I’m a completionist who typically takes forever to finish a zone in an MMO. I’m usually doing every quest and side quest, every achievement, doing trade skills, whatever. Eventually I’m outleveling all content I run into until the end game. That’s just how I play.
If zones scale then my OCD perfectionist streak doesn’t cause get in the way of having challenges anymore. I like this change. I like the freedom Chisquirrel mentioned.
Looks like the retro-raid scaling thing I mentioned earlier is one of the main complaints of the userbase. According to Blizzard, it was mis-implemented and wound up overscaling raid mobs by about 100% above expected values. Apparently mobs in MoP and WoD raids are now tough enough to be a challenge to solo runners, and (worse yet) people trying to do the raids at-level (like Level 80s trying to get the Algalon achievement in Ulduar) are finding it impossible; bosses have too much health to kill before enrage. :mad:
Apparently, this and many other bugs in 7.3.5 are why we’re being treated to a special short-notice 8-hour maintenance day tomorrow (1/19/2018). :rolleyes:
Oops. You’d think they’d have some sort of testing system in place to make sure things like this didn’t happen - maybe they could even have a separate server with all the changes, that anyone can play on to give feedback. They could call it the Server for Public Testing, or the Testing Server (Public), or something like that.
As for complaints about not being able to do level 80 things at level - that ship sailed long ago. With the mechanics, talents, abilities, and other changes, the gameplay has changed too much in the past four expansions to be remotely comparable. I mean, sure, it’s a cool achievement, but…
Can confirm. When I did my run of Terrace of Endless Spring on Tuesday night, the bosses that used to take me 5 seconds to kill, now took me 10 seconds to kill. This injustice shall not stand!
But seriously, how did people find out about the Algalon thing? Was there a full raid of appropriately geared level 80’s that just happened to be trying for the achievement on the very first night of the patch?
Indeed. One of the commenters to the EU version of the Blizz announcement told that very story. Algalon had triple the health he had before scaling, requiring DPS literally beyond the capability of the 10-man group of 80s.
That particular achievement is only available in a level-appropriate group with composite item level below a threshold. It’s a non-cheesable achievement, by design, and therefore non-achievable at the moment.
This is not the first time Blizzard has taken upon themselves to “fix” the problem that mobs are dying too easily. Remember the ilvl scaling “feature” Blizzard stealth-implemented in 7.2?
This episode is further proof that there are several Blizzard devs who think they know better than the the userbase and shove these “features” down our throats. Even the climbdown described in the announcement isn’t reverting an obviously bad idea; it’s just tuning the boss buff down a small bit, so those bosses will still be a lot tougher than they were. Tough enough that soloing a late raid boss (like WoD or MoP) on a less-then-awesome character (like alts) may expose the attempt to mechanics you’d normally be able to power past. (Like the 40-second cooldown before the Sha of Pride banishes you, or having to deal with Phase 2 (sparks, columns, disappearing floor) of Elegon. (This last bugs me, since I’m farming Elegon on 10 alts a week.)
They haven’t gotten it right, but expect resistance to further tuning down, because again, the devs are right and the users are wrong.
Meh, this is one achievement that has been around for 8 or 9 years (I remember this achievement being available when trial of the crusader dropped). So one achievement out of literally thousands wasn’t do-able for 3 whole days… 9 years later. I just can’t get that worked up about it.
Regarding soloing old content, I recognize I’m in the minority, but I don’t think old content SHOULD be easy to solo. I would rather it be just barely possible for an exceptional player to solo old raids, but no huge challenge for say… a group of 5. But again, I realize I’m a minority as I don’t solo old content ever (other than wanting all 3 color variants of the one shaman set from MoP), but there are lots of people that enjoy farming stuff week in and week out.
Sympathy not your strong suit, then? The “9 years” doesn’t count if the players didn’t buy into the game until much later, really. Hell, I don’t have the achievement, although I don’t care much, but there’s no point in having an achievement that’s beyond achievability. And I wouldn’t bet too much money on the “three days” bit either. As I said, it’s looking like the tune-down won’t initially be enough to overcome the initial overzealous buff, so more accurately like “3 days and counting.”
And BTW, I think the achievement has relevance now even to max-level players, because of Ulduar Timewalking. Previous Ulduar raiding achieves have been “archived” as legacy, specifically because Ulduar was given relevance and currency with Timewalking, so having an effectively new achievement literally unreachable is beyond unfair.
Ulduar came out the same time as Minecraft. WoW at level 80, NOW, is nothing like WoW at level 80, THEN. Players are regularly pulling more than twice the DPS in the same gear. Four expansions is plenty of time to get the achievement, and it’s pretty low on the list of things worth whining about, especially since groups HAVE been able to kill him post-patch, while carrying another toon.
Point conceded. For the niche group of players with XP turned off at level 80, who are raiding old content while making the effort to only equip items that were available 4 expansions and 9 years ago, this is incredibly unfair. I guess this is an argument in favor of sanctioned legacy servers.
Anyway, I came up with the best monk name today, looking forward to starting a new character and seeing how the scaling works in practice in the old zones.
You know, it’s a bit unfair to just make that announcement and leave it like that. It’s living the punchline, man. :o
(Of course, you’ll notice I’ve never mentioned my characters’ names here, because I’m a paranoid git that doesn’t want to make it too easy to tie on-line identities together, so I would understand if you want to just leave it at that unsupported assertion. :D)
I’m guessing it’s Kwai Chang Candycane.
Well, I have good news and bad news. (For me, obviously. The rest of you play a completely different game than WoW, as far as I can tell.)
The good news is that MV is very farmable for a 110 after today’s patch.
The bad news is that they’ve botched raid locks. Your UI says you have a raid lock with “X” cleared out of “Y”, but when you go in it’s a full reset.
This is true whether it’s the particular toon with the lock, or any character in a group with that toon that’s supposed to inherit and accept the lockout. In other words, for now, full clears for everyone (at least up to the desired boss). More time wasted.
I present to the world: Ianmonkellen.
Uh oh. Now worried that I over sold it. But the new scaling thing seems cool for leveling. Once I get to 60, if I understand correctly, I think I can go to Northrend (??), which will be nice because I hate questing in Hellfire Penninsula for some reason.
Yep. I can confirm that at level 60 Northrend is available.
I was skeptical at first about the whole scaling thing but I think this might actually be a real improvement. It will make farming certain prior-expansion items a teeny bit more effort but not enough to really impact my cash-flow (I make a LOT of money crafting panther mounts, as just one example). Otherwise… I think I might enjoy leveling certain alts more under this system. Overall, I think it’s a positive change, at least for me.
Preface: I’m not a raider. I’m (at best) an LFR runner, and then only reluctantly. Since I don’t have a good or active guild, and I was always the “outsider” even when I did, honest-to-the-Light social raiding was never a thing, and LFR is just frustrating even when it works, so I do it only when properly bribed. Stuff like the MoP legendary cloak or the WoD legendary ring, or other kinds of character development.
I love the lore, but if I can see the cinematics without stacking up Determination unto the Heavens, that will satisfy me, thanks.
So here comes LFR Antorus, final wing. Aggramar and Argus.
Aggramar was surprisingly easy. One-shotted. I guess I was relieved, because some of the raid wasn’t carrying its weight. (It’s a bad sign when I, casual scrub deluxe, gets into the top 3 DPS.)
But Argus. Ech. Definitely a fight in which (A) you do need to read up on the strats; (B) adds matter, so don’t tunnel the boss; and (C) the enrage is just too damn easy to hit if you have laggards and cruise-tards. It was almost as bad as my first run of LFR Archimonde. Fun fun.
All of this because I wanted to see the post-raid world content: Silithus. And the obviously very interesting and involved quest chains transitioning to the next xpac.
Boy was I disappointed. False advertising, frankly. A couple of lightweight quest chains left hanging, plus another world-famous Blizzard (literal) shit quest chain. Frankly, a blatant ripoff of one of the earlier (literal) shit quest chains from vanilla.
So, several hundred gold of repair bills, most of a stack of feasts, a dozen annoying deaths, and my reward? The best reward is apparently not having to see the planet Argus hovering over my world as I fly around. Yaay.
Oh, well, I guess I got a legendary ring I can’t use because it’s well down the BiS list, so I’ll chuck it into my (dwindling) bank space along with the other two dozen legendaries I can’t use.
The raid design itself was clever and intense, which is why it turns out to be utterly unsuitable for LFR mouth-breathers. So I can say I got it over with and never have to set foot in there again.
Holy smokes, your LFR group wiped 12 times on Argus? That is brutal. Kudos for sticking it out.
It’s funny, 12 wipes on progression with my guild is nothing, but 2 wipes in LFR and I start getting that “why am I doing this?” feeling.
I was definitely there at about wipe 4, which was someone deciding to ditch the raid in the BEST WAY possible: troll-pulling while we were still in queue for replacements and then deserting. (Obvious troll pull; resto monks don’t “accidentally” spam Crackling Jade Lighting at the boss until dying, and then disconnect.)
And that’s a big reason I was dissatisfied with the payoff: in no way was the short and boring post-victory quest series worth the effort. If the raid itself had been satisfying, it would have been its own reward. But that really doesn’t happen in LFR. It happens in progression raiding with a group of friends (or at least colleagues).
I am happy to report that I’m the proud owner of a brand-new gaming PC! This one here:
I’ve had it for a week now, and I’m loving it! Such a massive improvement over the 2008 iMac I’ve been playing on since WotLK. Now that I have a machine that can handle it, maybe I can hit some dungeons and actually complete a class hall campaign or two 
I’m also getting closer to one goal I set for myself for Legion: finally getting one of every class to max level (for the guild achievement). As of now, I have everything to 110 except for my monk, and she just hit 92 in Draenor.
Dayum. That’s a pretty damn good rig, all things considered. Sorry about Windows 10 though.
Meh, not gonna complain about W10 much. As long as it runs the game
In any case, at this point I basically **had *to get a new computer. My 2008 iMac has not been able to run the last two versions of MacOS X, and it’s too old to use Apple’s new graphics API, “Metal”. So I’ve been stuck with the last version of OpenGL that Apple implemented, and Blizzard finally announced that, after several years of applying duct tape to keep the game working with OpenGL (including some things that made the game look like shit, but at least be playable), they are abandoning OpenGL support as of Battle for Azeroth.
*Heh - as soon as I get time, I’m going to find good places in-game to take screenshots. I’mma take a screenshot on my iMac, with all of the graphics settings where I have had to keep them to play in Legion, and then leave the character exactly where it is. Then I’ll log in on my PC and take exactly the same screen shot. I’ll share them somewhere, side-by-side to show the difference.
Right now, I am mostly boggling at how water looks and acts at settings higher than “Low”. Aside from water, I’m am being amazed at seeing things in the game that I had no idea existed because my graphics settings never let me see them.
I’ve also installed Diablo 3, which I purchased at launch and then played for about two weeks. At launch, my iMac already couldn’t really handle it, and with the graphics turned down and my resolution reduced, it looked like complete shit. Then I installed Heroes of the Storm, which I had installed on my Mac and then discovered it was unplayable (mostly because it would just lock up at the beginning of the tutorial).
Also installed SW:TOR and rolled a character, then played just far enough to be offered my first quest. Haven’t gotten back to it - too much to do in WoW still.
There are some serious tuning issues in the open world as well. I’ve got a bunch of level 70 characters who are in the process of Loremastering Outland. Before 7.3.5, they all completed HFP and Zangarmarsh, and two of them had completed Terokkar Forest. Now another is starting Terokkar, post 7.3.5, and holy crap is it a lot harder, but not so hard as to be impossible (and of course, the first two went through there at level 70, but fighting lower-level mobs; the current toon is fighting scaled-up mobs).
But my monk in Draenor … um. In the final Shadowmoon scenario (the Defense of Karabor thing), remember Karnak the Burner or whatever - the orc with the flamethrower. He was always challenging, but now he is basically one-shotting my monk. I gave up after about six tries. And then in Gorgrond, there’s Khaano, the guy whose brain gets scrambled in the red mushroom area. Cannot beat him. He was never a problem before.