I think that titles should indicate that someone achieved something special. Hitting 80 first would have be an special (Lets just ignore peoples complaints about "unhealthy, etc" for discussions sake). Finishing the trials signifying you have completed T4 content was special as was the vials & receiving various gladiator titles.

If you were to reward things such as class relevent things such as "exalted with Cenarion factions" should be an achievement. To give out "Archdruid" to every single druid on the server is pointless. A title should be something that people have to put a decent effort into achieving (EG Finishing a Teir & it's quest eg trials or vials). Basic premise's of game should be Achievements.

Why not make these timed titles something along the lines of Hit level 80 or 450 skill within a month of opening. Or whatever time frame people think would be healthy. I'd kinda like something showing that I was around when WOTLK opened up.

I always liked these kind of things. I myself still run around with my old [Tabard of the Protector] not only because it looks cool (which it does) but because it shows that I've put a lot of time and work into my character and have been playing since before TBC.

I think these kinds of achievements and titles and such should be rewarded. Locking out things like Hand of A'dal and the ZA Bear are a good step, it would be nice to see it continue.

The majority of those people would have done it anyway, achievement/feat of strength/title or not.

I would argue that the primary reason for their removal is more closely related to the fact that they would almost never be aquired by honest players. Between character sharing, botting and just paying some guy in sweatshop in Asia the odds of a guy who just plays the game well ever having any kind of chance, regardless of how long he plays, are very small.

On MMO-champ:
Less trash is always nice, but it's a shame they changed the Heigan gauntlet (I presume they mean the suppression room before you pull him, not the Eye Stalk room you get teleported to). That's the only good suppression room in the game, I always thought.

Maybe they took it out because Naxx will be the entry level raid, and they're assuming there will be many wipes to people that cant dance. The change would mean you can do an attempt 3-4 minutes after each wipe, not 15. Maybe it's the nostalgia kicking in, but I always liked the way he was the 'joke boss'. Easy and fun boss, but with a suppression room to make guilds have to spend at least a bit of time actually learning him, as your attempts/hour were limited.

On mmochamp too, seems they opened premade chars copies already. Seems a bit too early to me, when there's still 2 untested leveling zone(storm peaks and icecrown), and tigole specifically said premades would probably get their own servers. Also quite a ton of classes are still totally broken, so don't really see the point of lvl 80s, it's not like we'll go to naxx this weekend with mitigation, threat and healing as broken as they are. I guess stacking DKs and healing priests/druids would probably work decently though.

Anyway, not sure this is intended, at least the euro copy isn't up(or went back down, seems some people started copies but it's not down).

Well the problem is that probably everyone can just get it, once they get some drop such as the Eye of Divinity / Leaf. Sure, the quests took some time (did both of them), but in the end everyone who got Domo's chest drop also got their Benediction / Bow. If a quest would be based on skill alone, the title would probably mean nothing as everyone can just do it. If you enforce not "powering through" it would mean either a random drop (f.e. Eye of Shadow / Blue dragon sinew), a cooldown (f.e. despawning demons / questgiver) or a quest item far up in progression, which all have their implications.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the class-specific quests. However, designing them so people "can't power through" them seems to be either luck-based (a random drop), cooldown based or require a load of hard to get materials (Thunderfury/Sulfuras) / reputations. I don't really see another way at the moment, blocking content hardcoded like in Sunwell wasn't that great either, and this would feel the same for achieving things individually.

I realize the discussion has already moved on a bit, but removing the actual items for Badges actually makes it easier for them to be account bound, not harder. In fact the only thing I can think of that is going to become a panel that makes no sense to account bound is Arena Points. Current implementation, at least. NC pets, keys, badges, honor points, mounts, tabards, and I'm sure there's more. All of them would make perfect sense to account bind. The fact that they've embraced making attunement keys account bound (Which I would see as the most controversial decision of all) really sells this idea. Plus it doesn't allow for awkward game mechanics like mailing items back and forth.

I wrote in the "About Design" thread about the Achievements. The idea behind it is really bad and I'm very glad they changed it. Design should never promote "stupid play" and grinding and skipping fun parts, lore, well designed quests and stay up endless hours is nothing that should be promoted or rewarded in any way. Players will do it anyway but players would basically do anything. Kill 50000 rats for one permanent point of each stat ? 20 times the reagents for 5% more effect on potions ? Such mechanics are bad Design and I am really glad they change it.

Will be good to get some testing in on Naxx. I'm expecting that especially for the 10 man that the dance will have been slowed down or the damage for failure greatly reduced. This is because most 40 man raids seemed to loose at least 25% of their number and they were (supposedly) the best raiders in the game. It was certainly hellish if you had variable ping trying to guess where you really were. Think about the sort of people that an entry level raid should be tuned for and the harshness of failing the old version of the dance seems out of place. I'm also willing to bet that the teleport to the eye room will be removed for the 10 man version simply because of the healer porting problem. Porting could be retained for the 25 man version though.

RoS gauntlet was pretty well done. Capable of wiping you if people play (incredibly) stupidly, but not really a chore and just right as a limiter on attempt numbers.

I get the feeling the only reason Heigan's gauntlet was there in original Naxxramas was so that you can't 20-man him with the 20 people who don't die ever.

What I want to know is how they'll deal with Sapphiron - and resist fights in general. With amount of things they're doing to make raiding more accessible, raid wide resistance check + raiding only reagents doesn't fit anymore.

Well, not in the first tier, at least. Shahraz was done pretty well. (not specifically the boss itself, but the resistance required required and its related raid-only-mat droprate)

Everyone disagrees with me. :P

Well that really depends on what the objective is, and assuming Blizzard's is to keep people leveling longer, you're probably right. However, there will always be people just speeding through content, ignoring lore (I know I sure have) to just get to lvl 80. The reason quite simply is that leveling is not interesting compared to the stuff you can do at the maximum level. You can't properly PvP (no Arena possible and instanced PvP is sub-par fun if you're not maxed out), you can't raid, you don't get the rep you need to get those profitable profession recipies, etc. To me (and I assume a lot more players) the leveling process is just something you have to get over with in order to get back to do the cooler stuff. Not getting achievement for the first ones to reach it might prevent some extremism, but I bet that just like TBC lots of people are doing it anyways.

As for the "pay 20x the price for a 5% buff" thing, this has always been the case. You want top-notch? Pay for it. You just want to compete? No problem, take this cheaper stuff. I believe there should always be stuff like this, as it gives people a goal to aim for (for example the extra 22k honor for a 25 resil bonus on the trinket... it won't make or break your arena game, but the slight edge at a high cost is something that will be interesting, just like upgrading your +healing by 14 and 1 mp5 going from S3 to S4 chest... heck even the badge chest to tier 6 is a very minor upgrade at an enormous effort cost). In short, I don't see a problem with this giving players the option to play competatively at one hand, and giving a very slight edge to those that actually do bother getting the "best" stuff.

I would expect Sapphiron to be like Hydross was, beatable with craftable items and green drops. Remember a lot of people used to farm an arcane set for Curator, so first tier resist isn't unheard of. In BC we saw three different means for resist sets, the ones for Hydross, the FR badge sets (which I don't believe ever got put to as much use as was originally intended), and the SR sets, which were raid farmable. Each provided a unique challenge at that level, but none was an unbearably massive roadblock. One thing I liked about the SR sets is that while the full sets were required for Shahraz, partial sets provide benefits on earlier T6 encounters like Kaz'rogal. Blizzard has said that resist fights will always remain as a mechanic in the game, so it is reasonable to expect several in LK, starting with Sapphiron.

Ah, you misunderstand my definition of "powering through". What I mean is that people shouldn't be able to trivialize the trials by having super raid gear. Maybe they have to take control of a mob with a subset of their class skills or something. Or something afflicts them and they take control of a "mob" that looks like them, but with set stats.

Also, if a trial is truly based on skill, not EVERYONE will have it. Because not everyone is skilled. Maybe everyone on this forum will end up with their titles, but is that really a problem?

I like the SR on Sharaz as something that's a nice compromise between opening up the entire instance (ala Hyjal) versus imposing barriers for relatively no reason (ala Sunwell). If you were super-hardcore you could get Sharaz on your first time you saw her with really limited SR gear or you could farm BT for another week or two until you build up to that point and then down her.

The thing I don't like about it was the extra costs ontop of the hearts. If the deathsworn would have just sold you the items in exchange for hearts it would have been better IMO.

Actually, if you were super hardcore you got to Shahraz when she was still the most difficult fight in the game. Trust me, you weren't going to kill Shahraz with limited SR the first time you saw her.

Sounds basically like they are working to fix the issues it had according to Sean[Fires of Heaven] Still very curious of the appearance thing. Flying would be cool!

It's not just that - if it was, there'd be no problem with the Achievements/titles. If someone wants to powerlevel in a couple of days living on cocaine, that's not my problem. However it doesn't and can't stop with that. The "first to XXX" achievements encounrage, or even demand outright abusive tactics such as account-sharing, having a whole raid of drones help one person level, and so on. Just look at the release of TBC for an example.

The other monumentally stupid part of the design was simply that they gave titles for first to 80, first of each class to 80, and first of each race to 80 without thinking how that would work in practice. Sure, levelling fast is a significant achievement (or could be deemed so if you like that sort of thing). But it seems silly to give one player two or even three titles for the same accomplishment.

There's a simple way they can get round this, which is to award a title for levelling from 70-80 in under X amount of /played time. Tune it high enough that you do have to make really significant effort to achieve it, of course! Basing it on /played time rather than RL time immediately removes the incentive for unhealthy play, exploits such as account sharing etc. You could still "cheat" by having a whole guild help one player to level up, but if that's what floats their boat, why not? Obviously you would remove the achievement if you ever alter the levelling curve (like they're about to do for levels 60-70).

Race changes coming up: