(WoW) Let's See...
Still enough people to raid sorta-baredly. We hit up Obsidian Sanctum (sort of out of the blue to me) and went for Sartharion with all three drakes up. I bet we could have done it better with strategy, but after a couple failed attempts, we were able to brute force our way through the fight. Then we finished out our Black Temple run - the Illidari Council was a pain in the tail and became an endurance battle, then Illidan Stormrage. The "main" baddie of Burning Crusade, once the most difficult of fights, done in three and a half minutes. Whoo! We also started in on Sunwell, the tacked-on raid of BC (which is still more satisfying than Ruby Sanctum) before calling it a night.
I wonder if a 10-man guild will be able to get the achievements for old 25-man raids? Ah well. I'd rather be doing Wrath raids, but I don't mind older stuff too much.
Elly, you sell your aggro-generation short. ;) Everyone has some issues with groups these days, but I've seen no evidence any tanking class is crippled. And between things like feint and misdirect and whatever tricks other classes have (which I realized partway through our ICC efforts were a factor in my own aggro generation), threat on bosses should rarely be a problem. My only complaint about paladins right now is that it takes a while to warm up holy power to secure our aggro lead, and I think there's a fix for that in the works.
I went into Wrath with some advanced knowledge, mostly from Project Lore videos. I'll miss those, it was fun.
Phasing was introduced, with the ups and downs of that. It allowed dynamic changes in the world, but made it harder to keep people together as folks who hadn't completed certain tasks were in different phases of the same area and couldn't work together. It sounds like there will be more of this without fixing that problem (not that I'm certain how you fix it).
Raiding difficulty philosophy changed radically. Instead of just the 10- and 25-man raids of Burning Crusade (or 40-mans), we started to see "hard modes" of encounters, and "heroic difficulties" of raids. Kind of neat, but overly complex, especially when Naxx deals with it one way, Ulduar another, and ICC yet another. I hope the model that's been settled on won't change too much in Cataclysm.
... and because of all those difficulty levels, gear got a bit out of control, leading to encounters otherwise "over-balanced" to account for it while older content became laughably easy. Aieee!
The Dungeon Finder was introduced. The worst I can say is some people are spoiled by it and don't even know where some instances are. Overall, though, it's a huge boon, especially for the more casual players, making it easier and faster to get into dungeons. And the crossover between battlegroups shows a move to integrate the different servers more, though there's no way to do it completely.
Classes underwent a lot of changes. I came out of Burning Crusade with the tankadin philosophy "block cap!" Then it was all about getting the Defense to be uncrittable. Now... we're back to trying to block cap. Wacky! Playing a paladin tank, however, felt good through most of the expansion, and doesn't feel bad now.
And, hey, we got dual-speccing. Sort of a mixed blessing there. It's awesome for just about everyone to have the option to easily switch roles. It's not so awesome to need another gear set to do it effectively. It's also led to a lot of "tanks" that aren't very good or experienced because they only do it to get into dungeons easier. Still, I think it's a net positive.
Vehicle combat was a mixed bag. Some of it in Ulduar and Wintergrasp and even some of the drakes were fun. But the required vehicle combat in Oculus and the Eye of Eternity tripped people up and made those places so much harder than they deserved to be.
Ulduar was far too long. Obsidian Sanctum, Eye of Eternity, Trial of the Crusader, and the Ruby Sanctum were arguably all too short. Raid lockout extentions were a welcome addition for those of us trying to make progress. The recent raid lockout changes have ups and downs - I'm not actually sure how I feel about those.
Hmm... What other big changes am I missing?
I wonder if a 10-man guild will be able to get the achievements for old 25-man raids? Ah well. I'd rather be doing Wrath raids, but I don't mind older stuff too much.
Elly, you sell your aggro-generation short. ;) Everyone has some issues with groups these days, but I've seen no evidence any tanking class is crippled. And between things like feint and misdirect and whatever tricks other classes have (which I realized partway through our ICC efforts were a factor in my own aggro generation), threat on bosses should rarely be a problem. My only complaint about paladins right now is that it takes a while to warm up holy power to secure our aggro lead, and I think there's a fix for that in the works.
I went into Wrath with some advanced knowledge, mostly from Project Lore videos. I'll miss those, it was fun.
Phasing was introduced, with the ups and downs of that. It allowed dynamic changes in the world, but made it harder to keep people together as folks who hadn't completed certain tasks were in different phases of the same area and couldn't work together. It sounds like there will be more of this without fixing that problem (not that I'm certain how you fix it).
Raiding difficulty philosophy changed radically. Instead of just the 10- and 25-man raids of Burning Crusade (or 40-mans), we started to see "hard modes" of encounters, and "heroic difficulties" of raids. Kind of neat, but overly complex, especially when Naxx deals with it one way, Ulduar another, and ICC yet another. I hope the model that's been settled on won't change too much in Cataclysm.
... and because of all those difficulty levels, gear got a bit out of control, leading to encounters otherwise "over-balanced" to account for it while older content became laughably easy. Aieee!
The Dungeon Finder was introduced. The worst I can say is some people are spoiled by it and don't even know where some instances are. Overall, though, it's a huge boon, especially for the more casual players, making it easier and faster to get into dungeons. And the crossover between battlegroups shows a move to integrate the different servers more, though there's no way to do it completely.
Classes underwent a lot of changes. I came out of Burning Crusade with the tankadin philosophy "block cap!" Then it was all about getting the Defense to be uncrittable. Now... we're back to trying to block cap. Wacky! Playing a paladin tank, however, felt good through most of the expansion, and doesn't feel bad now.
And, hey, we got dual-speccing. Sort of a mixed blessing there. It's awesome for just about everyone to have the option to easily switch roles. It's not so awesome to need another gear set to do it effectively. It's also led to a lot of "tanks" that aren't very good or experienced because they only do it to get into dungeons easier. Still, I think it's a net positive.
Vehicle combat was a mixed bag. Some of it in Ulduar and Wintergrasp and even some of the drakes were fun. But the required vehicle combat in Oculus and the Eye of Eternity tripped people up and made those places so much harder than they deserved to be.
Ulduar was far too long. Obsidian Sanctum, Eye of Eternity, Trial of the Crusader, and the Ruby Sanctum were arguably all too short. Raid lockout extentions were a welcome addition for those of us trying to make progress. The recent raid lockout changes have ups and downs - I'm not actually sure how I feel about those.
Hmm... What other big changes am I missing?
Is the fact we beat the Lich King (the final tier of raid content of Wrath) a big change for you? (Compared to the guild's Burning Crusade's Karazhan runs)
ReplyDelete*chuckle* Well, yes, but it's a personal/guild change rather than a change in the game to me.
ReplyDelete