WoW is Too Easy

Picture found on Google Image Search.

 

I hear things like this all the time, from bloggers to guildies, pugs and trade chat, from level 1 to level 80. There are tons of people saying the same thing, that World of Warcraft has gotten far too easy. This is usually in reference to the raids, but can also refer to the heroics. Often times I find that these same people are sabotaging themselves. They want harder heroics/raids and yet they do everything they can, sometimes without realizing it, to make the heroics/raids easier.

First off the one role I see complain about this more than any other is DPS. DPS has ALWAYS been and will ALWAYS be the easiest part of any raid/heroic/anything. You generally have to know where you need to be standing, and in what order to hit your buttons. If you are complaining about the ease of WoW and you are a DPS, try a harder role, such as healer or tank. If this is your first time playing those roles and you just respecced your level 80, expect to be yelled at as you destroy run after run until you get the hang of what it is that you are doing.

Another way people seem to shoot themselves in the foot is reading strats. Now sure, if you just got into a raiding guild and they expect you to know the strats of a fight then you need to read up on it if you expect to stay with them. On the other hand if your entire raid is complaining about how easy WoW is now, try having them go in blind to the next raid, whether that be ICC, Ruby Sanctum or something in Cataclysm. Go in blind, don’t read any strats and do what you are supposed to do: FIGURE IT OUT AS YOU GO!

The last pitfall, and probably the worst if you want to experience a harder, more exhilerating raiding experience: Don’t use addons. Seriously. Some of them might be fine, but anything that changes the way you actually play the game is a no go. The biggest offender here is Deadly Boss Mods. Imagine your entire raid doing a fight without knowing ahead of time when the silencing shout is coming, or when adds are coming. Think about how much you rely on DBMs and then figure out how much you are screwing your experience if you really want a challenge.

Try playing this game the way you are supposed to. Go into a raid with everyone blind. No strats, NO mods, nothing. Try Shift-1 to Shift-6 or whatever to change your bars again. Go back to guessing and paying attention to the boss to figure out what he’s going to do. Use the default Blizzard raid UI. Try all of that and then tell me if raiding is too easy. If you still think so, then it’s a valid complaint. If not you can’t expect Blizzard to cater to mod users and make it too hard for people playing the game the way they are supposed to be.

This is exactly why Blizzard won’t allow mods for their next MMO, I’d bet money on it. It’s also why most other games don’t allow addons, at least to the extent of Blizzards addons.

Naxxramas

You may be wondering why I’m not posting much, or you may have just deleted this blog from your feed for innactivity. Let’s hope that it’s the first one.

The simple truth is that for the most part I am only playing World of Warcraft. Sure there are some other games thrown in there, mostly single player with a few free to play MMOs, but the majority of my time is spent in WoW and let’s be honest, there are millions of WoW blogs out there.

I have made a LOT of progress since my last WoW update and Amuroth has really come a long way since he started out as a little level 1 nublet.

 

Amuroth in his offspec, Retribution PVP gear.

My main spec is Protection, and I’m already pretty geared. I’ve bought petty much everything I want from Badges of Triumph, so I’m pretty much stuck with raiding in order to progress. That’s not a terrible thing, it’s just much harder to find raid groups than it is to find heroic groups.

Amuroth in his Prot gear. The mace is from Forge of Souls, a 5 man instance that unlocks Pit of Saron, and then Halls of Reflection. It’s a story heavy dungeon chain and a lot of fun. The shield is from my first successful Naxxramas run.

Technically, according to WoW-Heroes, I am almost geared enough to tank 25 man Ulduar, so I’m decently overgeared for Naxx. The problem is that, whenever me and the wife find a group willing to do Naxx, they assume that because they are overgeared it’s going to be a cakewalk and no one takes it seriously. This results in several wipes and the raid quitting after two or three bosses.

Last night however we were in 10 man Naxx for close to 5 hours with a mostly guild group. It was a lot of fun. I ended up offtanking as we had a bear tank that was slightly more geared than me, and that was an interesting experience. I think it might be harder to offtank than to main tank, as main tanking generally only involves grabbing a boss and holding it. The offtank runs around like a chicken with it’s head cut off gathering adds and protecting the healers.

We ended up clearing most of Naxx including the Construct Quarter, Arachnid Quarter, most of the Plague Quarter and then Sapphiron and Kel’Thuzad himself. He skipped Loatheb as it took us several attempts to get through the Heigan dance and it was getting late. That is when we decided to head straight for Sapphiron and KT.

Sapphiron wiped us the first time, as did KT, but we got both of them on the second try. Often throughout the raid I found myself the only person other than the tank alive on a boss, so I’d be healing my Prot specced butt off and it allowed us to succeed once, and pretty much just stalled the inevitable the rest of the time. Sadly the gear that dropped was WELL below the gear we had, so few people got any upgrades.

I’m looking forward to starting up my own raid group to work our way through Naxx, Eye of Eternity, VOA, Onyxia, Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader and eventually, hopefully before Cataclysm comes out, Icecrown Citadel.

Forum Fail – Blizzard and the People

Blizzard recently announced, and then retracted, their decision to make RealID (I.E. showing your real, full name for your account, to everyone) part of the forums. There were over 2000 posts about how horrible this was and how it would ruin peoples gaming experience. My opinion is slightly different than most.

You see, I am completely for RealID on the forums, and everywhere on the internet really. We all know that the reason the WoW forums and almost the entire internet is trollish and useless is because of anonymity. You give people the ability to do and say whatever they want without any consequences or even potential consequences and they will, 99% of the time, do terrible things.

I know why people are crying out against it, and there are three reasons.

1) They like to troll. This is probably in the majority. Sure they are posting on their level 80 mains about privacy, but it’s their level 1  trolling that is compelling them to do it.

2) Right to Privacy. This one is complete trash. If you are on your own web page, then sure you have a reasonable right to privacy. If you are on a public forum, just like being in a public place, you have given up your reasonable right to privacy.

3) The Danger. People have been railing against this because if people know your real name they will hunt you down and kill you. This is utterly retarded. Plenty of people know my real full name. Most of the people I work with, most of the people I go to school with, dozens of ex-friends and ex-girlfriends, half of the people my parents know, etc. I’m not worried about any of them tracking me down and killing me, and many of them live in or around the town I am in, not halfway around the world. You know WHY I’m not worried about them trying to kill me? A few simple reasons really.

1) Murder is a crime and most people do not want to go to jail.

2) It is a lot of effort to go through and if they are that insane AND dedicated they will soon rule the world.

3) I am a nice guy. I don’t call people asstards for no apparent reason and, while at parties, I don’t jump into conversations and just call everyone douches, throw my drink at people and then run around naked.

Having my real name on the internet, or on the WoW forums, does not exponentially increase my chances of dying. Might someone die because of it? Only in the since that people die because SOMEONE built a road that he was walking on when someone mugged and killed him.

I do however understand peoples complaints that it wasn’t always a requirement, and that to require it now is wrong, since many people are addicted at this point and would keep playing even if they didn’t like the rule. I just hope that they make this mandatory for their next MMO, and for ALL MMOs in the future. I was to see [CharacterName][RealLifeName] says “….” in chat from now on. Make people deal with the things they say and do.

Modern Warfare 2: Fail Server

I am officially done playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as of last night. It started out like any other, I made level 50 and was just having fun getting achievements and enjoying the fact that I was improving in the game after a very long time playing it.

Then I noticed that I was suddenly level 70 and had all of the achievements. Did I just enter into a state of perfect gaming and WTFPWN everyone until it happened without me even noticing? No. What happened was that apparently one of the servers I was on was a hack server, and it boosted me up like that. The only hack server I knew I was on told me as I loaded in, and I loaded back out immediately, so I don’t think it was that one.

Anyway, since you can’t really put in a ticket, and this seems to be a huge problem, the only way to fix it is to delete my character data from steam and start over at level 1, without access to any of the guns or abilities I had unlocked over the months of playing.

In short, some terrible person effectively ended my enjoyment of the game, all thanks to Modern Warfare 2 not using any dedicated servers. Instead it picks a person to host the server out of everyone in the match, and if that person is running hacks, then everyone who joined (without knowing mind you) gets screwed.

Maybe I’ll finally get Battlefield: Bad Company 2.