[WoW]WotLK

[Izuldan]

Originally Posted by Arbuste

There is little incentive to try and get better if you're not very good to begin with. Rough ideas:
-Ring-type event: Bosses keep coming, the further you go, the more loot you get.
-War-type event: You've got 5+ bosses at the same time (think: Maulgar) and NPC support. Let's say that somehow, 5+ tanks are not required (because those bosses can be kited, mage-tanked, pet-tanked, NPC-tanked or they are not stupid enough to focus on the guy in the big armor exclusively.) You know that as long as you kill one, you'll get a NPC Zonewide Resurrection and loots (the NPC will kill the remaining bosses.) When you kill a boss, the other start to enrage, and get stronger and stronger.
-Timed event: The many bosses are not stupid either, and are planning on escaping. Kill as many as possible before the time is up. Or complete objectives to slow them down / stop them.
-Boss with phases: One boss, several fights. Everytime you remove 20% of his life, the boss runs away to the next room where he gets help / gets stronger... There are rewards laying around in each of the rooms that you can get when the boss runs away. The further, the better.

Some great ideas there, I know it's just a rough first-hand pass, but that would definitely be another way to make encounters more interesting. The only difficulty I perceive is that loot tables would have to be more extensive. Still, that's a fairly good way to reward ability. For example, in your ring or war type events, every boss yields one additional piece of loot, or maybe after 5 bosses are killed a "super" loot is dropped as well (one tier level higher). It would be a natural evolution from what we have currently, which is just 2 levels, normal and hard mode. What you are proposing would have more levels, and therefore a smoother and more incremental curve from easiest to hardest.

[GrobbeeTrull2.0]

Hey guys! We've finally made it! We're far enough in WoW's life that we can don our rose-colored glasses and reminisce about the good ol'e days of "hard raids" in MC!

...

Amirite?

[Heylel Teomim]

Originally Posted by Handaar

Threat meters are just 1 of a million ways WoW has made MMO's so easy. We didn't have a threat meter in EQ and everyone did just fine.

Yeah we raided fine without em, but there's no telling what kind of dps loss we all had due to having no clue where we were at on threat. Besides, EQ also had very few ways of measuring performance from your raid members. You really had no good way of finding out whether or not your dps were doing anything at all.

EQ was also a far less complex game in terms of encounters. You pretty much had two mechanics: an AoE, and adds. There wasn't anything else of consequence.

[Araxen]

WoW would be better without DBM(or BigWigs), Omen(or whatever threat meter you use), and Decursive. Those three tools have made WoW raiding easy mode.

[Sharmai]

Might as well bring back herb farming while were castrating ourselves.

[Tuco]

We did fine, sure, but we also did it slower than we would have with threat meters. Additionally, we rarely had the kinds of enrage timers or need to kill a mob quickly like we have now (See: 3D sarth).

You 'think' you know what you can get away with, but you don't really know, and err on the side of caution, because being one of the 20 DPS who just pulled aggro on a boss is embarrasing.

[Linus]

Originally Posted by Izuldan

The only difficulty I perceive is that loot tables would have to be more extensive. .

So, that's easy:

Valorous Dreadnaught Breastplate of the Boar
Valorous Dreadnaught Breastplate of the Monkey
Valorous Dreadnaught Breastplate of the Whale
Valorous Dreadnaught Breastplate of Frozen Wrath

[Sharmai]

Oh god. Could you imagine the bitching about random loot then?

[Heylel Teomim]

Originally Posted by Araxen

WoW would be better without DBM(or BigWigs), Omen(or whatever threat meter you use), and Decursive. Those three tools have made WoW raiding easy mode.

WoW raiding is easier because raiding as a concept is far more mature. Back in pre-expansion EQ, the dragon raids were practically just brute force attempts. There was no real strategy, you just send everyone at the dragon and pray it eventually dies.

Compared to even vanilla WoW raid content, EQ was very straightforward and boring. You soak up an AoE, hide behind a pillar if you can, and hit whatever it is in the knees while a half dozen healers push one button. That's basically every fight through Kunark and half of Velious.

The tools are a boost to your available information, they don't play the game for you. Sure, the Wright brothers got off the ground just fine without the cockpit controls a modern aircraft has, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to flying in bi-planes.

[Vandyn]

Originally Posted by Heylel Teomim

The tools are a boost to your available information, they don't play the game for you. Sure, the Wright brothers got off the ground just fine without the cockpit controls a modern aircraft has, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to flying in bi-planes.

That's a good analogy, but at the same token just because a modern aircraft has those cockpit controls doesn't mean it's any easier the fly than a bi-plane. The argument people make about mods (I don't, I love em) is that the mods themselves have made WoW a much easier game, perhaps even easier than it was intended.

Take for example something like Questhelper. Was it the developer's intention to basically have something hold your hand through every quest, telling you where and when to go?

[The Ancient]

Isn't blizz adding something like QH into the UI?

[Vandyn]

Originally Posted by The Ancient

Isn't blizz adding something like QH into the UI?

Something like a waypoint arrow that points you where to go? News to me but anything is possible.

[meStevo]

I don't think so (re:waypoints), they're expanding the quest tracking to be a little better and adding the 'click this thing for the quest' icon so you dont have to rifle through your inventory to thrust hodir's spear or whatever.

Once that is part of the UI, more mods will probably be able to use it, making QH, Carbonite, etc even better.

[findar]

to expand on that,when you mouse over a mob if it's for a quest it says which quest and what it drops for that quest / how many of that item you have. that's what i remember anyway.

[Clug]

Lack of threat meters was one of the reasons rogues were on top of the damage meters in vanilla WoW. We just went balls out after 5 sunders and vanished at 75-80%. Only other class that didn't have to worry about threat was huntards and well they got that nickname in vanilla WoW for a reason.