Trouble

I'm really curious what we're going to see this time around based on this quote:

 

Nezralix

It doesn't look to me like he's suggesting anything other than what we might expect. Big upgrades for people in very poor gear, without some of the shock from the stamina change in TBC.

 

Fenks

I think if Blizzard wants to fix the many itemization issues TBC has rather than seeing them repeated them in WotLK, they need to start with a clean slate gear wise. Just think about the rampant avoidance issues they have to deal with now (Sunwell Radiance anyone?) for T6+ Warriors, Druids complaining about their tank capabilities effectively having been capped at SSC/TK level for the same reason, the lifetapping/Warlock HP pool changes they tried, etc, they need to change the scaling of a lot of the relevant ratings quite drastically at level 80 if they want to keep gear progression throughout WotLK meaningful and at the same time not face the same issues they're facing now. Obviously some game mechanic changes are also in order, but I suspect they will want to keep that at a minimum, as those always seem the riskier solution.

 

• _Retribute_

One things that really made me wonder was the item level that dictated the blue/purple quality. It seems like before TBC the "item level range" so to speak was alot larger for a blue.Now it seems that almost every item is a purple and if its not its a piece of shit.

 

fractaled

Yeah, since everything is purple now, I think they should re-purpose the color of an item to indicate its source (and not have anything to do with quality). I.e. quested/solo/badge/5-man gear is Green, PvP gear is blue, 10/25-man gear is purple. At the same time have the default UI expose the item-level, and make that the quality metric.

 

Addled

I would agree with this, except maybe shift PvP gear into an entirely different color, get it out of the mainstream so to speak.

I wouldn't put too much credibility into what Bornakk says. He and the other CMs are basically glorified forum moderators. There have been plenty of times in the past where a CM outright lies (or doesn't know/pretends to know/makes up/relays outdated) information that later ends up proven obviously wrong.

Far more interesting (and credible) are what Tigole/Kalgan/etc say, since they're the lead devs for their particular specialties. Even Hortus "feels" like he has a better grip on what general direction WoW is going.

 

Vaeys

Not sure who it was (though I think it was at Blizzcon?) but they did state that starting gear from the new zones in Wrath was going to be Kara-quality - though they may have changed their mind by now.

 

Kumar

I think that is sort of fine.

Kara/Heroic gear replaced level early 70s.

T5 gear replaced mid 70s (75+)

T6 and above replaced through Heroic 5-mans and level 80 gear.

 

Nezralix

We can take a look at what they did in TBC to try to get some insghts. Ramparts represents the "starting point" of TBC gear, and it was ilvl 85. If you were upgrading from Dire Maul blues, which were approximately ilvl 60 (specifically 58-63), then you're looking at a 41% increase in item budget. Molten Core epics were around ilvl 70 on average (maybe slightly lower), so that would correspond to ilvl 88 blues, which is almost exactly what Ramparts was dropping.

Kara loot is ilvl 115 epics. Compared to level 70 ilvl 115 blues, they represent about a 25% increase in item budget (as do all blue to epic upgrades of comparative ilvl). "Entry level" 25-man loot is generally around ilvl 125, or a 35% upgrade, and rather in line with Molten Core drops.

So based on this model, you might expect that we'll see loot slightly superior to Kara drops dropping from the initial level WotLK instances, comparable to the earliest 25-man stuff. That's what they'll have to do if they want people in blues to have upgrades from greens after stepping foot in WotLK (rather than direct sidegrades), and especially if they want people to get "wow!"-type upgrades from instance drops.

Moving onward to level 80, gear would have to cover the progresion of ilvl 120 epics (Gruul/Mag) to ilvl 160 epics (Sunwell drops), so players will continue to see an additional 33% upgrade from their level 70 WotLK epics to their level 80 ones. Relatively speaking, upgrading from MC gear to Naxx gear was moving from ilvl 70 epics to ilvl 92 epics, or a 32% upgrade. It's probably no coincidence that it's very similar.

So in general, if Blizzard thinks the TBC upgrade model worked pretty well, then there are no major obstacles from doing the exact same thing in WotLK.

 

Grizzly

Or they could just use more colours than green, blue and purple. T5 could have been Orange and T6 Red. If they are going to continue having three tiers of raid gear per XP they might as well rearrange the colouring to highlight it. They can always add another colour if they want to make something feel super unique.

 

Starfire

But making more orange items just takes away from the "Legendary"-ness of it.

 

• _Retribute_

http://beta.wow-europe.com/ is now spitting out a 403 also. Looks like something will be happening really soon. Just reiterating what was posted on mmo-champion. Getting really excited for this now

 

Lithose

Queen Azhara probably is stronger then the Lich King, or right on his level. She was nearly as strong as Kil'jaeden during the sundering, before she was morphed into an ancient and infused with even more magic.

She is a very, very strong character, and its not beyond belief in the slightest to think that she has grown much stronger in a few thousand years.

 

Opioid

Honestly who cares? Colors right now serve a very clumsy function of vaguely defining an items quality level. Repurposing them to indicate source and have it be an actual, precise indicator of... something, ANYTHING at this point is a huge improvement.

Are you seriously arguing against a feature to make the game more transparent because it devalues your emotional investment in imaginary internet swords?

 

Anedris

Eh, ilevel is also a fairly clumsy moniker, given the enormous difference between a well-itemized item and poorly itemized item.

Personally, I would prefer a return to the old system where epics were much harder to come by. However, I think it was said at some point that Blizzard moved to the current model (epics for everyone) precisely because people have an emotional investment in purple - they realized that Joe average WoW player would actually rather have a crappy purple sword than a good blue one. (Of course this was back when purple was much rarer - now that Joe has a full set of purples he is probably considerably less excited about them.)

 

• _Retribute_

The one thing blizzard doesn't like to make sweeping changes, blizzard has always tested the water. Pre-TBC epics were extremely hard to come by(from a casual standpoint) now epics are extremely easy to come by. I expect WotLK to find a happy medium between free epics and working towards gear. Its really difficult to balance rewarding casuals and hardcores, but lets not turn this into a casual vs hardcore debate.

 

aleyro

I can't help but speculate that WotLK will produce the first player-obtainable "artifact" level items- frostmourne being an obvious candidate (assuming they adress the whole "lol i am teh lich king?!?") thing.

I think its safe to say that purple is the new blue, and blue is the new green.... I just wonder if orange will become the new purple, and "artifact" will become the new orange? pre-BC, "legendaries" were insanely good items that required, at a minimum, weeks of effort (above the standard progression grind) from an entire guild to obtain- now they just drop from bosses, exactly like purples. maybe WotLK can bring back truly epic-scale items, that require the work of dozens to produce, and truly reflect that level of effort?

 

Vaccine

Big leap there to be honest. I don't see anything that would point to Artifact being anything but an idea during development that was never really implemented. Legendary covers Frostmourne just fine (apart from it being yet another melee one).

I can't see legendaries become common place, thats a slippery slope. The legendary method in TBC does suck and the Atiesh system should be adopted on all future Legendary items in my opinion.

 

Gabz

I tend to agree with you Vaccine. I really don't like how "easy" it is to get a legendary now. Maybe I'm too oldschool but I remember how much a pain in the backside the "epic" weapons from EQ1 were... It made them more worthwhile in my opinion.

Even in WoW the original legendaries were not easy to obtain. I wish they would have followed the same mechanic with Illidan and Kiljadeon and their respective legendaries. Illidan could have damaged his glaives in a fit of rage just before his death to spite his would be assassins.

I really think Blizzard could have put a lot of lore behind the bow that Kiljadeon drops as well. I always wanted the first legendary bow to be Alleria's, I think that would have been an awesome idea. They could have put in a multi prong quest similar to the epic bow quest for Hunter's where you interacted with all of the sisters, even if it was just their ghost form.

 

Morlark

That is indeed a very slippery slope. But given how commonplace epics have already begun, it's a slope that WoW has undeniably already begun sliding down. And as Anedris pointed out, "now that Joe has a full set of purples he is probably considerably less excited about them". As a result of that, I believe that the process of making epics so commonplace was ultimately self-defeating. I'm certainly curious as to how Blizzard will avoid this slippery slope phenomenon in WotLK.

 

Nezralix

So everybody agrees that Molten Core was a huge snorefest that rewarded body count more than anything else, but somehow epics were more "epic" then?

There's nothing seriously wrong with the current system. If anything, there was a major problem in pre-TBC in the way that gear scaled (or more specifically, failed to scale, for anybody who wasn't raiding 40-man content). It might be an improvement to award PvP gear with its own color. The PvE situation is fine.

 

Emeraude

Ha, you guys are making an awfully big assumption there, that Blizzard is somehow upset or unhappy with the amount of epic weapons/gear that have flooded their game. I agree that the term "Epic" when defining purple items has lost it's flare now that every single person who plays has them, but there's been little to no evidence that Blizzard intends to change this. In fact they're happier then ever that epics are out there for everyone. The only thing that needs to be worked on, and Kalgan agreed, was the risk vs reward factor, that's about it.

 

Starfire

Purples were rarer. It is their rarerness that made them feel epic.

Not their quality. There are/were many cases of Blue-items being better than Purple-items. Their quality is determined by ilvl.

Of course, now there's nothing at all rare about Purples. In fact, its mildly annoying when people in S1 think they're "Teh shitz" with "full epix".

Edit: curse you Emeraude!

Also, yes, I know "rarer" items get a bonus to itemisation points (iirc blues were 10% more and purples were 20% more?)

 

Addled

QFT. I'd like to see Legendaries be a pain in the ass item to create. Blizzard needs to return to Atiesh and Sulfuras/TF style requirements.

Epics were rarer pre BC. Molten Core bosses dropped 3-4 epics each, for 40 people. Same for bosses in the succeeding instances. A person in full epics meant something, it meant that they spent a lot of time raiding, so indeed, epics were more "epic" pre BC.

Now you can basically get every slot in a character with epics by simply AFKing in AV/WSG/AB/EotS. And that is literally true. Consider that in the Hall of Legends, you can buy: 5/5 s1, offset bracers/belt/boots from armor vendor, a weapon from the weapon vendor, a neck, then [Talisman of the Horde] and a Battlemaster's item for both trinket slots. That's every character slot filled with an epic, except for the tabard.

And the truth is (and nobody likes admitting this) that a character geared like I described above is pretty darn good. Sure, they'll be beaten in DPS/healing by a fully Kara/Gruul/Mag's geared toon, but it'll be close. Epics are the new blues because there are plenty of people geared like this.

This system also screws over crafters. If I level a new Enhance shaman, why should I spent 1k gold and get a Fel Edged Battleaxe crafted, when I could just AFK in a BG and get something almost as good? Why should a warrior/rogue get a set of Felsteel Whisper Knives when the honor vendor has an epic that's even better?

 

Camaris

But what is actually bad about people having more and easier options to progress their characters? Is it the need to feel unique? Or is there not enough (visible) reward for being a hardcore raider (or a hardcore PvPer, I guess)? High-end raid gear is still easily distinguishable from the mid-range PvP epics, so then, it must be about the stats?

I think that 'pre-TBC epics were better' is a romaticized view that not entirely true. My paladin simply had utter crap gear, with absolutely no way to improve on it beyond hoping for that illusive Lawbringer/Judgment piece to drop while no other paladin needed it. Once you got the Scholo/Strat blues, the only way forward was tediously slow.