So what's going on with WoWFollow

They never should have tried.

The RSP model wasn't perfect, but how much has really been improved over the last nine years? And how much has been sacrificed? I'd trade the current "balance" for the ability to go melee Huntard and hybrid Druid again. Why? Because **** yeah, choices!

my main beef with blizz and balance is their hesitance to have spells function differently in pvp and pve.

having that as a tool could making solving balance issues a lot easier.

Oh I completely agree with you. I was just trying to discuss the state of the game from player perspective and experience. The idea that Blizzard failed to give PVE players the PVE experience they wanted them to have and this being due to arena balance issues are not at all incompatible. But I don't think it's realistic to pardon Blizz on that part (which certainly hasn't been the policy of posters on this board in patch note threads, ever).

At the end of the day, someone who is bored or frustrated with a dungeon isn't going to rationalize their experience in terms of Blizzard's struggle to balance content. If they're thinking about it at all, it's just going to **** them off more.

And at the end of the day, they're bored/frustrated with the content, and that's Blizzard's fault. It's not required of the player to pay for something that bores/frustrates them. And since Blizzard is the one who wants them paying, it's Blizzard's job to give them an experience to pay for.

In some ways, I do feel bad for Blizz's position. Well, I feel bad for the DEVS' position. The game grew really quickly, and then Blizzard was bought out by Activision. That adds a LOT of corporate pressure on them to make decisions from a business perspective. If it was up to the Devs, Cata would never have launched in that unfinished state, and I'm perfectly willing to believe they could have pulled off the transition back to a CC model quite well.

But business decisions forced them to release the game before it was finished, something directly contrary to Blizzard's approach to pretty much everything for most of their history, and the entire game.

And, honestly, that's probably the same thing that happened with arenas. The devs wanted them to be dungeon-level content. But esports were getting big, and business-side pressure forced them to gain more of the spotlight. And I'm sure that did make Blizzard a LOT of money.

I liked being a tree, but they didn't want me to be one.

I took my first Pandaren through the starting zone today.

Never again.


http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7617461861#13

I thought the Death Knight and Goblin/Worgen starting areas were bad, but they at least had a pretty decent pacing and an interesting story (well, the Death Knights and Worgen did). The Pandaren story is just some random "go save spirits, then save mega-spirit!" plot with a "I am one with the Force now, padawan" twist. It only picks up during the last fifteen minutes or so, when you are introduced to the Horde and Alliance, and that's two hours into it!

I have done each race's starting zone maybe four times - the Undead and Human zones 10+ times. This is the first time I've actually been tempted to quit a character due to the starting zone alone. I don't know if it took longer than Elwynn Forest or Tirisfal Glades, but it felt like it. Every hour felt like three. And I was leveling a Shaman, so my rotation consisted of this.

Never again.

Edited, Sep 10th 2013 9:53pm by Mazra

I like the Pandaren starting zone, but the pacing definitely needs to be upped. And no heirlooms is just nonsense at this point.

In some ways, the Pandaren zone suffers from anachronism. The experience is a lot like old-school WoW's starting experience was, where it was really all about your race's immediate needs, and far less about the world beyond, war, etc.

But that feels really off when you phase into Cata-level WoW right afterwards.

And it suffers from the timeline issue, badly. Your starting zone is kinda-sorta during the Cataclysm... but then you level straight through Cataclysm... and never resolve Cataclysm... and suddenly MoP?

That's definitely a major issue with leveling alts in WoW (and one they should have addressed with Cata's revamp). It's not timeline-appropriate on later characters.

What they really needed to do on top of revamping the world was:

1. Create "transition" quests that serve the purpose of raid cutscenes and give the finality to leveling characters.
2. Do... something... to make the BC timeline less insane. Frankly, it should have been revisited - BC was far more like Vanilla than like Wrath, content-wise. But even if that wasn't possible, they should have edited quest text where necessary to make it work.

The absolute worst case scenario should have meant making Outland and Wrath "Cavern of Time" worlds, with quest chains explaining the plot hole as sending you back in time to assist. Add some eternal dragonflight mobs, and move on.

But I loathed the timeline gap moving into BC. Couldn't stand it.

I've given up on trying to understand the writers' vision of the timeline. It's completely messed up.

If they were so hell-bent on revamping the "main continents" leveling experience, they should have come up with a time travel excuse for Outland and Northrend. Caverns of Time would have been an excellent choice. While the Aspects gave up their power, I'm sure they could come up with something less ridiculous than the current content jumping.

Even the main continents are messed up now. You're doing quests that are set in a time before the Cataclysm has been resolved, yet Pandaren are running around everywhere. Is the Cataclysm and Pandaria stuff happening at the same time, chronologically, or what?

The Pandaran starting zone experience is all about the effects of the Cataclysm on the Wandering Isle. My understanding is that the starting experience is set shortly after the Cataclysm occurs, roughly the same point in the timeline as the rest of the leveling content in Cata. They've actually just retconned the Pandaran back into that content.

Once that issue is dealt with, they have the time to focus on this new continent. After all, none of the zones in Cata are, strictly speaking, "new." They're all close to home, and just ones we haven't really been able to access before now. Only the Titan zone was actually new. But because there were already outposts near it, ignoring it wasn't really an option.

The moment Deathwing fell was the moment the race for Pandaria began.

At least, that's my understanding of it.

I'd suppose the best way to put it is that the Goblin, Worgen, and Pandaren starting experiences are all roughly in the same period, but the Pandaren starting zone starts towards the end of those other two (who actually experience the Cataclysm, and months following it).

[EDIT]

I haven't been through the DK starting experience since Cata. They retconned those races into it, I know. But it's timeline hasn't changed, right? Editing the LK out of it would be a big task.

Edited, Sep 11th 2013 11:13am by idiggory

I didn't notice any Cataclysm references on Turtle Island. I may have missed the reference to Deathwing, but as far as I can remember, the quests on the island deal with the turtle's increasing discomfort, which is threatening to sink the island.

You kill a bunch of the local fauna as part of your class training (way boring on a Shaman, by the way), and then you go fetch the four elemental spirits that have gone missing. Maybe the spirits left because of the Cataclysm, but as far as I can recall, one simply fell asleep (earth), one was being chased around by an onyx serpent dragon (air), one was angry for some reason (fire), and one wanted to play geyser trampoline (water).

After fetching the spirits, Obi-Wan Kenobi does his thing, and then you talk with the giant turtle, who reveals the reason for the discomfort: a giant airship crashed into its shell. That's when you encounter the Horde and Alliance. There are some angry tigers and monsters from the sea there, but I don't remember there being any explanation as to why they're there. I simply assumed they were drawn/aggravated by the turtle's discomfort.

Once you leave the island, you enter Stormwind/Orgrimmar and are immediately involved in the conquest of Pandaria and the Horde-Alliance conflict, which seems to indicate that you arrive in Stormwind/Orgrimmar well into the Pandaria content.

Edit: The DK starting area hasn't been revamped. Same ol' thing.

Edited, Sep 11th 2013 9:19pm by Mazra