WoW
Sure, Blizzard staff make a lot of comments I agree with at times, but rarely do they strike home so much as these, especially the first part (emphasis mine):
"There is a group of players that wants to do group raiding, but they aren't well served by the current difficulty choices. This would include the friends and family type guilds that don't remove players because they aren't performing at their best. In Wrath of the Lich King, 10 player normal difficulty raiding served these players well, but there is now a gap between Raid Finder and Normal difficulty.
When 10 and 25 player had separate lockouts and different loot, they were really different difficulty levels as well. Things were somewhat easier in 10 player difficulty, as it had the lower tier of loot and should be more accessible.
Now that both 10 and 25 player difficulty offer the same loot and have a shared lockout, there is a need to ensure the difficulty is similar for both raid sizes. This eliminated the lower difficulty 10 player raids, which left some players with no content to raid in a more casual organized group."
- Ion Hazzikostas (Lead Encounter Designer) by Convert to Raid, quoted from MMO-Champion.
"There is a group of players that wants to do group raiding, but they aren't well served by the current difficulty choices. This would include the friends and family type guilds that don't remove players because they aren't performing at their best. In Wrath of the Lich King, 10 player normal difficulty raiding served these players well, but there is now a gap between Raid Finder and Normal difficulty.
When 10 and 25 player had separate lockouts and different loot, they were really different difficulty levels as well. Things were somewhat easier in 10 player difficulty, as it had the lower tier of loot and should be more accessible.
Now that both 10 and 25 player difficulty offer the same loot and have a shared lockout, there is a need to ensure the difficulty is similar for both raid sizes. This eliminated the lower difficulty 10 player raids, which left some players with no content to raid in a more casual organized group."
- Ion Hazzikostas (Lead Encounter Designer) by Convert to Raid, quoted from MMO-Champion.
*sighs* Too true. However having people drop (Shujin, Mystiqe, Grimner, Zhokora, etc) also hampered progress. Granted things sure do feel harder at the "entry" level and it saddens me that might've been a key contributing factor to folk abandoning ship.
ReplyDeleteSeems a mix overall. Grimner didn't feel he fit real well with the guild (too "furry"). Myst followed Shujin and Shujin, I think, was probably more drawn to "more serious" raiding - a decision made at the end of Wrath when 25-man raiding was "harder" by design and had better rewards. Zho seemed to go that way too, before getting tired of WoW in general after working with us partway through Cataclysm. I can't really speak to Velnor's reasons for dropping out. But the most recent round... yeah, I sort of feel current design was a large factor. We hit a point in MoP when we could field 10 people with some regularity, but we weren't getting anywhere. Lack of progress is a big morale blow. If the tuning had been different, such that we might have actually seen some success... well, I do believe there would have been more interest in our group. I'm not sure if it would have been enough to keep a reasonably-regular raid together for months, but it would have helped. Mostly, I'm just glad to see our niche recognized by someone at that level, even if it may be too little too late in our case. Unless Ghostcrawler's "this is so awesome, but hasn't been announced yet" feature is 5-man (or variable size) raiding, I'm doubtful that even a new expansion will pull in enough people for us to rebuild a raid team whether they adjust difficulty levels or not.
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