So far I’ve stayed as far away from PuGs as possible. I’ve run the random daily at least once a day since the launch of 3.3, still I just recently got the achievement for PuGing with 50 people. That says quite a lot. Until Chas made this post about his experiences from using the random dungeon finder for leveling. His main concern seemed to be that it had turned into a more efficent way of leveling than questing. He also mentioned that they seemed a lot easier than before, but since he was used to three manning them, that may be the cause, and not the change to how classes works and the addition of heirlooms.
A couple of days ago when little else was going on I decided to give this thing a go on my lvl43 priest. A few things went as expected. There were your ninja pullers, ninja looters, ass hats, italian only speaking and every other kind of twat I’ve come to expect from using the cross server random dungeon finder. I had also expected them to go a bit smoother than usual since most people would be decked out in at least one piece of heirloom gear. I just failed to realize exactly how much bloody easier instancing had become because of it. If you mentioned the words “stairs” and “Zul’Farrak” in the same sentence to someone who’s been playing since Vanilla, they will either nod their head in approval with a grin on their face, or take a step back with a worried look. It is, or was, one of my all time favorite encounters in any 5-man. It was hectic, it required good communication between group players, with only one mana break in the whole event you would think twice about using every single point of mana. It was really challenging, and really, really fun when you pulled it off, which most often didn’t happen until the third try or so. When I saw the loading screen for Zul’Farrak pop up for the first time, I thought to my self “This is gonna be a good way of measuring how much easier instances have become”. The answer was rather depressing. Having gotten the key guy down and released our “friends”, our tank suddenly goes “healer, follow me!”. Surely not? He wasn’t gonna run downstairs? He sure was. And we pulled every single mob. Back in Vanilla you might as well have tried to solo Ragnaros and end up with the same result. But we pulled it off, without too much hassle as well. In fact I was at 25% mana and no people were dead when all the mobs were down. We did the same thing with even less trouble when the second wave spawned.
It seems the instances who used to take up to several hours and some skill have turned into the T10-farm of heroics we see at 80. When someone claims that the games have gotten too easy I’m usually one of those who tend to speak up and say that in many ways it has not. In this case though, there is not getting around it. With the exceptions of the ICC-5man heroics, Northrend dungeons and heroics (when you have just hit 80) currently is the only places where you can get a genuine challenge in 5-mans. I’m all for the “content for everyone” concept, but at the moment it seems to exclude those who appreciate a challenge while leveling up. It also breeds bad players, which is a whole topic in its self.
All of this brings me to what I wanted to talk about. One of the arguments I’ve used the most when discussing the difficulty of the game is that the game might not have gotten easier, but the players better. While the latter might still be true to some degree, the game certainly has become easier skill-wise in certain areas. The big question in hand is how this will affect everything in the end. The amount of subscribers, the community, future game play and so on. Will those who lack some of the challenge jump ship as soon as something of similar quality turns up? Will the number of subscribers stay as it is, increase or decrease because of where the game is heading? Will Blizzard keep things as they are? Or make things harder or easier?
Most of these questions are impossible to answer at the moment, one can only guess. I can only speak for my self. I’ve started missing that sense of achievement. Sure, it’s a game. But it’s beating a challenge that is well made that makes me enjoy games. If the game continues down this path and something better turns up I might consider stop playing. Who knows? I might still have been playing Warhammer Online instead of WoW if not for all the people I’ve grown attached to in Wow.
Unless this is just trial and error on the side of blizzard, I’d count on the fact that all the steps they are taking in the game will, in the foreseeable future, bring in more subscribers and hence more money.
As for the difficulty, I agree that it feels easier skill-wise. One of the worst effects of this is, in my opinion, the diminished value of cooperation and interaction between group members. Groups don’t feel as cohesive, and this interaction with other players is/was a key, I think, to many people’s enjoyment. As your title hints at, these days you can pretty much gather 5 decently-geared people in a hapdash manner and steamroll an instance. It feels like individual characters are more powerful in relation to the content. It’s often 5 people doing their own thing, together, rather than that team effort that is/was required for certain events, perhaps more so in the past – your example of Zul’Farrak was great. Most wipes in PuGs, I’ve found, are caused by overpulls or failing to execute seemingly simple maneuvers…or succeeding to execute stupid maneuvers…and not due to difficult encounters.
I don’t know if simply making instances more punishing is the answer, though. This reminds me of how tanking will be changed for cataclysm – larger health pools and lower (relative) damage, allowing factors such as efficiency and mitigation and the managing of which to find a higher importance. Maybe that will heighten skill requirements? I, for one, am looking forward to it.
I won’t even get into random PuG behaviors – seemingly exacerbated by the cross-realm dungeon finder. People are more anonymous than ever. Contributed to by the general fluid choice of character and location (transfers) and the ease of leveling alts.
…Plus this is an online game, and people are anonymous anyway. =P
John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, where art thou?! http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/ – ah, there
That’s something I haven’t thought about until you mentioning it. 5-mans feel a lot less like a group effort than they used to. Previously it was all about clearing the instances as smoothly as possible, and NO ONE cared about the damage meters. Nowadays it’s the complete opposite. Whoever waves their e-peen the most have contributed the most.
In silent contemplation, Tamarind mourns the death of the steps at ZF.
*joins Tamarind*
I was really, really dissapointed. That used to be such much fun and now it’s just trivial.
Sorry for the late reply, but i sort of needed a while to think about this. In the end, there are three things for me :
- I am sorry to have to say this, but the stair’s challenge you describe must have passed away before i ever had a chance to step foot into that place. When i came to Zul Farrak the first time, it was fun, but not really a challenge – any group which took me past the boss before (not that i can recall the name) would master the stairs without wiping.
- It seems that for a huge number of players, the “old” content is really more of a bother – something they have to go through to get yet another alt up to mess with in the end game (or in pvp). Many changes Blizz did (and plans) seem to indicate that they want to make getting there easier.
- Without the LFG changes, chances are that more people actually would never set foot there to begin with. I remember how hard it was for my first character to find instance groups. Without a guild or a large group of friends to fall back on, i would sit in the old lfg for hours, with most groups ending up being level 70-dragged “boost runs”, because someone got bored of waiting and did know someone else to call. With all the heirloom changes, and the changes to XP in the lower levels, Things now seem to go so fast even without going to an instance that waiting to do a place like ZF while it is a real challenge loose their value (Unless you want to do it for the challenge of it).
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[...] And most comments have been less than happy with these plans. Alternatively, you can take a look here, for a bit more in depth view on what is/has been [...]
As I have said elsewhere, this is one reason for my growing disgust with the game, though not one of the main ones (which would be fucked-up lore which is often totally ignored to boot, pet NPCs getting all the glory, RP servers which don’t deserve the label, and the complete and utter lack of consequences, especially for warmongering from PCs and NPCs).
I don’t raid anymore. Does that mean I don’t want a challenge? No. Heroics are so easy for the most part even without being overgeared that they are simply not fun anymore, except when running with friends. I’m a tank so I still have to pay attention, but that is generally because of aggro-grabbing AoE monsters and not because of the mechanics of the fights. For said aggro-grabbing AoE monsters, instancing has becomg truly mindless. They would not have lasted five seconds in TBC.
There are fights in Wrath which were fun but they are the targets of constant “nerfs” which mostly bleeds that fun out of them. And yes, let’s have a moment of silence for the oldie-but-goldie fights and places which have suffered the same fate. The famous stair fight used to be such a rush. When I recently tanked it with my pally alt, it was like a walk in the park. No one was overlevelled or overgeared, yet there never was a moment of danger. Sigh.
And I agree with the observation that this breeds a lack of teamwork and skill while causing an exponential growth in egotistical asshattery. Don’t get me wrong, it is great that the oh-so-vaunted, all-important “endgame” has been made more accessible than ever. But does that mean that EVERY SINGLE STEP on the path to that “engame” has to be so damn piss-easy?
I dearly wish that along with the “Highway to Endgame” approach, there would be room in this game for challenging content at ALL levels, solo and group. With the massive bonus to experience gain in the old world and Outland, you can skip a ton of content anyway. So why not bring back the challenges and the fun for some of that content?
I know it would be difficult to do because of the obscene boost to damage, especially AoE, that the last pre-Wrath patch gave us. It was really nuts. I remember at first the folks I used to tank for got a kick out of it, but even after the first raid we all sobered pretty damn quick because we knew that the challenge, and thus the fun, would never be the same again. If you tried to make a retro-run to ZF or Scholomance or heroic Shadow Labyrinth these days, at the appropriate level, it simply would not recapture the old mood because stuff dies too fast.
I suppose people who care to smell the roses and seek challenges outside the “endgame” are as much of a concern to Blizzard as the roleplayers: none. We don’t bring in the fat $$$$$. The gogogogogogo u faggy n00b types do that.