Pacing Revisited -- Is More Always Better? - Page 9

◊ Vectivus · 10/02/07, 2:07 PM

Is the root of this problem the emphasis on being 'first'? So many guilds are vying for the coveted 'first' kills that gearing up and attuning people and seeing major bosses defeated is less important than how fast we can get to the next boss.

If guilds at the bleeding edge of content weren't pushing for Hyjal and BT without getting everyone in their raid 2-piece Tier 5, would things be different? The game's half-life in terms of raid content would be much better.

◊ Praetorian · 10/02/07, 2:08 PM

Originally Posted by KinetiK

Honestly, I'm surprised at the attitudes of you "elite" raiders. Is there not a time you won't complain about something in World of Warcraft? You complain when content is held back, you complain when content is released but not tuned to your liking, you complain when content is released and then you plow through it in five days, you complain if there's not enough content and you're bored, you complain about PvP loot and how easy it is to get except when you have to farm for that one item. God... I could go on but I'm getting annoyed with you lot again.

I see it all plain as day here, right from Nihilum on downward, you're asking for Bizzard to manage your guild for you. If you're not an elite guild you need Blizzard to manage your guild's upward progress through individually tailored release dates so that when you've been Tier X you can rest for a number of days and farm Tier X before you "have" to start Tier X+1. Conversely, if you are the pointed tip of the spear like Nihilum or on the edge like EJ or Forgotten Heroes etc then you need Blizzard to slow down the releases to manage your guild's boredom after you've beaten all the content. Sounds to me like its more of an expectation management thing on your part than something Blizzard can ever possibly deal with.

Thanks for this constructive post; we're all more enlightened for having read it.

Pamine · 10/02/07, 2:12 PM

Originally Posted by Rasputin
This is simply untrue, if I read your post correctly. While it technically hurts nobody to have all possible content available from the word "go", there is psychology involved.

For the super-elite, you have the gradual disintegration of cohesion and interest because you have quite literally NOTHING to do in the game; you've beaten it, and it's stayed beaten for months. Contrast that with continually beating the available game every 6-8 weeks as new content is released. You see more desire to farm content to be prepared for the new content you KNOW is coming, you see a systematic reintroduction of real PvE goals.

For the less-than-elite, you have less of a mountain in front of you. When an entire tier is merely an obstacle to be removed before you START to progress, as I would argue T5 has been since 2.1, that's an issue. You feel that you're so far behind as to make competition a joke, and each boss you kill is just one more warmup step. I would even say a tier and a half, because even my guild(5/5 Hyjal 7/9 BT) sees Hyjal as just some place to try and get rid of as soon as possible to get finished with BT. That's harmful to retention and causes burnout issues.

You also have all the strata below the less-than-elite who are more disinterested in raiding than ever because what's the point in working hard on T4 and T5 content when you will never see the end of the raiding game before the expansion, at which point the playing field is re-levelled?

Guilds certainly will continue to defeat content as soon as it is released, and other guilds will do so more slowly no matter your release schedule. The point is that a more staggered release schedule is simply more beneficial to everyone involved from nearly every perspective. I suppose a hypothetical gamer who wants to play like a crazy man for 4 months and then not play for 6 has a reason to prefer an up-front release schedule, but I don't think it is a positive plan for anyone but that hypothetical gamer. The carrot is simply to distant to create any real incentive for anyone but the bleeding edge, and even they have a problem that they only get 1 carrot and then they're starved for 6 months at a time. Give me 3 carrots over an expansion rather than one I can't even smell for the first 2 months of chasing it.

I apologize for that mangled and abused metaphor.

I think this is pretty accurate. Everyone in my guild right now is there to progress, and intends to get to BT and beyond. Our leadership said many times that SSC/TK is just a block for us, to get to the real end game. The current plan is to kill Kael only the bare minimum amount of times just get attuned and then leave these instances behind. Right now we're at Vashj and A'lar, and I expect we'll get to Hyjal in a month if lucky. We just don't progress at the rate of the top guilds out there. We raid 4 days a week, we sometimes have class issues so we recruit new people who may not have optimal gear, spec, etc. All these issues make us wipe on things alot, delays progression, etc. We're still here for the progression though, and seeing Hyjal and BT locked in front of us, our attitude at each new boss kill isn't yay great new loot for us, but finally, another block removed from the path to the real raiding scene.

◊ Lord BEEF · 10/02/07, 2:12 PM

Straight up nerfs to content are generally frowned upon unless it's removing "bullshit elements" of a fight. Making Archimonde's fear have a cast time is fine, but if they decided to lower Morogrim's health or melee damage that could be disappointing if you were close to killing him before.

Buffs to classes and new itemization on the other hand is something people really enjoy and is a great way to make old content a bit easier.

You don't see priests saying "30% meditation will trivialize my guild's old accomplishments" and you won't see "I wish they'd add the coefficient nerf back to fireball, this boss is way too easy now". Similarly if they add a new itemization in zulaman, you won't see a druid saying "man illidan will be a complete joke now with this upgraded healing neck, gg blizz" or a warlock saying "I'll miss the challenge of doing vashj with a spell damage dagger off of prince".

◊ Praetorian · 10/02/07, 2:15 PM

Originally Posted by Vectivus

Is the root of this problem the emphasis on being 'first'? So many guilds are vying for the coveted 'first' kills that gearing up and attuning people and seeing major bosses defeated is less important than how fast we can get to the next boss.

If guilds at the bleeding edge of content weren't pushing for Hyjal and BT without getting everyone in their raid 2-piece Tier 5, would things be different? The game's half-life in terms of raid content would be much better.

Blaming the players collectively is pointless. It's not like the mentality of tens of thousands of players is something that is easily malleable or that any of us can control. It's like blaming "the players," collectively, for turning AV into a pure PvE zone. Players will follow the path of least resistance, and players will behave in ways that maximize their short-term enjoyment or progress towards a goal. AV is a PvE zone because that's what Blizzard has chosen to encourage and reward, and it will change when Blizzard changes the zone's design. Designers can mold player behavior via design and incentive structures, but they can't change underlying player motivations. They can refuse to recognize or reward certain motivations and those people will leave the game, but short of that, the point is to take those factors into account.

No one is willingly going to say "Yes, we could go into BT tomorrow and kill bosses there, but we're going to spend 2 months farming SSC and TK first so that we can really appreciate this tier 5 content first." That's not happening. You can put a gear check at the start of BT that's insurmountable unless your whole raid has X amount of t5 gear. You can have a keying requirement that takes weeks of t5 farming to meet. Or you can just not open BT until a bit later on. But those are design decisions. Players are going to consume the content you give them, when you give it to them, and then when they're done, they're going to want more. And if there isn't more, they're going to get bored. The job of an MMO designer is to manage that cycle to maximize retention and long-term satisfaction.

ANSeranov · 10/02/07, 2:15 PM

My guild is 1/6 and 0/4 right now. We're nubs who are just starting to get our feet wet in SSC and TK.

We look at all this content ahead of us and we're excited, but we figure we probably won't get to see it all. It's a little disheartening, but we're gonna keep pushing forward. My guild farms the hell out of content after we beat it, so I can imagine we'll kill Vashj/Kael more than most do before we phase out SSC/TK entirely (this is, of course, with the stipulation that we actually down them at all) but I can see why guilds would want to push past T5 content with all of T6 content sitting there going "HAY GUYZ U WANTZ SHINY PURPLZ?!"

I think it might be a nice problem to be bored because you farm all the super epic fights in the game. Illidan and other end-game fights look like so much fun to me, I envy you guys who farm them for phat lewtz.

KinetiK · 10/02/07, 2:16 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Thanks for this constructive post; we're all more enlightened for having read it.

And your initial post is a mere complaint about your guild's boredom in World of Warcraft. How is that valid? Reread what I've posted and then re-read your initial post and answer this, are you not asking for Blizzard's help in managing your expectations of the game?

1) Are other 5/5+9/9 t6 guilds experiencing this sort of malaise at this point? How about less-progressed guilds? How about people that don't raid, but focus more on PvP? If so, how are you dealing with it?

2) Would it have been better to have spaced out the raid content, even if it meant having less available right away, in order to avoid the large gap that has resulted? (For example, imagine t5 retuning in May as happened with 2.1, but no BT/Hyjal until July/August.)

It's unpleasant to take that step back and see it for what it is, I agree, but you haven't given me any reason to change my opinion that many of us are incompetant at managing your game 'time' and require Blizzard to steer you.

You can space out the content for yourself, blaming Blizzard for your inability to reign in your guild is hardly a good start.

Anguirel · 10/02/07, 2:17 PM

It must be tough to be on top of the world.

It's about time Blizzard stopped catering to 0.01% of WoW players and started focusing on things that concern at least 1% of the WoW population.

sovelis41 · 10/02/07, 2:20 PM

Originally Posted by Lord BEEF

Straight up nerfs to content are generally frowned upon unless it's removing "bullshit elements" of a fight. Making Archimonde's fear have a cast time is fine, but if they decided to lower Morogrim's health or melee damage that could be disappointing if you were close to killing him before.

Buffs to classes and new itemization on the other hand is something people really enjoy and is a great way to make old content a bit easier.

You don't see priests saying "30% meditation will trivialize my guild's old accomplishments" and you won't see "I wish they'd add the coefficient nerf back to fireball, this boss is way too easy now". Similarly if they add a new itemization in zulaman, you won't see a druid saying "man illidan will be a complete joke now with this upgraded healing neck, gg blizz" or a warlock saying "I'll miss the challenge of doing vashj with a spell damage dagger off of prince".

Wow, I was just about to post something very similar to this.

Currently on my server there are quite a few guilds on Kael'thas, and by the time 2.3 is released, that number will increase greatly. The individual class buffs and items from Zul'Aman will definitely help on Kael'thas and certainly Vashj. Blizzard tends to circumvent nerfing bosses by buffing the players. Hopefully this will also make reclearing SSC/TK for some sought after items and attunements for apps/non-steady-raiders easy enough that it can be done concurrently with working on T6. For example, even if the buffs mean you kill your nagas and striders a mere 2 seconds faster, that is a big help to allow for some core despawns and such.

Rho · 10/02/07, 2:23 PM

While I can see the issue, I think this is a beast of our own making. Even if Blizzard had delayed BT a month or two, the situation would be the same. This is a reality that people in super hardcore progression guilds will have to live with I think.

I think what Namaste said deserves to be looked at. Learn to have fun with the game again by attempting to do stupid stuff like 10 man Gruul or something. You've done it before, after all.

dexvx · 10/02/07, 2:24 PM

My thoughts:

SSC/TK pacing

These were intentionally slowed by Blizzard via Attunement mechanics, "c@ckblock" bosses (ala pre-nerf Gruul, changing Nightbane a half dozen times), untuned encounters, and the insane amount of consumable requirements. Almost every SSC/TK kill and learning before the Alchemy nerf basically required full flask and elixers as a raid. Assuming that as a guild can be raid ready (due to leveling) by mid-February, it took the top guilds roughly 3 months before reaching Vashj and Kael'Thas - to find they are untuned abominations of an encounter. This is an unrealistic time-frame, because of the intentional time-sinks put out in general.

Hyjal/BT

After the BT patch, everything was smooth and relatively tuned. Thus, it took top guilds a mere 2 months to beat the game - basically unheard of fast for clearing 2 major instances in comparison to pre-TBC content. Even my guild, which pretty much squandered over 6+ raid weeks due to some major reshuffling, have downed Illidan a week ago.

The Issue

My theory is to why people are "ebbing" out, PvP and PvE wise. First off, for Arena PvP'ers, there's only so much stuff you can get. Most DPS classes only have a single Arena set. If you're decently ranked (~2000 5v5), you'll get all the gear you need very fast, partly due to the 5000 pts most people had banked when S2 started. The hybrid classes can actually play with some other sets.

Secondly for PvE'ers, there's not really a point in getting gear once you've "defeated PvE". Blizzard stated (and, IMO, is a bad direction) that PvE was for PvE / PvP was for PvP gear - the gear schism. The result? There's no real purpose, progression wise, in getting more PvE gear once you've beaten the game (I'm getting PvE progression gear to... er wait, my progression has halted for a few months). At least in the BWL/AQ40/Naxx days, you could pick up something shiny and beat people up with it. However, with the gear schism, that gear is mostly useless in PvP. The only incentive for PvE would be to collect more PvE gear in hopes of using it for whatever instance is next (almost akin to running Naxxramas in hopes of being ready PvE wise for TBC - mostly a futile effort).

It's at the point where once the healing -> spell damage conversion is live, I won't even be interested in spell damage PvE gear for solo'ing (mainly due to the fact I'm on a gank friendly PvP server). By splitting the game into 2 meta-games: PvP and PvE, I think Blizzard has stepped on their own foot by literally cutting content in half. The result is more impatient people waiting for more patches - at a more frequent rate.

Rasputin · 10/02/07, 2:25 PM

Originally Posted by KinetiK

And your initial post is a mere complaint about your guild's boredom in World of Warcraft. How is that valid? Reread what I've posted and then re-read your initial post and answer this, are you not asking for Blizzard's help in managing your expectations of the game?

It's unpleasant to take that step back and see it for what it is, I agree, but you haven't given me any reason to change my opinion that many of are incompetant at managing your game 'time' and require Blizzard to steer you.

You can space out the content for yourself, blaming Blizzard for your inability to reign in your guild is hardly a good start.

Are you honestly saying that the best method for dealing with content is to simply NOT DO available, accessible, surmountable content simply because you want to force yourself to stay in an older instance? Peopel WILL consume available content as it is available to them, and the job of the developer is to maximize the playerbase's enjoyment of that content through whatever means they have available to them. If the contention of a large portion of most of the spectrum of raiding guilds is contending that a more spaced out release of raid content would make the game overall more enjoyable, isn't a bit presumptuous of you to come say that we should instead conform to your standards? I see a lot of support for a more slowly paced release schedule, and little argument against it.

So why don't you tell me, without simply demeaning "elite" raiders as whiny babies who expect to have their ingame lives managed, why should we be forced to hold ourselves back? I'm not even in the "complete and bored" group, I'm in the "progressing and dissatisfied" group. I was dissatisfied the moment I realized that a viable set of instances was rendered obsolete at the same time that it was rendered enjoyable.

edit: This says it much more succinctly:

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Players are going to consume the content you give them, when you give it to them, and then when they're done, they're going to want more. And if there isn't more, they're going to get bored. The job of an MMO designer is to manage that cycle to maximize retention and long-term satisfaction.

Quite simply, if raiders as a group are upset, and their complaint can be solved as easily as simply spacing out prepared content, why on earth should that not be done?

◊ Praetorian · 10/02/07, 2:25 PM

Originally Posted by KinetiK

And your initial post is a mere complaint about your guild's boredom in World of Warcraft. How is that valid? Reread what I've posted and then re-read your initial post and answer this, are you not asking for Blizzard's help in managing your expectations of the game?

It's unpleasant to take that step back and see it for what it is, I agree, but you haven't given me any reason to change my opinion that many of are incompetant at managing your game 'time' and require Blizzard to steer you.

First off, I could post about my guild members' favorite flavors of ice cream and it would be "valid" because these are our guild forums. You're quite welcome to not read threads that you deem unworthy, or to find other venues for discussion.

But regardless, my point in this thread is feedback and constructive criticism. It is a game designer's goal and purpose to do precisely what you scoff at: to "manage" player experience so as to maximize their enjoyment. If I were beta-testing a game that had an easily-accessible superweapon that trivialized the entire game, I'd offer feedback suggesting that the weapon be removed or restricted. Yes, players could simply choose not to use the weapon at all, and you could condescendingly chide them for lacking the willpower to restrain themselves, but the reality is that not having the option in the first place will improve the average player's experience.

So yes, I think that giving players too much content all at once, when development logistics preclude the timely introduction of follow-up content, is a design error. If you know that dessert isn't going to be ready for two hours, and you have three other courses to serve, perhaps it's better to space out your service rather than putting out all the food at once and then criticizing your guests for being unable to pace themselves?

You can space out the content for yourself, blaming Blizzard for your inability to reign in your guild is hardly a good start.

Rein.

◊ Praetorian · 10/02/07, 2:27 PM

Originally Posted by Anguirel

It must be tough to be on top of the world.

It's about time Blizzard stopped catering to 0.01% of WoW players and started focusing on things that concern at least 1% of the WoW population.

I'd say that, in various forms, the issues in this thread affect a majority of people who raid. Do you have anything further to say, or some coherent position to advance, or are you just bringing us a nice little dose of "QQ more" straight from the WoW forums?

KinetiK · 10/02/07, 2:30 PM

Originally Posted by Anguirel

It must be tough to be on top of the world.

It's about time Blizzard stopped catering to 0.01% of WoW players and started focusing on things that concern at least 1% of the WoW population.

I don't think you can argue that Blizzard caters only to "this board", the top of the world as you put it, but it is these guys who are the standard bearers for WoW progression and they're the ones who are being inspected by casuals like myself. That's good for Blizzard because it sets me wondering what those raids are like and just maybe someday I'll get to see that stuff. But for these Tier6 guys to complain that they're bored and that its possibly Blizzard's fault for releasing all that content too early... well, that's a bit much.

Buiden · 10/02/07, 2:36 PM

Originally Posted by KinetiK

I don't think you can argue that Blizzard caters only to "this board", the top of the world as you put it, but it is these guys who are the standard bearers for WoW progression and they're the ones who are being inspected by casuals like myself. That's good for Blizzard because it sets me wondering what those raids are like and just maybe someday I'll get to see that stuff. But for these Tier6 guys to complain that they're bored and that its possibly Blizzard's fault for releasing all that content too early... well, that's a bit much.

The complaint goes far beyond T6 raiders. The pacing mechanic at all stages of anything but 5 mans is off right now. Karazhan -> ZA was ages. T5 guilds are looking at a huge mound of content that will take forever to beat and that is intimidating. PvPers are wondering how much longer S2 really has to drag on because it should have ended weeks ago.

Avair · 10/02/07, 2:39 PM

Originally Posted by KinetiK

It's unpleasant to take that step back and see it for what it is, I agree, but you haven't given me any reason to change my opinion that many of us are incompetant at managing your game 'time' and require Blizzard to steer you.

How's this for a counter point? My guild is 9/11 in Karazhan, and I think the OP's point has a great deal of merit.

MMO's are social games, and there is an effect at each tier on those below. Backwater servers with poor raiding pools and bad progression exist because the gain from jumping up a tier another server is so strong.

Here's how it works, and its not just a T6 raider's problem.
* T6 guilds recruit from T5 guilds.
* T5 guilds recruit from T4 guilds.
* T4 guilds on backwater servers struggle to recruit players to kill Gruul.

If you remove the incentive to transfer, you get more even distribution of players across servers. This leads to more viable guilds at each level of progression, and less burn out for players.

Lumi · 10/02/07, 2:40 PM

Originally Posted by KinetiK

I don't think you can argue that Blizzard caters only to "this board", the top of the world as you put it, but it is these guys who are the standard bearers for WoW progression and they're the ones who are being inspected by casuals like myself. That's good for Blizzard because it sets me wondering what those raids are like and just maybe someday I'll get to see that stuff. But for these Tier6 guys to complain that they're bored and that its possibly Blizzard's fault for releasing all that content too early... well, that's a bit much.

The people here are discussing how to make WoW a better game by pacing content and extending the lifetime of older instances. This would make the game better for everyone. Developers could offer more polish, power guilds could clear and farm, and other guilds could slowly catch up and get the feeling of "beating the game". If SSC/TK was endgame for a longer period, many people wouldn't be complaining about keys as much. Kael being as hard as he is would be more accepted as he was the end-boss for an extended period of time.

There are a lot of other things solid pacing could do. Hyjal could have come out as a better instance instead of the shadow of what could have been good. Z'A could have been released before BT/Hyjal and the 10-man guilds would have content (along with the larger guilds farming it as well).

dexvx · 10/02/07, 2:40 PM

Originally Posted by Anguirel

It must be tough to be on top of the world.

It's about time Blizzard stopped catering to 0.01% of WoW players and started focusing on things that concern at least 1% of the WoW population.

I'll reply to this one.

You ever wonder why some servers are "dead"? The common theme to "dead" servers, has always had one crux - no high end raiding guild. Other than the trickle down theory (members who quit due to whatever reason and start their own guild), I have no explanation for this. There were a lot of healthy servers - Zuluhed/Darrowmere is a prime example - that went kerplunk because the high-end raiding guilds collapsed. On the flip side, Korgath, a tiny server with ~3K population several months after its inception (I know, I was on it for awhile!), turned into a very healthy server since Death & Taxes transferred there.

I know correlation does not equal causation, but I find it astounding that every server who's dying (and some of these have been around for years) does not have a major raiding guild. It leads me to believe that just because the hardcore raiders make up a small fraction of revenue, they make up a large portion (per capita) of the community and social network their server. Anyone who's read any of the "dying server" (non TBC launch related) posts can relate to that correlation.

Kirth · 10/02/07, 2:53 PM

Originally Posted by dexvx

I'll reply to this one.

You ever wonder why some servers are "dead"? The common theme to "dead" servers, has always had one crux - no high end raiding guild. Other than the trickle down theory (members who quit due to whatever reason and start their own guild), I have no explanation for this. There were a lot of healthy servers - Zuluhed/Darrowmere is a prime example - that went kerplunk because the high-end raiding guilds collapsed. On the flip side, Korgath, a tiny server with ~3K population several months after its inception (I know, I was on it for awhile!), turned into a very healthy server since Death & Taxes transferred there.

I know correlation does not equal causation, but I find it astounding that every server who's dying (and some of these have been around for years) does not have a major raiding guild. It leads me to believe that just because the hardcore raiders make up a small fraction of revenue, they make up a large portion (per capita) of the community and social network their server. Anyone who's read any of the "dying server" (non TBC launch related) posts can relate to that correlation.

I find this interesting as well with respect to a new servers that are released, guilds will re-roll on them with he full intent of becomes the 'top dog' of that server. Sometimes it works sometimes not. I'm not sure if Blizzard has even released a new server in the recent past but I'd be willing to be that if one came out that there would be a BT guild on in within 3 months.

Allev · 10/02/07, 2:54 PM

Taken to the extreme, the more "casual" guilds have been proceeding at the proper rate all along-- just fast enough to come close to end-game, but spreading their "breaks" until the next instance is released.

The only issue counter to that is that increasing time spent per week on raiding decreases the total time necessary to clear all the content faster than linearly, because of the weekly instance resets.

Maltyrius · 10/02/07, 3:07 PM

Originally Posted by Buiden

The complaint goes far beyond T6 raiders. The pacing mechanic at all stages of anything but 5 mans is off right now. Karazhan -> ZA was ages. T5 guilds are looking at a huge mound of content that will take forever to beat and that is intimidating. PvPers are wondering how much longer S2 really has to drag on because it should have ended weeks ago.

I concur with this 100%. The lack of pacing and the mammoth content wall that was put forth in TBC put a damper on many 'casual-core' raiders in my neck of the woods. When I first started knocking on the door to Kara on my old main and then looked ahead to
Gruul/Mags/SSC/TK/Hyjal/BT I confess to getting overwhelmed and was inspired to go into low gear (Kara/PvP/crafted epics). Seeing months, if not a year plus, of progression-focused content ahead was quite daunting.

A nice carrot to motivate is wonderful; ie: Clear Kara and then move on to the next big thing. Yet seeing the carrot *and* the 6 other bigger carrots was too much at once.

Cwealm · 10/02/07, 3:09 PM

Originally Posted by Buiden

The complaint goes far beyond T6 raiders. The pacing mechanic at all stages of anything but 5 mans is off right now. Karazhan -> ZA was ages. T5 guilds are looking at a huge mound of content that will take forever to beat and that is intimidating. PvPers are wondering how much longer S2 really has to drag on because it should have ended weeks ago.

New battlegrounds would be nice. I am bored to death with the current ones. I don't even care about honor or tokens- just something new to do.

Really wish I had rolled on a pvp server.

sovelis41 · 10/02/07, 3:15 PM

Originally Posted by Allev

Taken to the extreme, the more "casual" guilds have been proceeding at the proper rate all along-- just fast enough to come close to end-game, but spreading their "breaks" until the next instance is released.

The only issue counter to that is that increasing time spent per week on raiding decreases the total time necessary to clear all the content faster than linearly, because of the weekly instance resets.

Taken to the extreme, what you are suggesting is that guilds such as EJ handicap themselves to keep from getting too far ahead to hope they won't do stuff "too fast." Guilds that enjoy progression generally don't like to sit on farm bosses when the next brand new boss is a couple trash pulls away. It would make no sense at all to say "well guys, we're going to farm tier5 for a while until wowjutsu says 10% of the raiding population is on kael'thas. Once that happens we'll start work on hyjal and BT." What people are describing here is a way for Blizzard to do this by incrementally releasing the raid game to have several "end-points" instead of one end-point with merely several blocks along the way.

Who is Leotheras in relation to Illidan? A trash mob. Who is Leotheras in relation to Lady Vashj? A significant progression point.

Angeron · 10/02/07, 3:18 PM

Originally Posted by KinetiK

And your initial post is a mere complaint about your guild's boredom in World of Warcraft. How is that valid? Reread what I've posted and then re-read your initial post and answer this, are you not asking for Blizzard's help in managing your expectations of the game?

It's unpleasant to take that step back and see it for what it is, I agree, but you haven't given me any reason to change my opinion that many of us are incompetant at managing your game 'time' and require Blizzard to steer you.

You can space out the content for yourself, blaming Blizzard for your inability to reign in your guild is hardly a good start.

Don't be a stupid git. Managing a release schedule for game content is ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENT than managing a release schedule for new product lines in the fashion world, or new types of plastic piping in the piping manufacturing business. Where do you get off telling the consumer of said product (speaking of pipes, if you're just going to whine, keep yours shut) that they need to "manage" their consumption of your product? It is always the duty of the firm, and also always in the best interest of said firm, that supplies the product to manage its release schedule. You do not see major fashion labels releasing 100 new styles in the spring, because it would a) bankrupt them, b) cause a "new style" draught later in the year, c) cause a glut of styles wherein no style would appreciate the level of sales it would under a staggered release, and d) lose market share because of a-c. Similarly, you don't push out 3 tiers of content simultaneously when 1 is enough, because of the exact same reasons. This is basic, fundamental, marketing theory, and while you can always argue with a theory, the fact of the matter is: there are a million examples of it being correct, and you would be a poor businessman/woman* to ignore them.

*not to mention a fool.