I am a dedicated person. RPG generally turns my antenna on, and with ADD it is inevitable that I focus and dedicate about my interests. I try to reflect the kind of person I am by behaving, acting and talking like I am in real life, simply because I.... well, there's a different answer for every person about why he/she acts like he/she does ingame.

Another factor are common goals related to life. Some people like the feeling of working together and being a part of something big - hence PvE. Others might want to raise their own power above others, being able to face stronger challenges/opponents either alone or with companions - hence PvP. Within both we find challenge.

In addition we have enthusiasm, which involves the general Azeroth/Outland experience. The experience of being in a different world - hence Discovery and etc.




When it comes to myself - I take pride in my achievements, dedication and ideology.
To me, gear is power and pride. Some gear reflects the obviousness of what one has accomplished.

For example, I did eight runs in Heroic Blood Furnace to get [Mantle of Shadowy Embrace]. And I might still keep it when I get T5 Shoulders simply because it is a symbol of that I have worked hard for the gear I have. What I also take great pride in is that before I had started raiding I had every single preraid tank gear for druids; Dedication. It took a lot of work and time, and it has paid off quite well.

I think most have summed up the reasons why I started and continue to play WoW, with an exception or two.

Here's something you don't hear often...I started playing WoW to save money.

I used to party every weekend, mostly because I was bored. I remember back when EQ came out I picked it up and found myself staying home on the weekends more often because I had something to do at home. At the same time I found myself with a savings account that was actually increasing. When my guild in EQ disbanded I quit playing MMOs altogether and got back into the party scene. I picked WoW up to cut back on that and happened to find myself in with a cool group of people (except for Howitzer ).

That's reason #1.

Reason #2 is that I enjoy being part of a team. I played organized sports up through my graduation of high school, and eventually picked up a couple of new sports and played them in adult recreation leagues. Win or lose, part of the thrill is working in concert with a group of people to accomplish a goal. WoW had this to some extent pre-TBC but with the reduction in raid sizes post-TBC that feeling has intensified. I absolutely love RoS because it relies on me, as a rogue, making sure I don't fuck up and everyone in the raid is counting on you. At the same time, you are relying on the rest of the raid to do their job to be successful.

In the end it doesn't matter who hits the home run (though it's nice when it's you and the rest of the team cheers for you), it's being part of the team and knowing that you all pulled together, did your best and came out on top (beat the encounter). Ultimately it would be nice to have something special to single out my character to everyone around me, but, for the most part, <Fusion> over my head does that.


This is why I play WoW.

I think people are letting blizzard off the hook far too easily on the whole diversity of specs/items issue. No one here is talking about a loophole that makes it possible for a warlock pet to outtank a warrior. We're talking about small things that increase your dps by somewhere between 5-20% at most let's say, usually at the cost of hunting down some unusual gear and speccing a wierd way.

And no offense but at least from where I'm looking at (stuck on vashj, yay), raids are definetly NOT balanced so finely that a few people doing 20% more dps is going to break the game. In most guilds that are somewhere between casual and hardcore there is very often a huge difference between the individual output of players, some dps classes outdamaging others by a factor of 2, or even people within the same classes doing 40-50% more dps then another person because of well, being good players or knowing game mechanics or what have you. And somehow I doubt that there is no stratification between the good and the bad players in any but the extreme top-end guilds, if then.

Creating, or just letting be these types of more niche builds relying on some interface between specific items and talents/skills, so long as they are a not overly significant would be great for this game. Their lack is a big part of the lack of character customization that I'm gotten so bored of at this point.

And yes I'm willing to bet that quote gurg mentioned comes from someone who worked on D2 and is probably now working on hellgate, since that is what many people working those games have said over and over. Obviously D2 did that to an extreme that was at the end, bad probably, but hellgate seems to be getting that balance pretty well right now, at least from what I've seen.

Increasing your gear by 5% is a huge deal. Increasing it by 20% is massive. If there was such an item that getting it increased your dps by that much than everyone pretty much has to get it to compete. And once that choice is found out, everyone does it. The only reason they wouldn't do it is if the item is just from a drop and its pure luck whether you get it or not. Thus there really isn't niche items. All there is is items that are great for dps and you try to get them and feel screwed by the RNG if you don't get them.

Now sure if there was such a system that you could have seperate gearsets/specs that all delivered the same dps, sure that's cool. I think Blizz has done pretty well with the different lock specs, or shamans, or hunters, but not so well on mages and rogues. But the overall point is the community and discussion here is too large for big dps items/builds to stay unknown for long. Once they're found out, everyone gets it if they can, and this niche build has become the cookie cutter build and anyone who can't get the item is massively disadvantaged and pissed off.

Precisely.

This is no different than players using world buffs to kill raid content. Once it becomes common practice, the designers must create content around that or nerf it to preserve reasonable game balance. I don't think anyone on this board would argue that nerfing/eliminating world buffs from TBC raiding was a bad thing.

In pre-TBC, when you inspected someone in full HWL (before the new honor system) or full AQ40/Naxx gear, you knew they were somewhat unique (in comparison to the carbon copies we have nowadays) and powerful compared to others. It was like dangling a carrot to the inspector: play more, and you'll be a powerful individual. Play more, and you'll be generously rewarded with awe-inspiring gear. In fact, I'd argue for the majority of the WoW population, there was always something to do, whether it be progressing through 20/40 mans (the number of guilds killing Kel pales in comparison to Illidan kills 4 months after release) or PvP'ing to get that next rank. It was indeed a massive time-sink, but if you put time into the game, you'd get rewarded. Was the system perfect? No, small guilds received the shaft in terms of PvE progression (which would've been somewhat solved if Blizzard kept a solid 10 man progression seperate from 25 man) and PvP progression beyond R12 was out of reach of most people who had a job (which would've been solved by Arena concept, if they put rating requirements on gear so people would actually try "to progress"). But in the end, the carrot was always there for most people.

Come TBC, the carrot is gone, and I think that's why most people are bored. Nerfed PvE encounters. Monotonous Arena PvP. Carbon copy gear for everyone. People are always clamoring for more accessible/easier content/loot, but what they fail to realize is once they actually get there... what next? So you've attained a weapon on par with the best. So what? Everyone else has the same thing! Blizzard needs to bring back the carrot on a stick, quite literally.

That's simply not true. There are quite a few people like me here, that have raided pretty seriously before TBC and are casual now. Like several posters here already pointed out, it's not about actual personal power and status gains but about the possibility of these gains.

Watching something rare on someone else is cool, even when you do not posses it, but you can dream about possessing it, or just enjoying the event of getting to see something rare.

I have to admit that I don't care about PvP in MMORPGs either, so I don't give a damn how overpowered a item is compared to my noob gear. Even more, if someone has exceptionally good gear he has the right to dominate me in PvP. If I want even ground I'd rather go playing a round of Team Fortress 2 instead.

I think you'd be surprised at how many of us really are casual, either because we always were, or we went casual with TBC. There's no way to tell for sure, of course, but when a full guild called <serious casual> starts based on the population here, I think that's a pretty good indication that it's not all front runners around these parts.

And I, too, like seeing bigger carrots out there, even if I won't be getting a bite.

Sure, and for the average player who has no chance of getting to that possibility due to lack of skill or more likely lack of time to commit to this timehog of a game, what do they care about the possibility of getting that gear? There is no dream for them, but they pay the same amount of money. For them they want to have upgrades they can get in a more limited timeframe. And yes PVP does matter for many of them, and even if it doesn't for as many people who say "wow if I commit 20 hours a week to raiding or work really hard at PVP, I can get that gear" there will be more who say "fuck it I don't have the time to commit to this, I'm not getting anything for upgrades, 5 mans are boring, I need something to do". Blizzard cares more about this second group than the first

So better blandness for everyone, than something special for a few?

I don't know if you're old enough to have visited eastern Europe during it's socialist days, but let me tell you it was a very depressing place. But hey, there was indeed more equality than there is today.

The frontrunners do have better gear already, it's always been like that. Now sure their should be more titles, some niche items, mounts (a guildie got the Phoenix one and he's chased around now), pets, etc. But things that are so much better than the alternatives that they become overpowered? I don't think there is a need for that. I don't think we need a Thunderfuy mark 2. But there does continue to be legendaries for people to get so that hasn't changed. And there are really far more niche items between mounts, pets, etc than there used to be.

Really what has changed in TBC is the gap between raiders and non raiders has decreased. There wasn't some wildly exciting items pre TBC that were just OMG cool, or at any rate more than there are now in TBC. It was just that pre raid itemization sucked and raiding was so much higher level that there was 0 competition. An Ashkandi was only so cool because it made an Arcanite Reaper or TuF look like crap in comparison. TUF was a 60ish dps weapon while Ashkandi was 80. In the current game given what, 110-120 dps 2hs that are crafted or world drops (without raiding), a 2h would have to be 150 or more dps to be better. Which would create the same issues that occurred before TBC.

It's clear that level and gear differences will never be as great as they used to be. So Blizzard has released more stuff that doesn't affect player strength but gives signifigance of some sort. Mounts, pets, titles, so on. But there is a limit on how much of that they can do, and without resorting to some system like EQ had I don't see what they can do. There is some balance they need to maintain, especially with them pushing PVP like they are.

Why would someone pay money to a company like Blizzard to remain a serf in a feudal system? Especially when that customer is paying the same amount of money as anyone else. Especially in a game with a large PVP aspect. I'm all for special stuff, just as long as it doesn't affect player strength overly much. I certainly don't want the "Raid or die" mindset to return to the game.

Or even worse, the "wow that looks cool, I know I'll never get it but its neat" turns to "fuck I hate that damn crappy item" when someone bashes your face in with it and 2-3 shots you in your casual WSG or AB pug. For as many people who that interesting upgrade is an attraction or carrot, there are many who don't care like Sillia says or leave the game when consistently faced with these people in PVP.

Well, it probably all comes down to whether you view the game from a PvP point of view like you do, or from the PvE perspective like I do.

Looking at PvE i want "epic" content: adventure, exciting sights and powerful items to obtain. I fully subscribe to the concept that there will be people who put in more time into this virtual world and are entitled to bigger rewards. The "epic" concept values excitement over balance and predictability.

From PvP point of view you want an even playground to serve as a arena to for comparing you gaming skill with others. You want balance over excitement and strictly predictability in power (i.e. item) acquisition over randomness and exclusivity.


From the history of MMOs I'm very deeply convinced that the PvP approach is wrong one. The only PvP that worked in MMO history is RvR like in DAoC or EVE, which resembles often more PvE raids than typical PvP action. All other PvP based MMOs used to be less than stellar successes.

One can downplay the aspect of PvP in WoW as much as one might want, but we all have to face it: It isn't going away. Barring some really seriously hefty foundation-wide changes, it's here to stay. It is very unlikely that Blizzard will introduce something as radical as that in wow's lifetime. It's much more likely that the next MMO they are working on (and they are working on one) will apply the lessons they learned from wow's pvp system.

From the history of MMOs, no game has ever been as successful as wow, including its pvp system.

Blizzard will continue with the pvp system, and continue doing PvP and PvE balancing with each other in mind, whether we like it or not. It'd be an interesting thought experiment if they didn't, but that's about as likely to happen as them bringing back 40-man raids.

You bring up some good points. PvP demands balance because going into a match knowing damn well ahead of time you have no chance to win really isn't all that fun if you're on the losing squad. PvE on the other hand since the invention of instanced content it really doesn't matter if Guild X is over powered compared to Guild Y because of their loot because they aren't fighting each other they are fighting static, never changing, NPCs.

If they want to appeal to both hardcore PvE and PvPers they need to stop balancing PvE around PvP and realize that they are two different games.

I would lay money on it that when they sit down for their meetings discussing lets say Sunwell and the item levels of items they want to put into it, it WILL get brought up "What implications on PvP will these have?" Likewise I bet when they talked about S3 gear they asked themselves "What implications on PvE will these have?" They need to stop addressing that issue, branch out the two systems so that they can take them into their own unique directions, much like they did with Paladins Vs. Shamans with TBC. People demanded balance between the classes and as a result Blizzard was forced to create the class differently than they wanted to.

I look at the game today and all I see is PvE holding back PvP which is holding back PvE. The potential for both systems is amazing and I hope that they will address this at some point in the future.

It has nothing to do with not liking one or the other. They are selling themselves short in both PvE and PvP by forcing them to hold each other back.

I'm not suggesting they drive a wedge between PvP and PvE as you suggest. I am saying they need to acknowledge them for what they are, different systems.

Would it be so terrible if you had a way to make a PvP gearset + PvP spec for arenas along with your PvE gearset + PvE Spec. To bridge the two systems together are the battlegrounds where you can use either gearset/spec you want. I'm not saying this is a perfect system, I am just trying to point out the sky is the limit.

As an example to the real world, very few people strive to be like Paris Hilton yet a lot of people who are not rich still buy that People Magazine to read about her. People do not have to be hardcore and elite to enjoy the fact that the elite exist.

Same for WoW, regardless of if you were casual or hardcore, when you inspect that guy with better gear then you, you think "Oh my god, that gear is so cool."

One problem with giving leet gear to raiders now is the move from 40 man raids. In the 40 man raid environment, people who could only spend 6 hours a week got BWL and higher gear because they were friends of people who raided. Nowadays there is little room for those people so you would in fact get a higher stratification of the player base.

Even without pvp, never underestimate the nature of people to be petty and selfish. If people have something they can never get, some are going to not be happy about it. All PVP does is make that fact more clear to them. But inspecting in Shattrath can evoke the same reactions. We all saw the same posts on the R&D forum when raiding was changed to 25 mans. A massive seething hatred against raiders. I guess never forgot how irrational people can be. But they sometimes have a point, especially in that in pre TBC the gear gap between raiders and casuals should have never been so big, PVP or not.

I have almost never raided more than four nights a week for three to four hours. My old guild cleared BWL and basically disbanded on Sartura. My new guild is currently on Vashj/Kael'thas. I'm completely within the average bracket for raiding progression.

There is an enormous difference between rewarding players going above and beyond simple behaviours and "RAID OR DIE." Pre-BC, raiding gear demolished everything else besides HWL weapons. We're at a situation now, though, where a level 70 equipped with the best of five-man dungeons has very little to look forward to in raids until the extreme high-end. The immediately accessible upgrades, T4, need to be attractive. Blizzard agrees, hence the item re-balancing of 2.1. The problem now is that T5 and T6 are failing to be substantial upgrades similar to those.

Why is this bad? Firstly, it starts to feel like your character progression is stalling. A 5% increase in power between tiers adds up, but it feels extremely ho-hum. Secondly, it means that your motivation to continue with the content you're doing withers a little. Not being on the cutting-edge takes a lot of the glamour away from raiding. Yeah, you're learning how to do it, but hundreds of other people already know how. Now throw in that you've got little to look forward to until T6, and it gets dull.

Of course, your complaints are, invariably, PvP-centric, so enough about raids. What is there to distinguish a Gladiator from a regular player? They get gear a little quicker, a title that other people can literally refuse to see, and maybe an ugly mount. Does that system appeal to you?

Don't be ridiculous. PvP gear really is nearly handed out to the player by the game, and weapons from content that is barely even touched by raiding guilds aside, it is better for PvP. There are lacking proper itemization for some slots from PvE, particularly cape, ring, and trinkets, but to suggest that PvE'ers would run rampant if given 20-30% increases between tiers instead of 5-10%, two-shotting everything they see, is ludicrous, especially given the ability to keep PvP items up-to-date with PvE.

He isn't being ridiculous. He is talking about the pre TBC situation, where such 'status symbols' existed, and high end raid gear was vastly superior to pvp gear and yes you got your face smashed by said raiders. The comment was valid in regards to this point and other comments in this thread advocating the 'good old days' where you can show off your raid progression by smashing people in BG's. Any return to large leaps between teirs needs to be matched with large leaps between pvp teirs or the allure of seeing someone with a big shiny weapon disappears after being smacked across the head with it a few times.

One big problem though is that after reaching 70, a character is only advanced through gear. I wouldn't expect a level 60 to ever beat an awake level 70 and I shouldn't expect someone who has been 70 for 2 months to be on par with someone who has worked hard for 8 months and gotten the gear to show for it.

The main argument of casuals in Vanilla WoW was not that they got their faced smashed in by the hardcore raiders but that they had no way to advance their own characters in any meaningful way. Now Blizzard has added plenty of ways for said casuals to gain great gear. But people who put in the time should be a step up from those who don't.

A God if you will.