Loading ...A Triumphant Debate… again.
Emblems of Triumph are going to become the new drop-all Emblem in place of Emblems of Conquest when Patch 3.3 arrives.
I’m not surprised.
At Tankspot, some apparently are, they’re mad about it and the debate has began.
Why aren’t I surprised?
A year ago, raiders everywhere were lost and had no idea what to do with their time with only a few months until the expansion that we enjoy today would be released. The gear those raiders got in those few months wasn’t going to help them in Wrath of the Lich King. Sound familiar?
It’s not about gear.
Blizzard gets it
The fact is guys, I’m not a special snowflake and most of you guys aren’t either. Yes, Blizzard could remove Emblem gear altogether, but that still wouldn’t change that most of us aren’t getting world firsts. Yes, many of us have rightfully earned every single piece of loot we got at exactly the appropriate tier of content, but that still puts us a long ways behind those besting content days after it comes out.
Is it really worth holding back our new guild members, our alts and ourselves after a break from the game in order to look cool to those that have never stepped foot in a raid. If the only thing that separates you from those that haven’t raided is your gear, do you really deserve to be special?
It’s about accessibility and it’s a damn good thing.
Keep doing what you’re doing
News that every heroic or lower raid you run after the patch is going to work you towards superior gear to that of every heroic or lower raid you run now, should not stop you from doing them. Never mind that gems can always be bought with these Emblems, I can’t emphasize enough how valuable the experience is.
Do me a Favour
Be Happy.
Don’t ignore the experience you’ve acquired. Don’t devalue the joy you felt for getting the loot you got. Don’t forget about the contributions that the gear you acquired made for the time you had it.
And especially don’t throw a fit like a child and be pissed off because anyone will have an opportunity to show whether they’re actual good at the game. I’ll say it again…
If the only thing that separates you from those that haven’t raided is your gear, do you really deserve to be special?
October 8th, 2009 at 12:37 am
Hear hear!
I’m ambivalent about the change itself, but am happy to see that Blizz is doing exactly what they commited themselves to do with WotLK. Lets face it, they’ve kept their word better than any political party I could think of!
They said right from the start that they wanted to ensure that the vast amount of content would be ABLE to be experienced by everyone if they wanted to, with harder challenges available for those who wanted them. That was the reason behind the smaller raids being universally available for all instances. That’s also the reason behind all the badge loot systems that have come about in the last year or two. It’s the best way of ensuring that regular, average joes (like me :)) who has work, wife, and plenty of other commitments, still has SOME chance of seeing all the cool things that Blizz’s developers have worked hard to produce.
As Vene says experience and pleasure is the best thing to take away from WoW these days, not purple pixels. The game has changed… and for the better I feel.
Back in the day, 20 man raids were just about within my reach (and done extensively because of that :)), but 40’s?… no chance, saw most of Molten Core, largely through luck and being in the right place at the right time, but anything beyond that was totally out of my reach. I STILL feel annoyed that I was never able to (and never will) experience Blackwing Lair or AQ40 in all it’s “Damn! This is hard!” glory with every kill being hard earned and strived for. I also still wish I could have seen Naxx in it’s original state and seen for myself just how awesomely co-ordinated people had to be to beat it.
But… what’s past is past. At least now I can be fairly sure I’ll get to see all the various challenges I’ve spent 4 and a half years building towards.
Hearty pat on the back to Blizzard… maybe they should run for government?…
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October 8th, 2009 at 12:51 am
I completely agree with both the article and Laer. When blizz first announce the conquest badges for heroics, I was a bit peeved. I busted my butt to get the gear that I’d acquired and didn’t think it was fair that any moron with enough time on his hands could get the same. But then I started to realize that Blizz was doing this so everyone would have a chance to see everything this expansion has to offer.
So many awesome and well-designed encounters were missed out on by a vast majority of players back in vanilla wow. It probably felt like time wasted developing those encounters that so few got to see. But now, everyone will be able to see these fights. And like Laer said, there’s always the hard modes.
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October 8th, 2009 at 1:30 am
I will repeat what I said to some of my guild mates when there were mumblings of discontent at the Emblem of Conquest introduction for 3.2:
Is this going to adversely affect your enjoyment of the game, or rob you of your raid spot?
No and no.
Complaints come only from those who consider gear a statement of identity and something to define themselves with. I like to think I’m defined by more worthwhile things such as skill, experience and attitude.
What’s more important to you?
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Cleaved reply on October 8, 2009 2:12 am:
As I say in my post below… people will use this gear to mask how little they know about their class/spec. Because they can obtain it while knowing nothing at all and doing 1k DPS. This will effect PuGs the most, but Guilds just starting out will not know a bad player until they see them in action. Guilds well-established will have to tighten up recruiting or risk investing time in someone that has fooled them into thinking they know what they’re doing. You can no longer look at someone in Tier gear and say “that person Raids and has experienced this content” unless you Armory or have them link Achieves. Experienced Alts are one thing. Scrubs with no idea what they are doing, waste the time of people who like to have fun and enjoy the game as a function of understanding its mechanics and those of their class/spec. Carrying someone who is clearly not putting forth effort, is not fun.
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Vivilros reply on October 8, 2009 2:50 am:
This didn’t happen with the Conquest Badges being available from Heroics, and it won’t with the Triumphs either
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Clint reply on October 8, 2009 6:52 am:
I beg to differ.
Recruiting for my guild is much more difficult. I see someone that is about as geared as the average person in the guild and I think they would fit in nicely. Then the applicant attends a raid as a trial and sits nicely at the bottom of the dps charts with the tank. (and well below the tank on damage done due to being dead from the floor). But this is just an inconvenience. I have a different gripe with the way gear has become sooooo accessible that I will detail in a lower post.
Coniptionfit reply on October 8, 2009 1:25 pm:
The problem with your statement is that there is still alot of players out there who have been “carried” (for lack of a better term) by their fellow guildies. Just because they have the tier gear doesn’t mean they know the raid fights or even that they really know how to play their toons. I have run with quite a number of people that have had mediocre gear at best and they did exceptionally well simply because the had the skill to off-set their lack of epic gear.
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Cleaved reply on October 9, 2009 12:03 pm:
It’s true, some people are carried by friends/guildies, but what percentage gets that treatment versus the percentage that does it on their own via easy-to-farm emblems/heroics? If anything, loot-pinata like Onyxia, Vault and ToC5-man (reg. and heroic) compound the problem of Tier gear via easy emblems.
At the very least it takes a while for fresh-80’s to get enough emblems to build a decent set. Instead of spending that time learning how to play, most just bide their time until they get what is accepted as “enough epics” to get an invite to certain raids or guilds. Again, that is the main issue behind all this… that it makes it harder to determine who has a certain skill-set and experience. Some players are geared or under-geared and have knowledge and skill, but with gear so readily available to anyone with a pulse, most don’t fit that bill.
Eamonn reply on October 17, 2009 8:51 pm:
On the contrary, I find it much easier to judge a player in good gear than one in bad. If I group with a mage (a class I haven’t played much and thus don’t know all that well) in blue gear who does 1.2k dps in a heroic run I can’t tell if that mage is doing good or bad dps for his gear. On the other hand if I group with a full epic mage who is doing 2.5k dps I can tell straight away that he is not a very good player.
The classes are not balanced on DPS until they get into full epic gear, the sooner they do the sooner you can start to assess the quality of the player.
The only real problem I am seeing as a raider right now is that it turns out a huge amount of the player base were never bothered raiding in the first place. I play on a pretty well populated realm, in maybe the 5th or 6th ranked guild on the realm and we find it very very hard to recruit people. It is not that there are not tons of unguilded people running around in full epic gear, it is not even that there is a lack of skilled players in that mix. The biggest problem is that it turne out most players are happy to just have epic gear and could be bothered seeing the raid instance, nevermind stressing and working to get achievements and hard modes on the same bosses. I can’t say I blame them in many ways, after all why would they want to spend 3 or 4 hours a night wiping in raids when they can have gear that is pretty much the same from doing a couple of heroics every now and then.
The loss I feel, which I am sure is a loss many other more old school raiders feel is that the fun for me was never in the gear, it was always in the challenge. I enjoy a raid spent wiping on a new boss much more than a raid spent farming an easy instance. The problem for me is that it turns out that on a server of several thousand players there are at most a couple hundred with the time and inclination to do that. Hardcore raiders no longer have their raid numbers bulked up by casual players who just want the gear, those players now have a casual avenue to their gear leaving the hardcore raiders struggling to make numbers. So at a time when there is more avenues and ways to push yourself as a player than ever before, many raiders are finding themselves grouped with a lot of people who would rather farm the easymodes than wipe on the hardmodes. This leaves many old school raiders having very unsatisfactory raid experiences.
When wrath came out I was in a guild that had been going since classic. I levelled up rather slowly, took about a month to get to 80 and by the time I reached level 80 my guild already had naxxramus on farm status, having cleared it two weeks in a row without much hassle. This totally sapped my enthusiasm for the game. I had just reached lvl 80 and already there was nothing left to achieve. I always enjoyed the social aspect of raiding, you build cameraderie while wiping, I still remember our first Illidan kill because it came after such a long hard slog for us. Every new boss in BT took us a couple of raids to get past, we wiped on Illidan for three weeks before we finally got him down on the fourth. It gave us something to do, something to aim towards, a purpose to raiding if you will. The gear we got was only significant in that it pushed us slightly closer to crossing that next hurdle. When it became obvious that there were not going to be any significant hurdles to cross then the game lost a lot of interest for me. The gear was never an end, it was a means. This is where the game has changed for the worse, the gear is now the end. You have the means to kill every boss at your disposal so easily that the only reason to get better gear is the horrible, shallow, vain reason of having the best gear. You are farming the gear just to have the gear and not so that you can beat the next boss. The competition is gone, the thrill of working hard to kill that next boss is gone and in its place we are left to become the epic whores that we all hated from the beginning.
And therein lies the problem, when I first saw people wearing tier 2 way back in the day, yes, I wanted to have that gear but - most of all - I wanted to be a good enough player to be able to earn that gear. I know tier 10 is coming, and I know with a depressing certainty that I will be wearing that set in its entirety long before the next raid arrives. I believe I am a skilled and knowlegable player of my class. I believe that I do well in raids and work hard to ensure our success. The problem is I no longer believe that either of those things are nescessary. That makes the raiding I used to enjoy so much a much more hollow and shallow thing than it used to be.
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October 8th, 2009 at 2:06 am
“If the only thing that separates you from those that haven’t raided is your gear, do you really deserve to be special?”
What makes a player ’special’ is their level of understanding of their class and knowledge of current content. Currently, due to the ease of obtaining gear, it no longer serves as an accurate barometer of where a player has been and what they have accomplished.
WoW is a very very open book. You can find every minute detail about a boss fight or encounter online within DAYS of content going live or even on PTR. Yet you have people that obtain gear for this content, without an understanding of what the content is before they step into it.
Right now, the content has been made easier so Blizz can turn a better profit. More people reaching endgame with easier content, means less people quitting due to lack of being able to reach said endgame. It is a GOOD change, because 90% should be able to see endgame, instead of the prior 10%. However, the way they have made acquiring gear so easy, has lead to severely unprepared players stepping into content they don’t understand. People can reach a certain level and know nothing about that level of content, because they traveled through “lol ezmode” to get there. Running Heroics every day and being drug through while you do a bad job, all the while earning Epics and Tier 9 gear… does not make you a raider. It just makes it harder for people that know what they are doing to tell what you are until you join their group and show your ignorance.
Blizzard needs to steepen the learning curve a bit in Heroics, and revamp that content based on the level of gear people have now. Tune them up instead of down, and provide players with a challenge that forces them to develop some skills. Instead, they continue to add more and more “loot pinata” that give players a chance to play catchup even without Emblems (ToC5-man and Onyxia10/25). I like gearing my Alts up quickly, but I hate doing it with people that have no clue what they are doing and don’t want to listen when you tell them the right way. They assume because everything is falling in front of them with ease, that they have no reason to change anything they are doing. This is the only bad part about the current state of Emblems, Content tuning and Endgame.
* I have run multiple PuGs and even some runs with a guild that pugged me in to fill a spot… where people in DPS gear had DEF Tanking gear on in some slots. Others were in Quest Blues, missing sockets, no enchants or even had entire slots missing. This is the type of player I’m referring to. NOT to someone who has fully-enchanted, socketed epics and a spec that says “I know what I’m doing, give me a chance.”
The issue isn’t if people SHOULD take this time to get experience for the next level, it is whether they WILL take the time to do so.
Many people play this game and have fun, but they would have a lot more fun if they knew what they were doing and tried just a little bit harder. Getting a hit with regularity is much more fun than swinging the bat 700 times and never making contact, I would think.
After reading the Tankspot Forum post you linked, I have to agree with Lulia’s first post in that thread. I’m torn.
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October 8th, 2009 at 2:13 am
Well, I know people who have got close to full Tier9 already and they’ve never stepped foot into a raid outside of pugging VoA. All this change does is accelerate the rate of Emblem accrual.
If people are unhappy about this change, they can always fall back on the date they got their achievements if they need to feel better about themselves. Anyway, there are certain signature pieces besides shoulders and helms - for tanks I’m thinking shields and weapons specifically - that you can’t buy with Triumphs, they’ll remain out of reach unless you raid and get lucky (speaking as someone who lost out on Bulwark of the Royal Guard just last night!)
Seriously, people should have gotten over this when S1 and S2 (recoloured T4 and 5) went for BG honour, and *everyone* had “the raid look”. I’m confident enough in my ability and experience to know that “armor do not maketh the tank”; I don’t think those whining about this can say the same, really.
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Steele reply on October 12, 2009 1:47 am:
well jesus ive been running around with cyrils plate shield since like day 5 of Wotlk, talk about signature pieces; that would be mine. :/ and its not like ive only been to naxx or something, meh..
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October 8th, 2009 at 3:59 am
Fearing for the future of the game and the quality of its players is all very laudable. But if these people aren’t raiding with you, what’s the issue?
Generally when people say “I fear for the future of the game if it’s this easy to get gear” what they mean is “I’m upset because I don’t stand out anymore and therefore my effort’s wasted.” because WoW has always been about what the other guy’s wearing. Gear’s the only way to develop your character at level cap.
All that should matter is; are you having fun playing? If the answer’s yes, then your leisure time has been well spent, no matter what anyone else may be doing.
The days of inspecting the players in full T2 or T6 at the Auction House, knowing you’d never get that stuff, are long over. Thank God. I raid, I earned my gear “the hard way”. I don’t care that others can earn it “easier”, because the journey was fun for me. More fun than grinding heroics, for example.
Titles and raid drakes are the new, highly visible indication of progression. But guess what; they’re not that special either, depsite what all the, ahem, “AFKs” on Krasus’ Landing believe.
Vene said it best; no one’s unique.
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October 8th, 2009 at 4:57 am
I mostly enjoy 10-man raids and Heroic 5-mans. Mostly the latter. Because I prefer the smaller group content. I was done with Emblems of Conquest after 1 solid upgrade and 1 side-grade, so I’ve got a fair few stacked up and doing nothing. Which has resulted in me not wanting to run any heroics on my Warrior as of late. The thing I like so much about heroics is that I can run them when I feel like running them. I can come online and I can join LFG and stick my thumb out and instantly get a group or I can play with some friends if any are available. I can run the daily heroic for the Emblems of Triumph, and I can run VoA-10/25 for additional EoTs. It’s slow going, but I enjoy it. I can only enjoy it for so long, because I’ll eventually have everything from those emblems as well.
So I really like that Blizzard is switching over to a 2-emblem system instead of a 3/4/whatever emblem system. I can get the last tier of stuff very easily, and I can get one of the current tiers (But not the best one!) as well but much much slower than people who are raiding every week. It also allows me to gear up my alts faster, which benefits everyone that I group with more. It’s nice that there is gear progression through 5-mans or whatever your guild is running so that you can keep doing what you like in order to feel you’ve accomplished something rather than having to do something that you may not enjoy doing. Or rather it’s nice that you can see some gear progression while playing at your own pace and on your own schedule.
I think it’s great that Blizzard is allowing progression through so many different ways that fit well with so many different playstyles. It makes the game more fun and enjoyable, and well yeah it keeps people playing. If you’re a non-raider because of schedule conflicts or whatever it really sucks to just hit a brick wall and have no way of moving forward and results in very little desire to play. I’d know, it happened to me in Vanilla. :/
You can still tell the good players apart from the bad players. You can look at specs, gems, glyphs, etc to see if they know what they’re doing. Or if it’s really important to you, you can see if they’ve done hard modes for whatever tier of content, if they’ve got special mounts and titles, etc. The people who are doing the cutting edge stuff will always stand out from the other people at least a little bit. So I don’t think me and my alts having new shiny purples hurts players who have even more shiny purples. At least I can’t see any way in which it does.
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October 8th, 2009 at 5:13 am
I was a tank from the day that i dinged lvl 60 up to ulduar when i switch to dps.I want to thank blizzard for doing all the things that they are doing because they made possible for me to gear up and play an other side of the game that i currently enjoy.
I know that is hard to recruit proper people, but still is a lot better because if you have people that know how to play you can gear them faster.A good thing is that you can even reroll something else.
What blizzard made with the 10/25 heroic mode works very good for me because now you can see if he has gear.On top of that there are the achievements that everyone seems to miss out.What better tracking system then this.You have the date and what he did.So for raiders that are raiding now you don’t have a reason to be sad you made the achievements and that is living proof of experience.
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October 8th, 2009 at 7:45 am
As my warrior and priest are my alts, I am glad they dont have to be second class citizens in order to join the same content my mage enjoys. I do not have time to full time raid on any alts and I can only keep them so geared. Most of this gear is from badges. Yes even some of the best crafted gear is badge driven because that is often the only resource I have to purchase the required orbs. I welcome badges.
Elitists need to stick with their hardmodes and become completionists. Even if they complete every hardmode in the game they should step back and realize they are less than .6%(only basing this on anub25hardmode) of the gaming community. They can get on their highhorse and hopefully keep their opinion to themselves. Unfortunately you have about 35% of the community wishing/pretending they were/are elite. If they still want to wine and complain maybe they should focus one something harder and more challenging?(real life?)
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October 8th, 2009 at 7:46 am
I guess I should proof more… *whine instead wine …
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October 8th, 2009 at 8:05 am
Posts like this remind me why this blog is still on my feed reader even though i’m not playing the game anymore. Vene is one of the great minds in this community, and it’s always nice reading his calm and colleced analysis about things that would launch most other people on a fit of endless whining…
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October 8th, 2009 at 8:10 am
There’s basically two game designs that could be followed, and Blizzard has shifted from one to the other over the last five or so years:
Classic design: Content is relatively static in difficulty, and there is little or no gear inflation. Very slowly, new content of a higher tier of difficulty gets added. Players who reach the maximum level have to progress through each tier of content in turn. As they get progressively harder, players would end up spread out along tiers according to their level of commitment and skill, and beyond that progression would be very slow.
Advantages:
- There is lasting value in content and gear
- There is a well respected and stable scale of achievement
- All the tiers of content stay relevant and important at least to some
Disadvantages:
- The majority of players are excluded from high-end content
- Progression can become frustratingly slow or punishing
- This doesn’t scale beyond a few tiers, so expansions are problematic
WLK design: Content comes in timely patches. Once the new content patch arrives, the old content quickly declines in importance, and there is rapid gear inflation. Players who reach maximum level and seasoned veterans alike are supposed to play the latest tier of content. For new players this means that badge gear, raid difficulty levels, and such mechanisms make the latest content accessible. For veterans, gear inflation is the incentive to move to the new tier while hard modes answer the need for exclusive, challenging content.
Advantages:
- The whole player community is experiences the same tier of content.
- All the content is accessible to every maximum-level player.
- This system can support new content patches indefinitely.
Disadvantages:
- There is no lasting scale of achievement, other than realm firsts.
- It may encourage complacency. Come back next moth when it’s easy.
- It feels less like an MMO and more like a TV series with seasons.
Sooo, we’re on the WLK, like it or not. Icecrown has to be accessible to a fresh 80. OK they may have to equip quest blues and do a few heroics or Icecrown 5-player dungeons, but that’s it. The TotC raid and the badge changes are the gear reset between Ulduar and Icecrown, so that Icecrown is accessible.
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October 8th, 2009 at 8:37 am
I was a main tank for a middle of the road 25 man guild, but we recently broke up and our guild is now only capable of 10 mans. As part of this break up, we found ourselves stalled because we were short healers. We’re essentially now a casual friends guild, so recruiting isn’t an option (and likely wouldn’t yield results anyway).
Due to the heirloom items and new emblem system, I was able to level and gear my shaman for healing in 10 man Ulduar in about 6 weeks. That meant that on nights we’re short a healer I can hop on my shaman and have one of our DKs offtank instead of having 10 people sit around and do nothing.
That flexibility is why this system was put in place, not to hurt elitist e-peens or let skill-less people steal raider slots.
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October 8th, 2009 at 8:47 am
I’m a casual player. My guild runs 10 mans once week (if we can get enough people online). So, a lot of our members PUG raids to get the gear.
Unfortunately, our server is wrecked with the “Wow Heroes” score. Even for Naxx 25, you’ll get refused from a raid because you don’t have 2300+ score. Sad thing, gearing through emblems and gearing through the current toc/htoc gets you to 2200.
On our server, it doesn’t open the casuals to experience these raids. It puts us at the kids table with no way to eat at the big table. (Then again, guess I could just switch servers /shrug).
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October 8th, 2009 at 8:47 am
It is great for me who doesn’t have more than 5hrs a week that I can play and the badge system has helped my tank stay at a reasonable level on par with the rest of the raiders so I can step in and participate if I have the time and a raid spot is available. The downside is that as the next tier is released, a lot of the raids that I wanted to do and couldn’t are not run anymore because the loot is not worth the time and effort to get. Why would anyone want to do a 10/25 Malygos or Sarth when they can get the same number of badges and better gear from ToC 5-man or Icecrown 5-mans. All the hard work and effort put into designing and creating these raids make them obsolete. They get left behind quicker just like all the vanilla and BC raids and dungeons. Makes me kinda sad.
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October 8th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Making gear more readily available makes the game better overall. Yes, there will be baddies getting better gear and PUGs will suffer but good players and bad players will quickly be identified. I play on a high pop original server and every one knows who the true baddies are and which guilds are full of baddies.
Providing easier access to good gear allows good players to gear up alts and provide the missing peices that have not dropped and lessens the burden on Guild runs and loot councils.
Midway through Litch King I swithced from my tanking warrior to my Resto Shaman which I raid 4 nights a week on. On the weekend I like to play my warrior and while his gear is good enough to tank Naxx 25 and Ulduar 10 and can DPS through ToGC 25 I would like to beed up my tank set without griding thorugh Ulduar 15 times on non raid nights. I dont see a problem with this at all.
The people whom I run with know me and what I can and can not do and with gear being the limiting factor making me be able to upgrade easier makes it better for my group.
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October 8th, 2009 at 9:55 am
These updates that level the playing field are to help players catch up, and are for the good of the game I promise you. As a raid leader it becomes progressively harder and harder to replace players as they are forced to leave raids for one reason or another. There is a gear entrance requirement for new recruits, and every time they throw players a bone like this, it makes it easier on us the raid leaders to continue to recruit players to fill those vacancies.
I promise, this is a great thing for the continued health of your raid.
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October 8th, 2009 at 10:06 am
A few years ago, a guildmate gave me a piece of advice: an idiot in purple is still an idiot. I also like the previous posts about “gear alone doeth not a tank make”. When I see someone in LFG who’s boasting over their gear in order to get picked up, I will usually steer well clear of them, and I think most tanks do, as well. I’ve heard countless times in guildchat “we’re not picking up so-and-so, he’s an idiot”. I’ve never heard, “we’re not picking up whatshisname, his shoulders aren’t good enough”.
I’m comfortable with my own style and role to know that these “charity emblems” as some are calling them, will upset the top 10% of raiders, 25% won’t care either way, and the remaining 65% of WoW players will like it. I think Blizz is making the right move in making tier gear more accessible to the “average” player, but you still have to know what you’re doing in a group, even if it’s the millionth time you’ve run heroic UK and you can do it with your eyes closed. This change will decrease the discouragement that players feel when looking for armory upgrades and thinking, “Damn, I’ve got to run (insert applicable raid) for (insert applicable upgrade), and we’re nowhere CLOSE to that level”.
My guild knows me, knows my style, knows my habits, and, just as important, I know theirs. I know what I can tank, and I know what I have trouble tanking (I hate OT’ing the rubble from Kologarn, personally). My gear doesn’t have to be from ToC25 to know that I can tank it.
“Life’s a journey, not a destination”
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October 8th, 2009 at 10:24 am
In case no one has noticed, Emblems don’t sell weapons anymore (except the starting EoH weapons). If you want to feel special, flash your sword. In fact, this is the big difference between raiders and Emblemers. You have the sword and shield to prove you raid. You aren’t rocking that Peacekeeper Blade. You have a real weapon from a real raid.
As far as guild recruitment, can you really not tell that the person is only in Emblem gear? I’ve let a few Emblemers come on raids with me as a trial, but never a free ride into a guild.
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Cleaved reply on October 8, 2009 6:22 pm:
Any tanks starting now (1h Users) will have to wait until TotC 10 or Heroic 25 to get a tanking weapon, unless they go to H-ToC5 or Ulduar 10/25. The only option outside of that, are N25 runs for decent weapons that take longer to get than farming a Heroic. I wouldn’t say a weapon is a good barometer for current tanks just building gear. Most will rock the Peacekeeper Blade until they are able to get a lucky drop in 10 man TotC. I run 10 man TotC weekly on my Alt (Prot Pally) and have yet to see the tanking weapon. A good weapon will show you who has access to certain content or did at one time (Ulduar), but a worse weapon like Peacekeeper’s Blade doesn’t really mean they are a bad tank. Hell, I’m using Broken Promise and I have tanked H-TotC10, TotC10-reg. and TotC25-reg. as MT on my Alt.
Most of the posts here say Emblems are good and allow people to gear up. But a good portion of them also say that it will make “baddies” harder to spot, which is true. You now have to wait until you see someone in action and then boot them if they are bad. You can look at Armory for Achieves and Specs, but people get carried and specs can be copied from any website. Doesn’t mean they know what they are doing
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Alar reply on October 9, 2009 7:50 am:
Or they can just go to Ony 10 - Main tanked her last week on my naxx 10/dungeon blues gear tanked ilvl 200 or below in all slots who i retired about 4 weeks after the Lich king came out and got the shiny Quelserrar to drop.
I think the badges are a good idea if my guild needs me to tank up again i can just run spam heroics for a couple of weekends and get some decent crafted items from orbs from all the redunant badges my main has
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Cleaved reply on October 9, 2009 12:06 pm:
Yes, running heroics and using excess triumph emblems for offspec gear is pretty nice. I would rather struggle and wait for offspec loot, however, than gear up my offspec quickly amidst a bunch of people just out for epics they think immediately put them at “raider status.”
Belak reply on October 10, 2009 4:13 am:
So you agree that getting off-spec gear from badges is nice, but then you say you’d prefer to do it more slowly in raids only. I still just don’t get why this is a bad thing. As a dedicated raider, this is a way you can improve your raid performance for your guild outside of raids.
I’m just not seeing the down side.
In TBC, I spent lots of off-raid time farming mats for consumables for raids. Now in Wrath, the way I improve myself out of raid is by working for emblem gear, and the improvement is a lot stronger. If you don’t want to go this route and artificially limit yourself, feel free, but you’re going to get passed by those who are willing. *shrug*
Gravelayar reply on October 9, 2009 10:51 am:
Tanks in a 10 player guild should be running Flame 25 weekly with 10 players. Your tanking weapon will drop in short order.
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Cleaved reply on October 9, 2009 12:07 pm:
Good idea, for my alt I’ll hafta see if there is a weekly group going. I’ve sat in LFG while reading or listening to music for the past few weeks and no one is LFG or Forming groups for the most part. Blizzard did a fairly good job of killing off Ulduar as soon as Coliseum came out. People just aren’t that interested in it anymore, even just Flame Leviathan.
October 8th, 2009 at 10:47 am
I have to echo what the poster said above me, it’s about the journey not so much the destination. I’m certainly not in a top tier guild, most likely never will be. I consider myself a skilled player and most of my guild mates the same. That said, there’s always room for improvement and I still ask questions, still make sure I’m not over taxing the healers, looking at my numbers and that of the people I run with to see how we can improve.
There’s no question gear is important in progression raiding, but I once read a line early on when I started tanking that’s stuck with me to this very day. That being, skill is always greater than gear. I’ve run heroics with people in fully epic gear who didn’t know crap about how to play their class and alternatively run with people in mainly greens/blues who were very good. Judge the player on what he can do, not so much what color he is wearing.
Last night I got my first H. ToC piece from 10man, got the Dreadscale bracers. I was very happy of course, but even more happy as we proceed to down the next boss as well before we had to stop for the night.
Simply to say, I’ll leave the Emblem debate to others. I’ll trust in Blizzards judgment on what is the best course for gear. Sure it makes the vast majority of lvl 80 look good because they can sport alot of epic gear, it also allows them to see more content and helps to retain peoples interest in WoW. That’s a good thing I think.
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Storm reply on October 13, 2009 9:44 am:
The emblem loot makes raid content more accessible to the majority, which, since blizz is in this to make money, makes them very very smart.
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October 8th, 2009 at 11:23 am
I don’t understand why people are surprised and upset. The only mistake I feel Blizzard has made that they did not introduce the 2 badge system when Ulduar was introduced and waited until 3.2.
The current system allows people to gear quickly to fill raid spots in T8 content. The Triumph gear will allow people to be able to get into Icecrown. People who run ToC-10 and 25 and heroic versions of it every week will probably have EoTs coming out of their ears, just like I e.g. have EoC coming out my ears.
I love the accessibility of raids in WotLK. This will be the first time in any WoW expansion that my guild will be able to set foot into that final instance. The hardcore guilds are still getting their world firsts and hardmodes, and the Emblem system as of 3.2 and onwards allows guilds such as mine to be able to just actually experience content.
Thanks for posting this, Vene!
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October 8th, 2009 at 11:32 am
i like it, it saves alot of time. you can work with people, train them to help your guild.having better gear does not change this. it just makes it so you dont still h ave to run naxx to properly evaluate people
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October 8th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
I completely agree with this being a great thing, for both myself and others like me. I am quite happy with the small guild im in even though we, as a group, will likely never see the end game content. Blizz is giving those with the skill and desire to continue progressing the opportunity to continue doing so, even if it is as part of a PUG.
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October 8th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
“If the only thing that separates you from those that haven’t raided is your gear, do you really deserve to be special?”
Yes, we deserve to be special, because you said it yourself: it’s about the experience. Before the emblem gear, the only way to get geared was to have -at least some- experience. Granted, you could be getting ran through but you still can today. Now anyone can be geared for the latest instance in-game, which is cool I guess for those who don’t have the time to raid as much. For everyone else, the only thing left is the “experience” which is lame, why?
Because you can get experience of an encounter in a single run. You more likely need quite a few full clears of the said instances to be fully geared.
Then, yes we still need to be special because the experience is good, not good enough, because multiple clears for fragment farming or other gear drops, are eventually boring.
I don’t want this to end up just like Naxx1.0. I didn’t kill Illidan or Kill jaden and I wouldn’t have killed Yogg yet if badge gear wasn’t here. But what I say is: what’s wrong with not kill those bosses?
My own conclusions for w/e it’s worth:
- Vanilla was maybe too difficult to get to the last raid
- BC was good
- WoTLK too much content trivialization
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October 8th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
How does someone else having gear affect you at all?
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Elunesbuddy reply on October 9, 2009 8:53 am:
It does not. But “raiding” I mean, “FARMING content to get some special drop or get mats for high-end crafted gear for your guild” gets completely trivialized whenever emblem gear gets updated and when mats are readily available for a certain amount of emblems.
If you are in a position where it takes months to progress through the latest instance in game: you are happy. gear will help you clearing the last bosses in there, if any left.
If you are in a top raiding guild and aim at server firsts and such, you don’t really care because by the time the emblem gear is available you have fully cleared the content with your 7th alt.
If you are in between, it sucks. You have cleared multiple times the content to get fully geared and when it’s done and you feel ready to access the next raid, you realize that you could have spared 3/4 of those raids - the 1/4 being the fun and progressing part of it, 3/4 being the farm status raids. why because you could have obtained the same gear, pretty much, by farming heroics for less than a week.
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October 8th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
great post, totally agree. you don’t win the game by getting all the epix. if someone starts to QQ about it, i just ask them this question:
do you raid for gear, or do you gear to raid?
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Cleaved reply on October 8, 2009 6:31 pm:
Everyone should gear to raid, but I don’t think that is the issue. The issue is: people getting gear with very little effort makes it hard to see if they are a good raider at all. Gear helps you survive and make content manageable, but it is not a substitute for skill. Raiding is what is fun, and I think most people should be able to enjoy that, I just wish Blizzard made it harder to get some gear. In doing so, they would force people to learn more on the way up to Raiding, instead of just being carried.
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marklar reply on October 9, 2009 10:42 am:
it makes no difference to me what gear other people have. why should it?
if i want to try and evaluate a PUG pickup, i check achievements… how many yogg kills? how many hard mode kills? that is a much better indicator than some arbitrary “gear score”.
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Cleaved reply on October 10, 2009 8:47 pm:
Achievements are a great way to check, depending on content. A lot of the old content is PuG-able and quite a few people are scraping up old achieves. If you are vigilant and check dates, it helps. Everyone should check achievements, but checking them is a lot of leg-work for a PuG, but only due-diligence for a Guild. You make a good point, Achieves should be checked, however, this doesn’t necessarily go towards the point at hand. If gear is easier to get, you can check achieves and more and more people will NOT have achieves, because they got the gear they have without doing the actual content. You can then discount these people and not invite them to guild. However, if they weren’t so able to pickup gear with ease, then they might actually have the achieves, or at least more experience before they applied. This system makes people bypass achieves, and therefore hurts the overall recruiting pool of players.
October 9th, 2009 at 12:46 am
I wanted to take part in the community here.
First of all, thanks for the excellent material available through the site and the comments as well. I appreciate the efforts, and value the information.
Then, my personnal feeling about the emblem system is that the emblem systems works well for the guild I raid with (I am the current raid leader). Naturally, there are some terrible players on the server, which canaquire decent gear, but it doesn’t prevent the other one to have fun. If you play with them in Pugs, then so be it. I think their gear level barely makes up for their lack of (skill/dedication/interest/time, pick the one you think relevant). It just make recruitment a little more difficult, and make a test period almost mandatory for the “high level” guilds.
Lastly, I would appreciate a dedicated topic on crafted items. Because our guild is quite small, and we mainly tackle 10 man content, without hardmodes at the moment, we rely on craft a lot. By the way, we have several player who enjoy this part of the game as well.
Best regards,
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October 9th, 2009 at 5:46 am
I like the fact that this will make it possible for me improve the gear of my alt(and offspec gear on my main). This doesn’t bother me half as much as the Emblem of Conquest change which was a bit annoying for a dedicated 10-man raider since it was possible to have better gear in some slots from running only heroics than from raiding only 10-man Ulduar even if we include hardmodes.
Since Emblem of Triumph drops in both 10 and 25 man ToC and most “serious” raiders of both 10 and 25 man raids will already have better gear in most slots when the Emblem of Triumph change comes i like it, it makes it easier to gear for offspec and alts and the people who have taken a pause in their raiding will be able to get to an acceptable gear level without having to be dragged through old raids 11229 times.
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October 9th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Gear used to the be both the reward for defeating the boss and the way by which others measured themselves. People could look and see what bosses you had defeated by seeing the gear you were wearing so doing the raids served a dual purpose.
People enjoy raiding both for the gear and the sense of accomplishment. Blizz has moved from a literal system (i.e. killing bosses) to a more numbers-based system of achievements.
I think most people that play games are competitive people, they like to take on the challenges and savor the satisfaction of conquering that challenge and the respect that came along with it.
While I think the badge changes are a good idea and have helped me. I do think it takes something away from the skilled players. My guild never got past Mag and Gruul in BC and to the others who went to SSC and beyond, they set the standard. When you lower the bar for that standard I think you decrease the quality a little.
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October 9th, 2009 at 11:02 am
I don’t like it. I’m not going to rant or get upset, but I don’t like it.
Really, what bothers me the most isn’t letting the emblems of triumph fall from the trees, its that I don’t get enough time to enjoy the game with what I consider a “well geared” character. There’s no break from the gearing grind before the next ones starts. The pace that Blizz releases content patches is just too fast, IMO.
My tank has ended up being my alt since 3.2 came out and I have been running a healer instead. I was just beginning to get some playing time on the tank again in the last week or so from PUGs. The tank was pretty well geared by 3.1 standards but is now mediocre at best by 3.2 standards. I was just about to start farming for gold to get the crafted bracers and chest but now with talk of 3.3 coming I cant justify the time I’d spend farming to get those 12 crusader orbs and titansteel bars. I might as well wait for 3.3 and skip 3.2 gear.
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Cleaved reply on October 9, 2009 12:12 pm:
Agree, content is coming too quickly. They have started to cater to the 90% of players and get them into raids with more ease, however they have also catered to the 10% that go for “firsts” and hard modes before nerfs. Releasing content at this pace seems like it is geared towards appeasing the guilds that quickly chew up and get burned out on existing content. If 3.3 is truly on the not-to-distant horizon, then it seems as though it came along much faster than 3.2 after Ulduar was around for a while.
Pump the brakes, Blizz.
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Clint reply on October 9, 2009 1:32 pm:
Remember though, in BC blizz was criticized for taking too long with new content. Everyone was up in arms about how long it took for each tier of raiding to come out.
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Veneretio reply on October 9, 2009 1:56 pm:
I don’t see how there’s too much content. I don’t even know if that’s possible. I think the issue is needing to keep up with content or expecting to complete it all. It seems like a lot of guilds need to stop keeping with other guilds and start making choices of what’s best for their guild. What’s best is not always what’ll get you the best gear or what’ll make you look the best on the realm forums.
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Cleaved reply on October 10, 2009 7:27 am:
This is exactly my point. Some guilds (with the rapid updates) barely finish (if at all) the current tier before moving on to the next. I was in a guild just waiting around for new content, and it still felt rushed to me. The no-trash, 4-mode, one big circle of bosses that they made Coliseum seemed like a stop-gap measure. It really is one of the most, if not THE most, simple instances ever built, and really doesn’t look like it took much effort. Like a snack tossed to us until they finish Ice Crown.
I just think Blizzard has overshot in their goal to listen to players more. As I said above… pump the brakes, and give people some time to not only finish content, but use it fully to prepare for the next. To me, this is the only really good thing about the Emblem situation, as it allows you to finish building up for the next tier. I still believe the major downside is people getting ushered into new content before they are ready.
Machus reply on October 13, 2009 8:21 pm:
I agree that content is coming too fast. I was enjoying Ulduar on my mage, and we were just starting on hard modes, but now it’s irrelevant. The current TotC tier is boring, and only good as a stop gap till Icecrown really.
On the plus side, since TotC and Onyxia only take a day, I’ve finally leveled my tank. It’s a good pause.
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October 9th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Then they should make the content harder. They have it good with the Hard Modes. Why wouldn’t they made Hard Modes harder and slow down the pace at which new content is introduced.
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October 9th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
I look at badge gear as a sign of effort. If an app has 400 badges worth of gear + gems, you better believe he/she earned it. You’re talking about at least 100 runs - which if nothing else shows that they are willing to work - something every raid crew could use more of.
So what if someone buys a full set of iLevel 232 tanking gear + thrown weapon, ring and trinket from heroics? At a cost of 350 Emblems, not only will it take a lot of runs but if you raid you’ll be picking up T10 - so why do you care? Not only that but the new 5-man content is going to drop iLvl 232 & iLvl 245 gear in heroic - making every other instance in the game obsolete the day 3.3 goes live.
Raiding for gear is really missing the point, and stupid. Stupid because it’s very temporary - sooner rather than later it will be a “bank slot epic”, I’ve 8 tiers of content worth of those at this point
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October 9th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Badge gear is a good thing. It keeps old content still valued. People will still do heroics, Naxx and so on because of badges. That being said, the TBC model was a better system than the current Wrath system. In TBC we saw the same badge from everything. We also saw HIGH prices for everything of use. However, the biggest thing that the TBC system did was fill itemization gaps for most classes. It did not strive to gear everyone in pieces of Tier gear. It strived to fill the wholes in the raid content’s itemization. Sure you could gear an alt in full badge gear and be effective, but that was not the intent.
I really do hope that in Cataclysm that Blizzard rethinks the entire endgame yet again. Stop with the “accessible” raid content, give us challenges that take time and effort from the get go, instead of giving us artificially “challenging” hard modes such as Hodir or Steelbreaker.
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October 9th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
The whole badge debate bums me, but I can also see and understand the otherside. My view is that, I only have the one main, I don’t work on my alts, and I’m always getting the best gear possible to me. So I put in all this effort, when people cruise in with easymode loot. That said I don’t really care either way, it’s not like I haven’t farmed 40 or so runed orbs myself for guildies and the likes.
That aside, I think if they were to do it right, blizzard should scale all heroics upwards with each tier of gear, and then have them drop higher ilevel epics.
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Cleaved reply on October 10, 2009 7:33 am:
This wouldn’t be a bad idea. Scale-up Heroic Epic and Rare loot just as they did with Onyxia loot. Not making it overly amazing, but give people a better starting point. Don’t make it an amazing update, just bring the same stats and put the ilvl on par with one raid tier behind the current. This would go a long way towards helping people gear up (and properly) while also not starting them out with half the gear you’ve been raiding for. Maybe they could change some stats on those epics and rares as well, instead of the ilvl. Perhaps make sure that if you collect every piece, you are hit-capped, with decent expertise, defense capped, etc.
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Veneretio reply on October 10, 2009 1:51 pm:
How would a brand new 80 do Heroics ever then?
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Cleaved reply on October 10, 2009 8:41 pm:
I didn’t say to increase the difficulty of heroics, just scale-up the loot in EVERY heroic, instead of adding a single heroic loot-pinata (aka ToC). Then, you would have more people running the actual Heroics for starter raid gear and getting experience, instead of just running the daily every day for current-tier raid gear. Not perfect, but it would lead to players gearing properly via running ALL heroics instead of 1 per day. Heroics are not hard, and you don’t need emblem/heroic gear to do Heroics. Therefore, I put your own question back to you, how would a new 80 do Heroics? (assuming heroics were actually hard)
If someone needs to do heroics to get T9 just to raid, then they are doing it wrong. This would only be the case if they needed T9 to do T10 content.
Just up the gear ilvl from heroics and allow people to work towards gear that way and leave current-tier gear to raiders, and prior tier and heroic drops as the “jumping off point” for new raiders.
If you can’t do current tier content in 8.5, then you don’t deserve to be raiding, since everyone had to start it in 8.5, since you couldn’t get T9 from day one
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Veneretio reply on October 10, 2009 11:18 pm:
I was referring to Erabie’s comment which implied upping the difficulty.
Belak reply on October 11, 2009 4:55 am:
Cleaved:
“If you can’t do current tier content in 8.5, then you don’t deserve to be raiding, since everyone had to start it in 8.5, since you couldn’t get T9 from day one ;)”
I realize this was a bit tongue in cheek, but it still gets to the heart of your issue with this change. That’s the exact same argument, though, as “If you can’t beat the bosses the way they were released, then you don’t deserve to beat them ever and Bliz should never nerf them.”
We all know this isn’t Bliz’s approach. They have always taken the route of releasing bosses fairly hard so the hardcore guilds can have a challenge and then nerfing them over time so more people can get them down as well.
This emblem change is simply the same song, just a different verse.
Cleaved reply on October 11, 2009 8:54 am:
Apologies, I misread the reply-thread, Vene.
Erabie reply on October 12, 2009 3:46 am:
Increase the gear level drop from normal instances, I don’t know about you guys but it’s like 1/1000 lfgs are looking for a normal instance. It would be nice to see them get some use…
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October 10th, 2009 at 2:08 am
Here’s my opinion.
Is Blizz doing the right thing by changing the minimum badge level. IMO, no. I think they are stepping it too fast. Last change should’ve given everyone valorous, with daily H giving conquest. And this patch should give conquest/daily H triumph.
Why?
Well. The last emblem change just about destroyed my raid group. I have a dedicated 10 man group. We ran every week for three or four nights a week, trying our best to clear Uld. When the patch came out suddenly everyone wanted to do heroics. Why bother raiding Uld when you can get better gear by doing heroics, and get it faster.
Luckily my group was keen to see ToC10 and finish Uld. But. We still haven’t finished Uld. The motivation was lost with ToC10. ToC was highly accessible, relatively achievable, and dropped the best loot. But the emblem change still cost us dearly. Nearly three weeks of limp wristed raiding, all because everyone was off farming heroics.
And this is set to happen again.
Gripe #2.
Is the content more accessible now? Yes. 100%. Anyone can gear up and have the gear to raid the newest content. It’s a pity 50%+ of them lack the knowledge and skills needed to successully raid the new content.
This fact just about tore up the guild. A number of our casual players got geared up and then (since they had the gear) felt they were entitled to run with the core raid group.
So we ran a few raids for them.
An lo and behold, the groups either failed miserably, or the only survivors at the end of a fight were the core raiders. I’m not saying they don’t deserve to see the content, and these changes are great for helping them. But IMO it is just breeding a group of players who feel entitled to something they have not earned and are not truly capable of doing.
FLIPSIDE.
We have also recently re-mained a few guild members. Having decided to change mains we were able to get them back up to the level required to run with our core group.
That was nice.
So. Back to original point. I think making content an gear more accessible is good. But please can we slow the gravy train down. The newbies in the world need to learn how to walk before they can run.
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Veneretio reply on October 10, 2009 1:59 pm:
I see this come up time and again, but ultimately, it’s about leadership. You have it within your power to slow the train down. If you can’t slow down the train because you don’t have the people then the issue isn’t the game giving out too much loot, it’s recruitment.
Better gear only breeds bad players if bad leadership let’s it. It’s a hard truth to face, I know, but at some point as a leader, you have to accept that what you say and do matters. You are not helpless. You have some control over how Blizzard’s changes affect your group.
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Bhigbhiggrr reply on October 10, 2009 8:19 pm:
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Here’s my story…
My “A” raid group (of which due to real life I am no longer a part of) was formed by me and run by me. I had 10-12 people consistently turn up, on dates/times we collectively decided and we raided. We spent hours together wiping and killing (four hours wiping on the first boss in Naxx was awesome!). We learned to play together and blah blah blah. Most of us will “know” the rest of the story.
Now the guild has around 30 potential raiders. All level 80, all with good badge gear. But only the core 12 of them have done a lot of raiding. We have been trying since before Ulduar to form a second group of 10, and to start running guild 25s. But unfortunately everyone’s play times vary and we’re haven’t had much luck. We pick up skilled and talented recruits who make promises to help form raids. Good, nice people with the gear, the experience and the skill.
(why am I mentioning all this…)
Well. The second group has never worked out. And the main reason is lack of dedication. Most people can’t even seem to turn up for one night a week to raid. BUT, those same people now have all this flash gear, and you know what, they EXPECT to be given raid spots. But as a responsible Raid Leader, should I give a spot to someone who has no raid experience, and is almost guaranteed to turn up for ONLY one night, just because they are “technically” geared enough?
I have spent hours trying to help build a second raid team, and have gotten so close. The last time the big killer was the lack of experience. I was in the group (Uld), working with them, giving up my Raid ID and time. Only to see wipe after wipe. And why? Because all those geared/unskilled people could not work together, and could not stick to the tactics.
But would they take my suggestion go to naxx for a bit of learning? No. It was below them, because they had the gear to raid Uld.
A little experience goes a loooong way.
And so I say again, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Now I am going to dedicate my time (what little I have available) to making the second group. A group that will be all beginners. I will take them through a training ground (Naxx) and reward them with harder content. Why? Because if I don’t do it. No one else will.
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Veneretio reply on October 10, 2009 11:17 pm:
But that’s just it, you never led them to water. You said, let’s do Naxx and they said no. This is the point where you have to put your foot down and say you aren’t doing Ulduar in this guild until you’ve done Naxx. You have to be willing to lose people. I think this is your biggest issue. You are in a rush to get to the 25 man level, but you aren’t willing to put your foot down and make sure you have the people you want for that.
Keep recruiting aggressively, don’t be afraid to lose people and don’t be afraid to wipe. Just because you weren’t 1 shotting Ulduar bosses you thought were easy doesn’t mean they weren’t learning. If you don’t like them hobbling their way through Ulduar bosses then call for wipes once things aren’t going well. If they don’t intentionally wipe, you call the run.
You have a vision, I can tell. I think you just need to have the guts to stick to it.
Bhigbhiggrr reply on October 11, 2009 3:17 am:
I agree and disagree. I feel I did lead them to water.
I wanted to get everyone in the guild (who wanted to raid) involved. So I found enough people to form a solid raid group that would be capable of doing Uld (with some practice and experience), offered them “A group” time and experience to help “train” those new to raiding and offered advice when their runs were not going so well. The group had the potential. They had a Raid leader with experience and enough well geared people. But this was also their downfall.
You simply cannot control people’s attitudes. Their unwillingness to go back to something like Naxx to learn was part of the problem, as was their gear. A common statement on vent was (paraphrased slightly) “come on, we have the gear, just stop dying.” I sound like a broken record, but they were just not willing to accept going back to naxx primariy because of the gear they had. Most of them felt that the T8/T8.5 gear they had meant they should have been able to clean up Ulduar.
To add insult to injury, the more casual players were just unwilling to raid on a set schedule. Again, they wanted (and fairly so) to play when they had time. But this would often mean they were asking to either
A) Join the A group on their progression raids
B) Get me to form their raid group on their individual schedules
(Again with the broken record) I don’t mind helping out, but I too still wanted to play the game myself. I don’t pay $15 a month to play task scheduler for 40 other players.
And again some of the same old culprits felt they should be allowed to run “leading edge” progression just because they had T8/T8.5 gear. These more casual players would not turn up to a second night’s raiding and, more often than not, would not survive more than a minute in the encounter. And I cannot blame them for too much of that. They are allowed to play on their schedules, and they die due to lack of experience. But this was always to the detriment of the experienced raiders, who now have an unenjoyable night.
To be brutally honest I have little/no personal interest in running 25 man raid groups. It is a larger commitment than I had/have time for (especially since I was still running my 10 man group as consistently as possible). But for the sake of those in the guild who want to, I continue to try and reach that level.
Don’t misunderstand, I do not ignore the situation, and do not give it an only half hearted effort. But I find the badge changes are exacerbating the situation where the casual and part time players are feeling entitled to get in on raids to which their experience and skill level do not match. If you tell them otherwise they often get huffy. But rather than finding a solution that suits them, they opt instead to repeat the request next time they are online. Pre badge change these people were looking for Naxx, post badge change one they wanted Uld. With the next badge change they’ll want H ToC and/or Icecrown. And I think for the some (majority?) of these people, they will not be able to successfully raid that level.
As a now part time raider, I doubt I will be able to see the end of Icecrown before the next expansion. And I accept that. Maybe I’ll get lucky, maybe I won’t. But I understand that my inexperience cannot be COMPLETELY compensated for with the latest badge gear.
As a quick side note. We’ve never been afraid to lose people. We do not tell people how they should play. We encourage all of our members to find a place in the World (of Warcraft) that suits their style of play and level of commitment, even if that means they leave us. And as much as possible we encourage everyone to “Give it a go”. The only thing stopping most of them, is themselves. We cannot and do not help those who do not try to help themselves.
(I’m betting some of that sounds contradictory, but that’s just an issue with forums/blogs. You can be expected to know our in-game dynamic…)
Bhigbhiggrr reply on October 11, 2009 3:35 pm:
hmm.. Sleep does wonders for proof reading. My last line should read “You CAN’T be expected to know our in-game dynamic”
Oort reply on October 13, 2009 8:21 am:
I understand what’s going on there, i’m in a somewhat similar situation. I am GM of what started out as a casual social guild.
I joined as MT during 2.3, we started Kara and when things finally got rolling the old GM and offtank quits the game, dumps the guild in my lap and a couple of the better raiders decided to go too.
We finally got it back together in 3.0 and we got to clear the lol version of ZA. Wich was actually a good thing, because 2 “pve sucks” pvpers changed their mindset because of it and are 2 of my most valued raiders now.
Then Lich King hit, we all leveled up to 80 and started out in Naxx 10, later on progession got slower due to RL stuff of some raiders and hard time getting recruits and decent pick up players, mostly since our only raid night is monday.
Now things are back on the role, we killed Mimi last night and i hope to clear Ulduar next week (/cheer for the lock out extend)
In the mean time some slow levelers catched up and even though we’re not actively recruiting, we’ve expanded quite a bit and have loads of times that 20+ 80ies are online. Now we lack healers for 25 man content, but they could be recruited, the reason why i wont is because the 80ies who aren’t in our “A” group have the exactly the mentality you described above.
They lack total experience in raiding, i tried to set up newb /alt groups to get them experience, it mostly turns out to be alts because the newbs/noobs (guildranks, my guild is called Noob World Order) just dont want to go through naxx, or even Ulduar, they only start begging for a raid spot on monday night, and with 15 “A” players it’s hard enough to keep a clean rotation going.
(Tanks are set, 2 healers switch weekly, i’d rather have totems and bloodlust on progression fights than not, ret palla is good for AP reduction etc etc)
And actively recruiting healers and players for 25 mans means I have to guarantee them an actual raid to go on, and with a mindset of these noobs I’d just waste their time, and my own for that matter, cause we’re starting to do quite well on strictly 10 progression (relative to server ofc).
I’ve tried several setups, but imo were it comes down to is they want to be carried through the “cool stuff”, wich is still quite hard for ourselves, and don’t want to experience “true” progression, like wiping 3 hours straight on a boss (Mimi you’ve been the biggest pain so far) and then finally achievement ding! yelling and screams over vent, he’s dead.
I will keep trying though…
Bhigbhiggrr reply on October 13, 2009 2:14 pm:
Your mention of Mim reminds me of a prime example of the (as I call it) “Unusual sense of entitlement” some casual players get with having near current tier level gear.
Our “A” group was running well over 50% T8/T8.5 (and equivalent) gear, and had just down general for the first time. All this j-u-s-t before the emblem change. With the emblem change we decided to check out ToC each week, clear what we could then head back to Uld.
We picked up a few new members, mostly (as it would turn out) casuals. Which we don’t mind. They normally want to run heroics, or VoA/OS, maybe a Naxx farm for some kicks.
But one individual, a couple of weeks after the emblem change, asked to come on our A group Uld raid. We’d just cleared the available bosses in ToC, and had cleared up to Mim. Now for us Mim and General are not “farm” content. We still struggled on Mim, had seen General twice, and cleared him once.
The person whispered to me, saying all they wanted was Mim and General for loot. Fair call? Yep, sure, everyone wants loot. Except that they had never been past XT, and we were not in a position where killing Mim is considered easy (we still made plenty of mistakes).
And yet they still felt justified in telling me “we should take them, they had T8.5 gear now”, and “the others in the group didn’t need the loot, they had lots of gear”, and (best one) “it was JUST Mimiron and General, not Yogg”.
Someone might argue, that the person might turn out to be an incredibly good player. And that could’ve been true. Except the next week we let them in on some of the keepers. I think they lasted 30secs on Hodir, and about 1 minute on Freya. All due to inexperience. Luckily even down one person the group was still able to clear both bosses.
October 11th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
I think a bigger issue now is “Gear Score” - which doesn’t take into account anything significant, or even if someone has the *right* type of gear on, or gems, or enchants.
I see people with “high” gear scores pulling in low dps, or not following strats, dying early, or otherwise playing their class well. Last night I did the Heroic Daily (Nexus) and was # 2 on DPS, #1 in overall damage, and # 2 in healing - as a warrior tank up against a hunter, a mage, and a druid.
I’m seeing capable players being left out of raids or heroics because their “Gear Score” is “low”.
I think an article on the harmful affects of this for pugs and raids would be beneficial.
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October 12th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
That last line is sure to burn more than one “hardcore” raider, lol
Great post!
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October 12th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I agree that all game content should be accessible to most players, but I also agree that for the hardcore, dedicated player, there should be some “tangible” benefits.
Take me for example, I play about 6 hrs per week, have played since the first installment (I also played Warcraft, Warcraft II and III). I have a wife and son, and busy work schedule, and have never been able to play the end-game content because I was undergeared. I have a “WOW plan” of progression for my toon that I slowly work on week in/ week out so I become a better player and obtain the requisite gear. I do this because I want to experience the best content in the game. It has taken me most of the year to be ready to start to do raids, and I deserve to do them, I pay exactly as much for the content as anyone else. As someone above mentioned, achievement dates automatically differentiate the better players, but I do think though that Blizz should attach some tangible benefits to some of those utlra-high level achievements. The current emblem system is the first system in which part-time but knowledgeable players can progress (over a much longer period of time) towards end-game content. After 5 years of play, I did my first 25 man run last weekend and had a blast.
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Erabie reply on October 12, 2009 4:20 pm:
I agree that some raids instances should be accessible, but there has to be a line drawn at some point. I mean how ridiculous is it going to be:
“I am Arthas, the biggest and baddest WoW villain, WHAT?! ARRRGGHHH you’ve slain me with an ilevel 200 weapon”
Alot of the problem I have with the current system is that there isn’t a feeling of progression, it’s more of a restart. What is going to be worse though, is being that t9 is accessible through emblems, which means even the most casual of casuals will be able to pick it up in time, which also means that there isn’t going to be that big of a variety of item models running around. It’s going to look like something out of clone wars.
One thing that I like about MMOs WoW included is the character customization through looks, t9 was like a homogenization of this. Now that everyone will have t9 it’s going to all go to hell.
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October 12th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
I left a reply on the TS thread (page 4, #64).
Basically -
There are (IMO) 4 types of players that are not raiding ToC right now. Players fall into 1 (or more) of the following categories; does not have a raid-permitting play schedule, lacks proper raid level skills, or just plain doesn’t want to raid.
The 4th type of player has the 3 above raiding requirments, but maybe started late in the game. Maybe they started playing when WotLK was released, and it took them a bit to level to 80 and learn their class, etc. These players are a very small minority, and there are ways to help boost their gear set to allow them access to the higher raids other than giving them free raid level gear for running a handful of heroics.
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October 13th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
How i loath the “I have the gear so let me join your guild/raid” players, so many applications from characters with close to zero raid achivements and while they might be great players it’s damn hard to know if they cant even be bothered to go throuh Naxx/Ulduar to show it. And i prefer not to have to drag them in to a ToGC group and waste 5-10 trys to find out they don’t have a clue about how to raid.
I do however wish that Blizzard would release a new 5 man dungeon with better loot everytime a raid is release so that people who can’t or don’t want to raid (and me on non raid nights) could get something new to do, preferably the new 5 man dungeons would be the only place to get better emblems(and daily quests) but always have a minimum of 5 bosses( or split in to wings like the Icecrown 5-man with a total of atleast 5 bosses) so that the new emblems can be gotten in a decent pace and possibly upgrading the lowest emblem every tire after the second, ( when a 5 man with conquest comes old HCs drop Valor, when a HC with Triumph comes, old is changed to Conquest and so on).
(I don’t really know what the point of this post was but i am sure i had a good idea when i started)
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October 13th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
I like the fact that I can run 5-man content and occasionally 10-man content and feel like I’m progressing my character. I applaud Blizzard’s efforts to open up more of its content to casual players, since they’ve spent so much time creating it for us. I think that I know my class very well, I can play it skillfully, and I can operate in a raid environment, and I can dodge burning poo just fine. I like that I play the game on my schedule, not a raid leader’s or guild’s, and not have to spend 3+ hours at a time playing unless I absolutely want to. Everyone here who’s sat in their chair waiting for someone to come back from their smoke break or with their microwaved pizza or whatever knows what kind of pain I’m talking about.
I also like the fact that for the dedicated raiders that are willing to commit to it, there will be signature items for them to proudly display (as posters have previously noted). I find this similar to the Arena PVP system, where some rewards are reserved for the best of Arena PVP teams. And I accept that for those players, such rewards will come for them long they will for casual players.
In short, I like that Blizzard lets me play the game as a casual player and succeed, without having to make it feel like an obligation.
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October 19th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Honestly, most of the people here complaining are people who are very casual. Not hardcore.
I mean I pity you I have a wife and kid and job… Sounds to me like maybe you should be playing games that have a pause button.
Casual people pay the same as us and want to do the same as us. WRONG! Casual people do not want to put the time into it that hardcore people put into the game.
I like the way blizzard has set it up. Really, its so balanced.. I get to do hard modes, and see fights like alagon. Casual people don’t.
You know I used to awe at people and respect people to a degree because of the gear they wore. You could inspect someone and know that that person has alot of time invested into their character.
I do agree with the badge system. I more agreed with it back in BC than I do now. It is literally a joke to people who spend uncountable hours gearing and preparing their character. Making every raid. Sacrificing so much to be called the best to have some guy who did no work except run a few heroics to be able to get loot.
Then you want to see the content… Then find a casual guild or u-tube fights. Why should you see content that you have clearly not worked to see.
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Veneretio reply on October 19, 2009 7:51 pm:
This comment is very close to what I consider unacceptable here as it’s borderline trolling. If you take issue with this comment, feel free to contact me, but please, resist the urge to personally attack this commenter if you don’t like what he’s saying.
As to you Jacks, try to focus on the actual debate in the future and steer clear of points like your “pause button” statement. In general, always be cautious with the use of the labels casual and hardcore when trying to contribute to a debate as they are relative terms that mean different things to different people.
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October 19th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Hi - first time poster here, but I’ve been reading for a while.
I only just hit 80 the other day with my first tank who is my first toon who is a prot warrior. I’ve leveled prot and done 5-mans most of the way up, pretty much whenever I could find a party. And I think these emblems are absolutely *terrible*.
Why do I think they’re terrible? For the flip perspective of what a few of you here have complained about. Because they mean that no one is running Naxx anymore, and I’m not really going to learn how to raid.
(OK, I OT’d an MC raid of about 20 people once at around level 70, but that hardly counts. Most of the raid was 80s and even the glass cannons could have taken plenty of hits just by themselves. And I tank Vann and Bal regularly in AV, but those are just tank and spank.)
I’m a member of a casual raiding guild that some rl friends recruited me for (”Hey, you possess the capacity to learn and apply your knowledge, you’re already more qualified than most people in the game!”), but while previously the guild would have run me and a couple of the other newbies and new alts through Naxx a few times to let us see how it was done and get us geared, now they say just to go for emblem gear and not worry about it. I *know* this is wrong, but nobody’s advertising Naxx pugs - and if they were, they’d probably demand you be T8/T8.5 anyway. The Karazhan pugs sure do.
I leveled all the way to 80 wishing I could do old world and TBC raids or even heroics - but no one was ever interested in the previous world once they hit 58/68. I consoled myself with the thought that I’d get the real experience when I finally hit 80 and more people were willing to do the content, complete with the whole Thrill of Victory/Agony of Defeat jazz.
Plus, you know, maybe I’d rather do raids, try new things, fall down repeatedly until I learn to stand - than just grind heroics. I understand that most Blizzard players aren’t in my position, that of having just leveled their first 80, so content shouldn’t be designed with my experience in mind - but speaking as someone in my position, it sucks.
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Kavtor reply on October 19, 2009 9:48 pm:
You can pug almost everything outside of hard modes now. Shouldn’t be too bad to pug some heroics until you’re comfortable, and then step up to pugging VoA, Ony, and Naxx.
The badges are pretty awesome. There’s still a big gap to the end game gear, but I’ve got about 24 hours played on my alt at 80. I’m pretty comfortable healing anything outside of hardmodes with the gear you can get in a short period of time. It’s nice to be able to do content a few times and get what you need, rather than having to grind out the same content I was done with months ago on my main, just so I can help out my friends with my alt.
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Everblue reply on October 20, 2009 1:01 pm:
Have you tried explaining your dilemma to your guild members? If they are RL friends would they not be willing to post the occasional late night Sartharion raid, or let you tank VoA once in a while?
If you spend even a short time grinding heroics (a couple of weeks doing the easy ones regularly) you’ll be in T8.5 gear and your health (which is what people look at) will be high enough that people will let you tank PuG Onyxia or ToC.
One other piece of advice - stack stamina at all costs. Do everything you can to get your health above 30k unbuffed. Ignore avoidance, armour, fun trinkets. People will sneer at a tank with 20k unbuffed health (when I started tanking Naxx10) but you will find you get some respect once you hit 30k.
Look at it this way - without the badge change you might never have caught your friends in your raiding guild - you would have needed to farm each raid tier for weeks to get the upgrades you need to progress to the next level. Now, if you are patient with heroics for a short time you can catch your friends up, and experience the agony of defeat with them (great!).
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Bhig reply on October 20, 2009 1:47 pm:
Firstly. Grats on 80.
You’ve definitely got the right attitude. I take it since you’ve only recently reached 80, you’re either a new to game player, or someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to play. If it’s a time issue, you’ll probably always get caught in the middle of things.
At this stage I agree. Not many people are interested in Naxx anymore, and it actually makes a reasonable training ground if you’ve never raided before. It’s not so hard that you need mad experience, but has enough variety of fights that you get to learn how to do different things.
IMO, the badge changes are a pain for people in your position.
Your “best” option is to do as other posters have mentioned. Run the lvl 80 heroics and get the gear and then go deep end with Ulduar and VoA. Doing enough heroics will at least give you all the basics you need to start raiding. If you can get in on a decent Ulduar group then you’ll be able to fulfill the various add tanking duties without overly “endangering” the raid. Also, I recommend the add tanking as it gives you better skills exposure than the boss sides of the fights.
Also, Everblue’s comment of 30k hp is (sadly) very true. For some reason people first judge a tank by their hp. This is , IMO, a HORRIBLE way to do it, but that’s just how it happens. 30k might be a slight struggle with a lot of help from guildies/RL mates. But anything about 27k should start netting you spots.
Also, it is best to try and run with guildies/RL mates (since you have access to them) as they will be understanding of your inexperience. There will be less accusatory shouting going on when a fight goes bad.
Stick in there. And if you’re in a PUG, make sure to tell them when you aren’t sure what to do. If they’re spoons then they might kick you, but it’s better to get a decent explanation rather than have a whole group raging at you for “making a noob mistake” (often followed by a lot of hating on Trade Chat if the group had some real elite players).
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Bhig reply on October 20, 2009 1:50 pm:
Bah… Not proof reading properly FTL…
“30k might be a slight struggle with a lot of help from guildies/RL mates. ”
This should read:
30k might be a slight struggle withOUT a lot of help from guildies/RL mates.
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October 20th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I read a lot angst in topics related to Badge gear, and I think it’s off base.
The best gear still drops in hard modes, most of the really good piecs that don’t drop in hard mode still drop in the raid zones - not off badge vendors.
Unless they change something - iLvl 245 T9 gear will still require trophies in addition to badges.
Most importantly, the new 5-mans are going to be dropping iLvl 232/245 gear. Without knowing what those pieces are yet, it’s a safe bet that several of those pieces will be pretty good and probably obsolete the badge gear that’s already out there.
Real raiders how have been to this BBQ before know that any piece they get is going to be obsolete sooner rather than later. If you did all that work to stand around in Dalaran and have people admire you then I’m afraid you wasted your time.
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