WOW 3.2 buffs mounts, adds a new portal and zepplin
- Thread starter Teelie
- Start date
How do mounts at any level make you play better? All they do is make you faster at getting somewhere to suck if you can't play your character.
I thought I'd posted the latest on this but apparently I missed one. You'll still have the same NR restriction of level 77 and a thousand gold fee. 1,000 gold isn't that much by NR standards though. I can get that in a few days.
i think the changes are good. does it make it easier? not really. it makes parts of the game less tedious. it wasn't hard running all over darkshire, or running all aound ashenvale or darkshore... it was slow. now it'll be slightly faster.
Rii
Rear Admiral
"The game is not casual enough."
"The game is too casual".
You say this as if it hasn't been the case since Day 1.
WoW became the extraordinary success that it is today by embracing those casual players which had previously been neglected by the likes of EQ. From the cartoonish graphics with exaggerated animations to the rested XP system and the unprecedented amount of solo content in the game, WoW was built from the ground up as "My First MMO".
It's only now, after WoW's dominance has shifted the goalposts for the genre, after its playerbase has aged and self-segrated, and after most of EQ's playerbase has died of heart failure or at least grown tired of bashing WoW, that folks are forgetting this. Being a hardcore player in WoW is like being an elite duplo architect.
As someone who has played WoW off and on since the beginning, I like this change. Suddenly the prospect of trying a new character is much more attractive to me because now I can start zipping around on mounts earlier and at a cheaper cost. As it is now, do I really want to be walking around Hillsbrad Foothills or Arathi Highlands for the 5th or 6th time? Not really.
I'm thinking of casually leveling up a Mage and a Hunter to level 20 over the summer so I can buy them a mount as soon as the new patch is released - which I expect is still at least a couple of months off.
I'm thinking of casually leveling up a Mage and a Hunter to level 20 over the summer so I can buy them a mount as soon as the new patch is released - which I expect is still at least a couple of months off.
For new players who don't want to brave/don't know about the run through the Barrens? To make free travel between all Horde cities just like there are between the alliance ones?
Speaking as an alliance sometimes-player, I'm boggled that there wasn't one added when they put in Stormwind Harbor as well.
like the poster above, it's for new players... also all capital cities are now linked by some form of major transportation.
I love WoW and normally I like it when they do things to make game play easier, but it seems they are going too far and making it too easy. There is such a thing as too much. They are going to end up chasing all the real gamers off if they keep this up. They need to find a happy medium.
I doubt they'll chase off anyone but the most hardcore gamers but those are the ones who rush in and down the hardest content first after a week or so and demand more.
I'm sure if they really wanted to, they could redo a C'Thun type near-unkillable boss and then let .5% of the entire population ever see it just to satisfy the elitsts. Somehow I doubt it though. Blizzard specifically said "no more of that" because it's a lot of work to build these encounters only for virtually none of the players getting to see it except a tiny fraction of them. I mean realistically, how much of the existing population has even been into Naxx let alone Ulduar?
Naxx is the new entry-level raid and I still see a lot of guilds struggling with it and though the higher skilled players can pug it, they are not the end-all of gamers Blizzard is aiming to keep. They want to keep as many players as possible and it means a fine balance between Fisher-Price and C'Thun.
I'm sure if they really wanted to, they could redo a C'Thun type near-unkillable boss and then let .5% of the entire population ever see it just to satisfy the elitsts. Somehow I doubt it though. Blizzard specifically said "no more of that" because it's a lot of work to build these encounters only for virtually none of the players getting to see it except a tiny fraction of them. I mean realistically, how much of the existing population has even been into Naxx let alone Ulduar?
Naxx is the new entry-level raid and I still see a lot of guilds struggling with it and though the higher skilled players can pug it, they are not the end-all of gamers Blizzard is aiming to keep. They want to keep as many players as possible and it means a fine balance between Fisher-Price and C'Thun.
If you don't have 1000 g in your pocket simply via levelling from 70-77, you're doing something wrong. Quests and mobs in Northrend drop a mint.
Now 5,000 gold for the epic flying is a bit more of a hurdle, but it still only took me a couple of weeks to save it up. I've got a Tundra Mammoth now, thousands in gold, a fortune of mats in the bank... I only grind maybe 10 hours a week or so. You can make 100 g in 30 minutes just doing dailies in NR....
Cool to see the new portal down to the gate and a FP to Shatt, but what's with the Zepp from TB to Org? It's a 4 minute FP...... I guess it's so people can more easily start in TB and get to Org without having to run it at low level? A Zepp from TB to UC would have been more useful....
???Do you play much???
Statistics show that level 80 characters make up a very large portion of the WoW active population. Most people with a level 80 toon have one or more character below 80. Statistics at various ranking sites show that 69% of guilds (of about 58,000) have downed Kel'Thuzad in heroic Naxx and 93% have downed at least one Naxx boss. I'd wager most people have been into Naxx, if you haven't been it's only because you don't want to go or you're the type of player who logs in for a couple of hours a week to level your lonely 54 Hunter. Run a few heroics, get some blue pieces and a crafted or two, get into a Naxx pug. Pretty simple if you're 80.
Six guilds in the entire world have downed Algalon the Observer. Six. Four of those were done in the past two weeks. All of them are among the top guilds in the entire world, the best of the best. Blizzard has nicknamed Algalon "The Raid Destroyer". Only 17 have even opened him up for the hour they give you to try to down him. Most casual guilds haven't even downed Yogg in ten man let alone 25 man. I now believe Hard mode Ulduar to be as challenging as anything Blizzard has ever created, Sunwell and old school raids included. Even some of the trash in Ulduar is as hard as some Naxx bosses to be honest. And it's funny, because so many people who complained about Naxx being too easy are now complaining about Ulduar and prodding Blizz to nerf it. And pugs are few and far between on my server for Ulduar because the veil has been lifted and SURPRISE half the people who claimed to be bad ass walking around in full T7.5 are face rolling morons who want to be carried through raids on ez-mode and log off if they wipe on a boss more than twice.
I'm on a low pop server and most decent guilds were one-night clearing Naxx even a few months ago. Pugs... well they're pugs. Facerollers and people gearing their alts, no surprise they all suck if that's all you run. If you're on a high pop server (like Blackrock where I came from originally) a decent pug shouldn't be hard to find, there are usually big guilds that run good ones on a regular basis.
I have two 80's, four in the mid to upper 70's and another five or six in the fifties, so I do play a bit. 
I'm no casual player, but I'm not a hardcore raider either. I play inbetween, something a lot of people always overlook. It isn't black and white causual or hardcore. The target Blizzard is aiming for is people similar to me who play more than a few hours a week but don't spend 40+ on it either doing nothing but raiding and heroics for the glory.
They want to do it so that the causuals get their game time and enjoyment and at the same time not make it insurmountable to get into the end game stuff. That really irks the hardcore I've noticed. So much that I've seen a few act like the very idea of causual gamers doing end game is an insult to their mother. That's why they introduced "hard mode" for Ulduar; so the more causual players and guilds can get in but the hardcore can get better loot and achievements. Naturally not many of them are satisfied with sharing the end game content though.
And I've downed Naxx and been to Ulduar. Maybe it's just skewed perspective or far too many lazy people on my server but I see a lot of people who might have been to Naxx, that's about it. Not a lot of them downed Kel'Thuzad. I see plenty with armor from heroic emblems and a fair number with some but not full tier 7/7.5 gear. Not too many with any 8/8.5 yet but Ulduar is still new enough that people are going to be fully geared out just yet.
Maybe I exaggerated on how many have been in Naxx but I still don't see a lot of people successfullly doing Naxx in 10 or 25 man and mostly I see a lot of PVPer's. Funny cause the realm is PVE. PVP realms and griefers are just too annoying to deal with sometimes.
I'm no casual player, but I'm not a hardcore raider either. I play inbetween, something a lot of people always overlook. It isn't black and white causual or hardcore. The target Blizzard is aiming for is people similar to me who play more than a few hours a week but don't spend 40+ on it either doing nothing but raiding and heroics for the glory.They want to do it so that the causuals get their game time and enjoyment and at the same time not make it insurmountable to get into the end game stuff. That really irks the hardcore I've noticed. So much that I've seen a few act like the very idea of causual gamers doing end game is an insult to their mother. That's why they introduced "hard mode" for Ulduar; so the more causual players and guilds can get in but the hardcore can get better loot and achievements. Naturally not many of them are satisfied with sharing the end game content though.
And I've downed Naxx and been to Ulduar. Maybe it's just skewed perspective or far too many lazy people on my server but I see a lot of people who might have been to Naxx, that's about it. Not a lot of them downed Kel'Thuzad. I see plenty with armor from heroic emblems and a fair number with some but not full tier 7/7.5 gear. Not too many with any 8/8.5 yet but Ulduar is still new enough that people are going to be fully geared out just yet.
Maybe I exaggerated on how many have been in Naxx but I still don't see a lot of people successfullly doing Naxx in 10 or 25 man and mostly I see a lot of PVPer's. Funny cause the realm is PVE. PVP realms and griefers are just too annoying to deal with sometimes.
Rii
Rear Admiral
~40% according to WarcraftRealms. Of course Level 80 characters are likely to be over-represented as they'd average more time logged in and thus be more likely to catch Census sweeps.
So those numbers actually sounded perfectly reasonable to you? Nothing went off in your head such as the fact that WoWJutsu only tracks guilds whose members are toting raid gear? It hardly comes as a surprise to learn that raiders raid.
Of course, such folk make up most of the playerbase.
I tried to overlook the implied huntard insult but it is something I should address. The third character I made is actually a hunter (not a huntard) and is level a 76. True though, I am guildless on him but only because I'm already split between two raiding guilds as it is on that server and I don't know which one to stick him in.
I've also noticed that the new huntard is the shammy dps. I've seen more fail dps out of shamans than I have hunters lately. Seriously. I've seen 80 shamans (in epics no less) who do less dps than my level 72 rogue was doing, in partial Kara gear.
I've also noticed that the new huntard is the shammy dps. I've seen more fail dps out of shamans than I have hunters lately. Seriously. I've seen 80 shamans (in epics no less) who do less dps than my level 72 rogue was doing, in partial Kara gear.