Comments on: Is WoW Too Easy, or Are We Too Lazy?

By: IGN history of Warcraft, and news | pwnwear

IGN history of Warcraft, and news | pwnwear — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:28:32 +0000

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By: Hinenuitepo

Hinenuitepo — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:11:30 +0000

Indeed, the QQ about wow being too easy is an oft-heard refrain. When I first started playing at the outset of BC, I was amused by the ‘old-timers’ saying BC was too easy and epics were free.
Blizzard has by now a well-established approach of offering the next-best level of gear ‘for free,’ meaning that if Tier 9 is the top current content, Tier 8 becomes easy to aquire. Like it or not, it’s here to stay.
What really amuses me is when people quit wow because they’re pissed that it’s too easy to get gear.
As your blog points out, hard modes are there if you want a challenge. Somehow, despite wow being ‘too easy,’ only a very small percentage of players have defeated Algolon in 25-man, and NO GUILD has all the hard mode achievements available. NONE, out of tens of thousands of guilds. Too easy? Not really.
Sure, my casual raiding guild has downed the TOC bosses within a few attempts on normal every Tuesday. But I’m sure It’ll be a while before we even come close to killing all the faction champions within 60 sec of each other lol.
The game’s varying difficulty levels are achieving the goal Blizz has of letting more people experience the content while letting the hard core folks face challenging encounters and get the (temporarily) “best” gear. It’s a difficult balance and Blizz doesn’t always get it right, but in general they’re doing a pretty good job.

By: Gravity

Gravity — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:34:10 +0000

Didn’t test lowerping (yet), but might to play in US/Oceanic server from the UK over the next month or two.

Hmmm recruit-a-friend. Tempting!

By: Karatheya

Karatheya — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:00:51 +0000

It looks like the ping times might kill you running on the EU servers – all the recruitment posts I see are running on US realms at asia-pac times.

How did that lowerping service work out for you?

My experience playing with a similar time shift (+6 hours to my old US server) suggests that there’s just not much going on around mid-day on most realms, even during the summer months. Extended Maint would also eat into your Wednesday raid if you tried to run one. Tough call.

I’d say re-roll on the US side to be honest. Might be a good time to try dualboxing and R-A-F – with the 3.2 changes I’d be surprised if you couldn’t get a couple of chars up to 55 in a couple of weeks of dedicated play – might even be able to do it while the 10 day trial was still active, then use the paid-for account to launch another DK presuming you want to go down that path.

Hope it works out for you.

By: Gravity

Gravity — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:25:08 +0000

I like how Blizzard is doing content and progression. I think they’ve got the balance perfect, with tweaks like the Conquest badges everywhere to give people a gear-boost.

I also agree there’s a problem with player performance too, or in-general capability at life. Your example below is classic:
“Worse still is the person who doesn’t read strategies and doesn’t mention that they have no clue about what to do. When I do a ready check, I expect that everyone who clicks “yes” understands the mechanics.” If they’re saying yes when they really have no clue, they are applying the logic that ‘all fights are the same, tank/spank, and I can learn it as I go’. Doesn’t always work.

Look at how many people die on the void lord boss in VH because it requires a different strategy; you are personally responsible to kill his sentries. They die because it’s treated like a tank/spank.

Anyhow, the other point about all this relates to something we’ve chatted about before. I am moving back to Australia at the end of the year and need to decide if I form an Asia-Pac hours guild on EU server, or maybe a chapter within my current guild, or re-roll, since I can’t transfer to the Oceanic servers.