So at this point of time it seems like there will be no gear in raid finder once Warlords of Draenor comes out. Well I should say no tier gear, but we all know that tier gear is the only gear that counts in raiding.
My journey in wow has been a long one. I have been playing since Classic wow. And what I've saw in terms of reward from raiding is this: End of storyline and tier gear. Unfortunately for me raiding was not accessible to me until Mists of Pandaria. Technically Cataclysm when LFR first came out but I was rather worried to step into something that I was told had such a bad environment. So for me it feels like I'm having this accessibility ripped away from me, at least in part.
I want to see the gear and be able to have a good looking set of gear. Taking tier bonus' away just takes away the feeling of high end gear.
Why do I need it if I'm not going to raid higher? You are right I don't. But that is not the point. Besides why does a normal level raider need tier gear? Could they not get the valor gear from the four different rep grinds and enter into Normal Mogu'shan Vaults and progress from there? I mean the tier gear in LFR was the lowest level gear, and it got better as you increased difficulty level.
Speaking of difficulty level, I have heard several people use the reasoning that you need to have motivation to move up to higher difficulty levels. Well I disagree. If I am fine with LFR level is that not my right? Why does it hinder someone else if I only want to or can only raid LFR? I don't hear people criticising people for playing different levels in say Diablo or Madden or Call of Duty? There is a reason for having different difficulty levels, so different people can have access to a game.
Only reason I can see for this change? To appease the elitist raiders that don't want casual players to raid.
In any case whatever happens I will have to make the best of the raiding landscape come Warlords of Draenor.
Wednesday, 30 April 2014
Friday, 14 March 2014
$60 level boosts
So Warlords of Draenor reorders are out and with them the paid boost to 90 service.
The price? Sixty dollars. Slightly more or less based on currency conversion.
Personally I think it's a bit high. Most games hot off the shelf go for $60. One character is not a whole game. For the price of wow plus a monthly subscription I could level fifty characters to level ninety, or one hundred once Warlords comes out.
Well you could say that I'm paying for it via monthly subscription. I say no. That is for maintenance of the game world. I mean are we paying Blizzard to level our characters? No, we are paying them for the content. We are leveling the game characters. It is our time that we are putting into leveling one or more characters.
This gets me confused when people try to associate a price per hour or per level or what not to come to the $60. I don't normally pay someone at every level that I make or every hour, so why should that factor into the price of a boost.
I have heard people say that it's for those people that want to return to the game to play with higher level friends. No it is not, as if this was the case then the single free boost to ninety that was offered with the purchase of the expansion would have sufficed. Yes you can say that people would get around that by buying more copies of the game. But that would not be free either. More than likely these copies would be only purchased for the boost and you'd have to pay for account transfer.
The thing for me with the boost to ninety was that I'd be able to skip the old content. Do I believe the old content is bad? No, but it's also old content. I have leveled many characters through the old content so it's not like I would be missing out on anything or smacking the developers in the face by not taking in their hard work. I have taken it in, many times. And I enjoy it, and would have no problem doing it again. My issue is that having 98 characters to boost to 90, at $60 I'd have to pay $5880 to so.
Yes I know I'm more than likely a rare exception, but still, it's the way I play my game and should we all not be able to play our game the way we want to? I think if we were all told that we could only pvp or only raid or whatnot this game would be less enjoyable.
Another complaint I've heard is that it will introduce a whole bunch of players that do not know what they are doing into LFR. Well that's the way it was before the boosts so what is the difference? I have heard many people say that leveling does not necessarily teach you how to play your class.
I believe the official reason is along the lines of not wanting to invalidate leveling. Well I think this is a bit silly. For several reasons.
One, you are not forced to boost your character so there will still be people leveling their characters. I have heard many people state that they like doing this. I like doing this myself. I fully planned on leveling the long way one character of every class before I started boosting those classes. For example, prior to boosts, I only was missing a Mage, Monk, Rogue, and Warrior level 90, so I would not boost any of my characters of those classes until I got one to 90 by leveling. Also I planned to have characters that I would level slowly through all content.
Two, leveling was already invalidated. How so? Well I have found that every time a new expac was launched, the xp that was required to level through previous expansion content was slashed big time. For example, I would be leaving Northrend to go to Cataclysm content in the middle of Dragonblight. I didn't have to do the whole expansion.
One thing I've always heard on podcasts in regards to this, is that the game creators wanted people to see the new content. So they provided a way to get there faster. And slashing xp was not the only way. Heirlooms. Gear, that currently goes from levels 1 to 85 that each give a percentage of increased xp. The more you have the more xp you get which means the faster you level.
Eventually the Darkmoon Faire gives you the ability to boost xp. Then with Mists of Pandaria, if you played a monk, you would get a daily that would give you boosted xp daily for one hour.
All these experience boosts. So people are zipping through leveling. Furthermore, how many peoples ideas of leveling are getting as many of these boosts as they can then dungeon crawling? I'm sorry but this is not really what I think of when I think of non-invalidated leveling. This is just as "invalidating" as boosting a character to 90. A way to speedily get through old content that one has done over ... and over .... and over again. Again remember that you are not forced to boost so if you want you can level. However slow or fast that you want to do it.
They also introduced the Death Knight class that starts at level 55. Then the scroll of Resurrection that allows a returning players to boost a character up to 80/85. Oh and then the recruit a friend where you get triple xp. More ways to skip old content and get to the new current content.
The fact is, in my eyes, is that a person boosting a character to 90 does not hurt the game nor other players, so quite frankly there is no reason to make it inaccessible to players. That being said I don't think this price point will change. But I had to get this off my chest.
The price? Sixty dollars. Slightly more or less based on currency conversion.
Personally I think it's a bit high. Most games hot off the shelf go for $60. One character is not a whole game. For the price of wow plus a monthly subscription I could level fifty characters to level ninety, or one hundred once Warlords comes out.
Well you could say that I'm paying for it via monthly subscription. I say no. That is for maintenance of the game world. I mean are we paying Blizzard to level our characters? No, we are paying them for the content. We are leveling the game characters. It is our time that we are putting into leveling one or more characters.
This gets me confused when people try to associate a price per hour or per level or what not to come to the $60. I don't normally pay someone at every level that I make or every hour, so why should that factor into the price of a boost.
I have heard people say that it's for those people that want to return to the game to play with higher level friends. No it is not, as if this was the case then the single free boost to ninety that was offered with the purchase of the expansion would have sufficed. Yes you can say that people would get around that by buying more copies of the game. But that would not be free either. More than likely these copies would be only purchased for the boost and you'd have to pay for account transfer.
The thing for me with the boost to ninety was that I'd be able to skip the old content. Do I believe the old content is bad? No, but it's also old content. I have leveled many characters through the old content so it's not like I would be missing out on anything or smacking the developers in the face by not taking in their hard work. I have taken it in, many times. And I enjoy it, and would have no problem doing it again. My issue is that having 98 characters to boost to 90, at $60 I'd have to pay $5880 to so.
Yes I know I'm more than likely a rare exception, but still, it's the way I play my game and should we all not be able to play our game the way we want to? I think if we were all told that we could only pvp or only raid or whatnot this game would be less enjoyable.
Another complaint I've heard is that it will introduce a whole bunch of players that do not know what they are doing into LFR. Well that's the way it was before the boosts so what is the difference? I have heard many people say that leveling does not necessarily teach you how to play your class.
I believe the official reason is along the lines of not wanting to invalidate leveling. Well I think this is a bit silly. For several reasons.
One, you are not forced to boost your character so there will still be people leveling their characters. I have heard many people state that they like doing this. I like doing this myself. I fully planned on leveling the long way one character of every class before I started boosting those classes. For example, prior to boosts, I only was missing a Mage, Monk, Rogue, and Warrior level 90, so I would not boost any of my characters of those classes until I got one to 90 by leveling. Also I planned to have characters that I would level slowly through all content.
Two, leveling was already invalidated. How so? Well I have found that every time a new expac was launched, the xp that was required to level through previous expansion content was slashed big time. For example, I would be leaving Northrend to go to Cataclysm content in the middle of Dragonblight. I didn't have to do the whole expansion.
One thing I've always heard on podcasts in regards to this, is that the game creators wanted people to see the new content. So they provided a way to get there faster. And slashing xp was not the only way. Heirlooms. Gear, that currently goes from levels 1 to 85 that each give a percentage of increased xp. The more you have the more xp you get which means the faster you level.
Eventually the Darkmoon Faire gives you the ability to boost xp. Then with Mists of Pandaria, if you played a monk, you would get a daily that would give you boosted xp daily for one hour.
All these experience boosts. So people are zipping through leveling. Furthermore, how many peoples ideas of leveling are getting as many of these boosts as they can then dungeon crawling? I'm sorry but this is not really what I think of when I think of non-invalidated leveling. This is just as "invalidating" as boosting a character to 90. A way to speedily get through old content that one has done over ... and over .... and over again. Again remember that you are not forced to boost so if you want you can level. However slow or fast that you want to do it.
They also introduced the Death Knight class that starts at level 55. Then the scroll of Resurrection that allows a returning players to boost a character up to 80/85. Oh and then the recruit a friend where you get triple xp. More ways to skip old content and get to the new current content.
The fact is, in my eyes, is that a person boosting a character to 90 does not hurt the game nor other players, so quite frankly there is no reason to make it inaccessible to players. That being said I don't think this price point will change. But I had to get this off my chest.
Wednesday, 4 December 2013
No Flight? Not a problem!
I have heard many people complain about not being able to fly until 6.1. Come on people, this isn't the first time we've had to wait until we could fly.
Burning crusade was the expansion that brought us flying. For most classes you had to wait until level 70, the level cap, to get flying. Unless of course you were a druid. If so you got it at level 68.
So then we come to Wrath of the Lich King. Flying was again taken from us until level 77.
Cataclysm was apparently the exception in which you could get the Flight Master's License from the get go.
Mists of Pandaria comes out .. and guess what ... no flight until level 90.
So out of 4 expansions its 3-1 in favour of having to wait until some point of time to be able to fly. And I like it this way, it feels like it means something to actually obtain flight.
And really, is flying that big of a portion of the game? You can do 99% of what you need to do, without your flying mounts. The 1%? Getting around.
So really, why are people trying to boycott or say they are going to boycott a game? Just play the game. Have fun. There is so much to enjoy in this game. Flight just enhances the experience. It doesn't make it. How many people played the game before Burning Crusade? We didn't have flight then.
So long folks.
Burning crusade was the expansion that brought us flying. For most classes you had to wait until level 70, the level cap, to get flying. Unless of course you were a druid. If so you got it at level 68.
So then we come to Wrath of the Lich King. Flying was again taken from us until level 77.
Cataclysm was apparently the exception in which you could get the Flight Master's License from the get go.
Mists of Pandaria comes out .. and guess what ... no flight until level 90.
So out of 4 expansions its 3-1 in favour of having to wait until some point of time to be able to fly. And I like it this way, it feels like it means something to actually obtain flight.
And really, is flying that big of a portion of the game? You can do 99% of what you need to do, without your flying mounts. The 1%? Getting around.
So really, why are people trying to boycott or say they are going to boycott a game? Just play the game. Have fun. There is so much to enjoy in this game. Flight just enhances the experience. It doesn't make it. How many people played the game before Burning Crusade? We didn't have flight then.
So long folks.
Wednesday, 9 October 2013
Free Purples
I recently took part in a discussion on the World of Warcraft forums about LFR. In that discussion another player brought up the topic of free purples.
I have to vehemently disagree that purples are free ... anywhere.
Yes I know the Timeless Isle allows you to open a chest and get a iLvl 496 item. But it is not free.
For one, you have to be level 90 to use these items and to get to the island through the designed method. That means you have to put time and effort into getting here.
There are also two methods of obtaining these items:
I have to vehemently disagree that purples are free ... anywhere.
Yes I know the Timeless Isle allows you to open a chest and get a iLvl 496 item. But it is not free.
For one, you have to be level 90 to use these items and to get to the island through the designed method. That means you have to put time and effort into getting here.
There are also two methods of obtaining these items:
- Killing elites
- Opening chests
Killing elites would not make them free as you have to fight, with a group to get these items.
With chests there are the ones that you have to purchase a key from a large Hozen. 500 timeless coins.
Not free. I have found that you lose more coins than you gain.
Most chests on the isle are one time use. The rest, aside from the chest cave, are weekly uses. So there is a great amount of limitation on you once you have been there for a bit. Furthermore the following costs apply, which apply to killing elites.
- You are not guaranteed to get an Timelost arrmor pice.
- If you do get one, you are not guaranteed that it will be for the preferred armor type for your class.
- If it is the preferred armor type for your class, you aren't guaranteed to get a piece that you need. You might get three chest pieces, and unless you have a burden of eternity, they are useless.
Now I understand you can send these pieces to other characters, but remember they can't use them until level 90, so if they arent' level capped, well they are just space users.
So no, the Timeless Isle is not just handing out full gear sets, there is a cost involved.
As for LFR, and more than likely flex and normal and heroic modes, they aren't free either. Last night I ran the first wing of Throne of Thunder. The only thing I got was a Sigil of Power and gold. No Purple armor dropped. Just greens that were useless to me.
So really, why are raiding elitists complaining about gear being free?
Tuesday, 30 July 2013
Altsauce
Alts. You either love them or ye hate them. Personally I love alts. Well the only thing I don't like is the fact that I have thirty three characters that I want to get to level ninety. Problem for me is I never know when to speed level them or slowly level them. Personally I like to go slow, not getting/using my first mount until level forty, then sixty. Flight at seventy. Completing every quest in every zone before moving on. Well through Vanilla, I have a path, I don't do it all. But that's that. It's late ... and I don't know what else to say at the moment.
Oh btw #TeamDae for the win!
Oh btw #TeamDae for the win!
Tuesday, 23 July 2013
Group Quests ... Really
So recently I've been working on my Blood Elf Hunter on Wyrmrest Accord. Before starting on WrA I had gotten my hunter, Karn'Nakas, to level 70. I had the intent of clearing all non-dungeon content in each expansion groups before moving on to the next. Once I got to Icecrown I ran into a rather annoying problem. Group quests. Oh I had run into a couple prior, but managed to defeat them. But in Icecrown where I had stopped my xp gain at 81? No way. And it wasn't just a few. After I finished some with the help of a guild mate, I got more after a few regular quests. Now don't get me wrong, I do like the concept of a group quest, it promotes social gaming. However, in old content that you don't have many people doing at level, it's kinda pointless to have quests that you require a group for. It isn't all that easy for everyone to get the people needed. Well that's my rambling for today.
Thursday, 27 June 2013
My first day
Well this is going to be my attempt at a blog. I can't promise a polished product, but I will be saying things as I see it. This will be about my thoughts and experiences in the wonderful MMORPG World of Warcraft. Hope you all enjoy.
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