[WoW] 3.2 - Call of the Crusade

[Vinen]

Originally Posted by Vandyn

I'll say that the WoW content patches are equal to something like a mini-expansion compared to something like an Everquest expansion. Especially the early EQ expansions. They do add a sizeable amount of content but nothing on the level of multiple zones/dungeons/levels like EQ does.

Here's a good question, which had more content, Lich King or Velious?

Velious by far for endgame.

[fanaskin]

how many total raid targets where there. dain, vindi, statue, aow, tormax, dragon outside kael where u ported in, that fish dragon. how many raid targets in tov total? compare that to the number of bosses in lich king. and the whole thing is scewed too can you consider halls of testing raiding? it was basically all trash. thats something that just doesn't exist in wow, you dont go into a zone to do trash like you did in say hate or fear. do you consider wow 5 mans content in comparison to eq? cause if so that is a huge plus for wow in terms of content and reward. theres no way that even a memorable dungeon like tofs compares effort to reward to a bunch of the wow 5 mans.

[Heylel Teomim]

Originally Posted by Vinen

Velious by far for endgame.

Not a fair comparison. Velious was released out of the box. You've still got two tiers of raid content to go for Northrend before it's complete.

There were a buttload of bosses, yeah. However, Derakor, Statue and AoW were basically three progressively harder versions of the same fight. Velketor was cool, Grieg I can't even remember, Dain was awesome, Ring War was awesome... Unfortunately the dragons in ToV just didn't seem all that unique. The only ones that are memorable at all are Vulak, Vyemm, and Aaryonar (fuck you Aary, fuck you so much).

edit: I forgot Wuoshi and Plane of Growth. Wuoshi was a rehash dragon, and Plane of Growth was the worst trash clear in any game ever, so that's a wash.

[James]

Originally Posted by Vinen

Velious by far for endgame.

No doubt, but you have to compare the goal of the two expansions. Velious' only core game mechanic change was an increase to mob HP, which was solely designed towards end game raiding. There was no level increase, item mechanic change, new trade skill, new class, new race, nothing except for new zones. Of those new zones, the lowest one was level 40, and a vast majority of them were designed for level 60 play. The entire development of Velious was focused on raiding content in every single way, from the ground up.

Northrend, however, was not.

[Vinen]

Originally Posted by James

No doubt, but you have to compare the goal of the two expansions. Velious' only core game mechanic change was an increase to mob HP, which was solely designed towards end game raiding. There was no level increase, item mechanic change, new trade skill, new class, new race, nothing except for new zones. Of those new zones, the lowest one was level 40, and a vast majority of them were designed for level 60 play. The entire development of Velious was focused on raiding content in every single way, from the ground up.

Northrend, however, was not.

Which is why I only specified endgame. Looking at everything else... jesus fuck does Northrend have a lot of content... even if it can be completed in one week.

[Lenas]

Grieg was Luclin.

Doljonijiarnimorinar, Dain, Vindi, Statue, AoW, Tormax, Yelinak, Koi'Doken, Velketor, Wuoshi, Tunare, Sleeper's Tomb (~6?), Temple of Veeshan (~18+?)

[Heylel Teomim]

Sleeper's Tomb was 5 I think? The golem and 4 warders. Also, you forgot the dude in Dragon Necropolis that dropped his heart. The one that was also an neat regen sword.

Temple of Veeshan I can't even count em up, there were so many utterly forgettable dragons between the "good" fights. Then you had the Halls of Testing with its massive trash rooms.

Velious did one thing right that WoW just fails at, and always had: world bosses. I'm talking the fish guy in Cobalt Scar, Wuoshi, the wandering dragons in Kunark, etc. Those add so much to the world.

With phasing, I don't see why these things can't come back. Just make it so if you've killed the world boss that week, it's phased out for you. Then everyone can complete it once a week like a normal instance boss.

edit: Also, you had to have a shitload of bosses, everyone was competing for the same spawn per week. You would never actually get to kill them all in a single week.

[GrobbeeTrull2.0]

I guess my beef is that even though they might deliver Velious-amounts of raids eventually, it took them 2 years to do what other companies (lets not even compare EQ2...) do in a single box every year.

And don't even say "polish" because this expansion has been anything but polished. There have been more bug-fixed, tunings, etc than any other expansion (oh wait, BC lol).

[Lenas]

People confuse "polish" with "specular lighting."

[mek]

Uhh, yeah, this expansion is much more polished than anything before it. Naxx and Uld were actually fully functional the day each launched, comparable to Naxx1.0 and Sunwell (the other two perfect raids, supposedly). Compare to:

MC - Ragnaros undefeatable for almost a year.
BWL - Nef undefeatable for months.
AQ- Cthun undefeatable for months.
TBC launch - insanely overtuned tier 4 plus consumable requirements destroy most raiding guilds, everyone becomes lolpvp casuals.
SSC - Vashj defeated by one guild only for months, which immediately flamed blizzard for making an insanely buggy fight. Presumably used an entirely-soulstoned raid to do it.
TK - Kael undefeatable for months.

So yes, polish has gone WAYYYY up since Tier 6 (the same time Blizzard decided to PTR everything), and has stayed there. This expansion is definitely the most polished of anything Blizzard has put out, and Ulduar is comparable to Sunwell in sheer goodness, assuming you are actually attempting 25man hardmodes. If you are just loot pinata'ing everything, well, QQ more imo.

[Teron D'Amun]

Originally Posted by Burkex

it's like they have a whole new crew working there now and this crew is pretty clueless.

it is a whole new crew working there, the old staff moved on to develop a new mmo

[James]

Originally Posted by Lenas

People confuse "polish" with "specular lighting."

No, you fucking cocksucker, I confuse 'polish' with 'playability', and your precious fucking EverQuest had almost none of it. You remember Kunark release? I do. Dragon loot and non-existant items dropping everywhere, random mobs with no names chasing you down. Zone crashes, encounter bugs. There's a big difference between changing the HP on Flame Leviathan+4 from being doable but hard, to nearly zergable as a 'tuning' change, to fixing the Dain poofing down the well bug that kept guilds from even attempting him for months, that they never even fully fucking fixed. Pull your head out of your ass, motherfucker.

WoW's polish is that you can log in, play with your friends, and make noticeable progress in raids for the majority of its life. But whatever. You're a faggot, and so is Grobbee. I'm pretty sure everyone here knows that.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by mek

MC - Ragnaros undefeatable for almost a year.

What? Stopped reading there.. He was first slain on April 25th, 6 months after launch? Not bad considering the circumstances.

For posteriety's sake, Majordomo was killed Feb. 10th. You are obviously referring to the 1 hour and lolbye version, but it was 2 months, not a year. And he probably was beatable.. but it was still retarded.

[mek]

Correct. Tigole departed as lead designer after TBC, as well as most of the other hotshots... they're all working on mystery mmo. They also have several separate design teams for WoW, there is the expansion team, the class design team, dungeon team, etc.

And there's the community team, which appears to be composed entirely of mouthbreathers.

[mek]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

What? Stopped reading there.. He was first slain on April 25th, 6 months after launch? Not bad considering the circumstances.

He was defeated a day after he was patched to be killable. Just like Nef, Kael, CT, etc etc. If you had a clue, you would know this. But you clearly don't. A ton of guilds had cleared to Ragnaros months before he died, but he was impossible (and a lot were stuck on Majordomo who was a lot harder then).

For the curious, the original Ragnaros submerged to summon sons of flame every 1 minute instead of every 3, and his submerge was bugged so he didn't actually submerge and continued attacking the raid while Sons were summoned. Basically it was a guaranteed wipe shortly after the 1 minute mark every attempt - a couple guilds got to the 2 minute mark only to see a second wave of adds and realized the fight was fucked.