why would you want to throw yourself at the repair pinata of Ulduar?

2) Make the first couple bosses a cockblock for the retard masses. Razorgore was tough, so was Vael. It kind of sounds like they are doing this with the first fight, and is a great idea. I like the idea of the vehicles scaling with gear, that's a creative way of going about it (I do think the vehicle thing is getting taken too far however, that by itself is a stupid idea.)

3) Finally to solve the problem of once a zone is on super-farm status how do you get alts in and shit like that? Give the end boss of the zone some way to key players outside of the current raid the key/attunement to the zone. This is probably the most difficult portion because obviously if you make the item BoE for anyone to cast attunement on themselves then Timmy will just buy it off the AH. Maybe another solution to this would be, "Hey we have X% of the raid keyed and inside, maybe we can let 1-X% in that isn't keyed." I don't know, obviously this has been done in the past as well (EQ PoP from what I remember?) but it makes sense.

[Daerath]

Originally Posted by Dumar

hours camping shards isn't the answer, but a long, involving quest chain leading to a key is. that's what you play for, you know, to experience the game.

Only if the long inolving quest chain isn't a tedious pile of shit. Take the Magician Epic v1.0 Quest line from EQ1. It was long. Very fucking long. Longer than all of the Wheel of Time books put together, which are so long R.J. died before he could finish the fucking story.

The Mage Epic could have been a very enjoyable and satisfying quest line... Until you realized the drop rate on the stuff you needed for each part of the quest was so low that it would take years to finish the fucking thing.

And this is the problem. You will never find a long quest line that has any sort of useful reward at the end that isn't also full of major speedbumps in at least every other quest. Without them, once the quest is solved and ends up on the online quest DB of choice, everyone will have it beaten inside of a week. So you add in a bunch of rare drops and voila, you have a quest that people end up hating. Nobody bothers to read the quest text anymore, they just use said online DB to find out where to go and what shit they have to kill.

[Cybsled]

Originally Posted by JeydaX

stuff

So basically you want to restrict access to the general playerbase, but you still want a means to sell the very items the scrubs "don't deserve" for your benefit?

I guess thats the real reason you want super restricted raids...the general public will have less gold to spend on overinflated items if they're spending it on repairs and potions!!!

[Rusty Dagger]

Originally Posted by FoghornDeadhorn

That sounds good now, but in a few months when you've just leveled an alt to 80 and you have a guild ready to gear you up, having to run every heroic is going to be lame.

Which is why achievements should be based on your account, not your character. Most reputations, too.

[dak]

Blizzard needs to keep going in the direction they did with OS. Apply the one drake, two drake, three drake sarth expanding loot table system to every future encounter in the game.

Every encounter in an instance should have at least three tiers of exponentially more difficult things to achieve while doing the fight, each granting an extended loot table with slightly higher ilvls. It doesn't have to be additional NPCs, just look at some of the more exotic raid achievements. Make it things like...

Tier 1 - Raid takes a specific amount of damage from a given ground effect (forcing people to stand in a damaging ground effect). Tests the healers

Tier 2 - Tier 1 + during phase 2 another NPC flies in and starts attacking the raid for a moment. DPS break off and kill him before he leaves. Tests the DPS

Tier 3 - Tier 1+2 + over the course of the fight there will be 6 randomly timed, randomly located in the room pillars of light the tank must drag the boss under. Tests the Tanks.

That way everyone gets to see the content but people who spend time doing it every week in a solid guild will have something in the encounter to aspire to achieving.

You can even work a key quest into the upper tiers if you want. Make an instance where the only way you can complete an encounters third tier challenge is by having all 25 players zap him with some kinda long attunement quest obtained scepter.

Another advantage of the tier system is you can actually start putting legendary items on loot tables prior to the last encounter of the expansion as Blizzard has traditionally done.

[Believe]

Originally Posted by dak

Blizzard needs to keep going in the direction they did with OS. Apply the one drake, two drake, three drake sarth expanding loot table system to every future encounter in the game.

Um, they've already basically said they're doing this. Something like 11 out of 14 bosses in Ulduar have variables to increase the risk and reward.

[JeydaX]

Originally Posted by Cybsled

So basically you want to restrict access to the general playerbase, but you still want a means to sell the very items the scrubs "don't deserve" for your benefit?

I guess thats the real reason you want super restricted raids...the general public will have less gold to spend on overinflated items if they're spending it on repairs and potions!!!

Did you even read my post, or are you just a fucking moron? I pointed out that problem and offered a simple solution to it.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Blizzard isn't going remotely close to your direction, so either give up on it or try to work within their very obvious design philosophy when you want to make 'suggestions.'

[Cybsled]

Did you even read my post, or are you just a fucking moron?

I'm sorry, I couldn't read your post clearly. All I saw was "Q_Q" over and over again and it threw me off.

[Zerai]

Originally Posted by FoghornDeadhorn

Blizzard isn't going remotely close to your direction, so either give up on it or try to work within their very obvious design philosophy when you want to make 'suggestions.'

No, you pointed out shit that sucked 5 years ago and said bring it back. Unless you just think you're so awesome that you came up with these wonderful ideas first because you managed to vomit it up onto your keyboard in which case you are a complete fucking mongoloid.

The reason that shit is gone now is because it was just a complete headache.

Your point 2 is the only one with some validity, but they are doing that. In the form of tiered content. So yes, little timmy can get past the first boss. Hell, the last boss. But he gimped through. Who cares. His rewards are a tier or two below yours. And if even that bothers you, you deserve only pity.

[JeydaX]

I like the idea of OS and what they're doing in Ulduar. What I don't like is idiots just waltzing in there without having beaten previous content. That makes no sense.

[Zerai]

Originally Posted by JeydaX

I like the idea of OS and what they're doing in Ulduar. What I don't like is idiots just waltzing in there without having beaten previous content. That makes no sense.

Because you can't see the big picture.

Having beaten the previous content is only relevant in ONE situation. And one only: You waltz into the new content without beating the old content, then complain of lack of content.

That's it. You're perfectly allowed to complain about a lack of content if you beat everything. But not if you skip shit then complain.

Your idea with item 3 blew. In EQ it was fucking terrible. Between recruits and alts you always ran out of spots for the free key.

Also, 10 man guilds. 10 man sarth3D requires certain raid stacking unless you are just awesome. My guild has some great people and some not so great people so 10 man Sarth3D probably won't happen.. But we're friends. I'm not a hardcore raider anymore. I don't care about being the best. I raid once a week. I probably won't do most of the ulduar hard modes and I don't care. I'm not complaining about lack of content because there is enough for me given how lax I play. And I'm glad that Blizzard develops content for me and you.

It's the same as new expansions wiping out all the old ones. You see it as wasted content. The intelligent ones among us realize what a great idea it is. I went back to EQ once. It was fun to do the old things again. Until you realize how worthless you are because of the giant hill in front of you to get to where you need to be to be of some worth (unless you have friends in a high end guild who can bring you in and give you rotting loot) but as a new player, you're stuck.

And that's why WoW is number one. A brand new player can pick up the game tomorrow and be raiding in under 2 months (assuming they are driven and able) with ease. Your gay ideas put walls between new players and the endgame. Well news flash: those walls are just tedium.

[JeydaX]

So you're just another Timmy. Makes sense now.