I said before that the emotional rollercoaster of blogging is hilarious: I feel terrible, I feel great, I feel great, I am PISSED OFF, I am great again! And, err, I am, in fact, feeling better, after my extremely moopy post of a few days back. The thing about WoW is that it’s value neutral – to a large degree whether the game is good or bad, positive or negative, is largely irrelevant. The fact is: it’s something I’ve chosen to play (and I can stop choosing to play it at any time) but it’s the equivalent of a high maintenance girlfriend. You have to be pretty damned disciplined about what you’re willing to give it, and sometimes you turn round and realise that you’ve let it take too much. And although I don’t want to dump WoW, because I do love her, and I know better than to expect she’ll change, there needs to be a boundaries shift. Starting with me.
The Rat Race
This solely an endgame problem, and one I’ve intellectually recognised for a long time. Recognised but done bugger all about.
The thing I really like about the levelling game is that it’s pickupable and putdownable. If you have half an hour, an hour, or three hours, or three days to spare, you can find something relatively novel to do, and feel like you’ve made some measurable progress. I know some people think it’s all just one long grind but the changing aesthetics, the infinite variety of monkey testicle on Azeroth, the sense of discovery keep me bimbling happily from 1-80. And because I was, for a long time, Perpetually Late to the Party, even endgame was dominated by my own interests – there was nothing driving me forward, but me. The advantage of being last is that you don’t have anything to keep up with.
But now, for the first time ever, I am in current content. I am at the party. Eating the Twiglets. Which means I suddenly found myself in a race, a race that everybody runs but few people acknowledge. Not a race to server firsts or anything silly, but at least understandable, like that, but a race to keep up, a race to be basically on par with the other priests in my guild, the other healers, the other players, a race I am required to run in order to maintain my usefulness to the community running with me. A race with no end, and constantly shifting boundaries, and a race you lose the second you stop for breath.
Perhaps race is the wrong word. Perhaps it’s just a hamster wheel big enough for 11 million.
Regardless, I climbed out of it on Monday night, and even gave it a kicking with my little hamster toe. I’m not saying it was easy. Not raiding, not doing the various dailies, gave me twitches. Think of the frost badges I wasn’t getting, that other people were getting, the loot that might have been mine. But, y’know, it was okay… it was better than okay. It felt fantastic (I also took the opportunity to get it on with my cop-buddy, my loyal renegade friend, Garrus Vakarian, which probably helped take mind off things).
So we run 1 x ICC 25-man raid + continuation, 2 x ICC 10-man raids + continuation, a fieldtrip to Ulduar, plus the Misfit Run for people or alts who couldn’t make any of the others. Given I only have my main, that’s still FIVE DAYS a week. Of raiding. That’s not a game, that’s a LIFE. No wonder I was going slightly mad.
So I sat down with my High Maintenance MMO and we had a talk. I’m going to be firm with her, and she’s going to respect my time, dammit. I will raid twice a week ONLY, with an optional third that I am not allowed to indulge in two consecutive weeks. If that has to be ICC + continuation, so be it, but in an ideal world it’ll be Ulduar – because, even though I like ICC and it’s exciting to be doing current content, Ulduar is the content I WANT TO BE DOING.
Take that, hamster wheel, take that.
And if I’m crappy under-geared healer … well … that’s the guild’s problem. Poor bastards.
No matter how fast you eat ‘em, sprouts are still sprouts
The other thing that has been grinding me down is the Sanity Tap – I have, day in and day out, been dutifully signing up for my 2 frost badges, notching them up like tally marks by which a prisoner notes the passing days upon the walls of his cell. And as part of my new “well fuck it” regime, I’ve stopped. I mean, I’ll still do a heroic or two if I fancy it, or if there’s as chance of going with guildies, but the never-ending daily grind of frustration and abuse? Screw that.
Also, you know what strikes me as arsey-versey about the whole business? Heroics are overwhelmingly your primary source of frost emblems…or mine at least. I mean, we are a casual raiding guild so on a good day we down 3-4 bosses. So raiding, the thing emblems of frost are FOR, will net you about 6 emblems of frost a week. Compared to snoozing and pissing your way through a heroic every day, which will net you 14. That’s just plain wrong. Yes, you can go and poke Noth or sit in a crotch pot for an additional 5 but the weekly raid isn’t really a raid, it’s basically just the daily heroic writ large, inspiring boredom and irritation on a grand and epic scale (thanks for that Blizzard).
Maybe it’s just because we’re caught in the middle – hugely serious raiders are probably approaching getting 14 emblems of frost per raid, and I guess you can do it on 10 and 25 man if you’re truly dedicated. But ultimately it just seems a bit depressing to me that you get more material benefit from drooling through a random heroic with the dregs of Crushridge than it would be if you decided to gather up 9 other people and tried to take down Marrowgar.
I guess this is just on my mind a bit since 3.3 is about to hit, along with the much-talked about heroic nerfs … that is the nerfs of heroic dungeons, I mean, rather than nerfs that are themselves heroic (NERF HERO – which I imagine being a bit like Guitar Hero, although currently it’s only available to Blizzard employees). I meet this news with no particular emotion beyond than resignation – it seems like the tacit understanding that running heroics is not something players really want to be doing, or should be doing, has now become an explicit acknowledgement. Putting yourself through LFG is basically and now self-evidently nasty obligation because Blizzard can’t think of any better way to deliver us 2 emblems a frost a day. It is, in short, the portion of sprouts before we’re allowed our ice-cream.
This. Is. Not. Good.
The thing is, I know why Blizzard introduced the badge system and, to be honest, it makes a lot of conceptual sense. You can whinge that what it does is create a lot of Tier 9 geared noobs who expect to be able to faceroll their way through TotC while standing in fire the whole time … but without the badge system I wouldn’t be raiding. And I think that having a level of raiding content available to us ordinary folk is important because, y’know, raiding is a barrel of monkeys worth of a good time. But the knock-on effect is that it has basically invalidated heroics, and now that Blizzard introducing changes to make heroics even more “efficient” (in short: to stop tanks quitting a group when they see the OK loading screen) you truly feel the worthlessness of the hoop through which you’re jumping.
The rewards for running heroics are now all meta-rewards: badges are an arbitrary currency, not like actual “I will pry this purple axe from your cold dead hands” loot. And meta-rewards are all very well as an adjunct to other rewards but as a reason in their own right they rapidly become hollow and pointless. Think about ICC. As much as I appreciate the two frost badges per boss you get in there and being able to buy a piece of Tier 10 in about six years time is quite exciting, but I’m really there because I want to snaffle Marrowgar’s bone spike (ooh la la) and no increasing number of bottlecaps (because that’s all emblems really are) is going to come even close to being as satisfying as that.
Right.. first of all, congratulations to the decision. I think it is right to set a limit to how much raid stuff you are doing.
I do not think anyone can judge the choice itself – after all, that is yours to make, but of course i am glad that Ulduar is still on the menu for you (which should hardly be a surprise, really).
As far as getting or staying geared up, my view is rather simple. Keeping up with a reasonably regular attendance to Raid Instance x should have a good change of netting you the gear you need to perform well in said instance group. And you definately do have the ticket to go in already, gear wise.
Granted, it will not make you The Best Geared Priest Of The Lot (TM), but that is the trade of you (and i, actually) chose to make. And i for one think that should not be a problem for the guild.
Ulduar on the menu … yes, I'll take it with extra cheese and a side portion of potato wedges
I think the thing is, before I sat down and thought about it, I wasn't making choices at all -I was just doing stuff, with the upsot that I accidentally raided 3 consecutive nights in a row – and went a little bit nuts. Also you get a creeping sense that your life has gone away somewhere and you can't quite work how or why it happened. But the moment you stop living from raid to raid and I think to yourself "Yes, I have chosen to do this now", raids themselve become enjoyable, you feel a great commitment to them and you stop wondering if you've accidentally sacrificed other stuff in the pursuit of lilacs.
Missed you last night – it was a good run.
Meh, 2 frost emblems a day for a 30-minute heroic run? I'll take it, although the Heroic nerfs annoy me.
My recent post On Raids, and the Leading Thereof
I'll take 'em too … I'll just whinge about it
These emblems were introduced in TBC as alternative to gear up instead of raiding. They did only drop in heroics and not in raids, first.
It’s funny that you think they should only be obtainable through raiding.
Actually, I would love to see a 5 man progression path instead of raiding. Hard 5 mans with difficult pulls are so much more fun then the “jump out of fire FPS” game which raiding is.
Eeeek! No I don't, apologies for lack of clarity. I most assuredly DON'T think they should only be available through raiding – I just think it strange that the emblems that are most useful to raiders are awarded in greater profusion from tedious heroics than actual raiding.
Ah, I see.
What they should to is add a maximum number of EoF you can obtain per week. This number should be equal to the number of EoF a full clear of the current 25 raid gets you. Every further EoF you would loot is automatically transformed into an EoT. (They already do that for the daily heroic where every run but the first gives EoT instead of EoF.)
That would mean: If you clear every boss in ICC25/ICC10 your done for the week. No need to run 10 man or heroics.
If your raid doesn’t clear every boss, you can run some heroics to get the remaining emblems to help your raid with progression.
If you don’t raid at all, you can do heroics to obtain the badges.
If you have to sit this week from your raid, you can do some heroics to not loose out on badges. You can even do that while being on the bench.
And the nice thing is: You don’t have to run 25 man and 10 man for double badges. But you can if you like and you would still get EoT which can be traded for epic gems.
btw: Is there a way to get e-mail notifications for further comments on your blog?
Actually that's a bloody good idea. Of course, it does emphasise the notion that 25-man raiding is where it's at. Currently that is the implication (bosses are balanced around 25-man raids, and they just knock the edges off for 10 man, making 10 man feel a bit lack lustre if you're seen the 25-man) anyway but until Blizzard decides if it want us to be prioritising 25 mans or 10mans or it doesn't care I think it would take something that is currently only implied and make it explicit. Personally I think that would be a shame – 10 man raids SHOULDN'T feel like the wussy cousin of 25 man raids.
The other problem with a hard limit on badges is that certain elements of the "hardcore" crowd would infinitely whinge that this it's merely a sop for casuals who don't want to put the effort in … but I'd really appreciate the liberation from the grind.
There should be a little drop down box under CommetLuv that says "subscribe to repiles / all new comments. Isn't it there?
Sure, but it would be strange to let the lich king drop EoT because you've exceeded your EoF limit with stuff like the gunship encounter.
And forcing raiders to run heroics is as bad as forcing people to pvp or raid. The game offers different ways to play it. There shouldn't be a right one. But I know what you're saying and agree. Make up a number of EoF you can obtain per week and let them drop accordingly in raid and heroics.
I think 10 mans are hard to make challenging and doable. With 25 man raids you can really do cool stuff because of the amount of people. Like away teams as with Thorim. 10 people are not enough so you have to nerf the encounters. On the other side a 5 man group allows for amazing group play as was needed in some TBC heroics like Magisters' Terrace or Mana-Tombs (as long as you didn't outgear them). 10 people are already to many for that. I think 5 mans could be more challenging and more demanding than 10 or 25 mans for each individual.
I like the easy 10 mans for a casually guild trip. Maybe we need 3 difficulties? Casual, normal and heroic.
> The other problem with a hard limit on badges is that certain elements
> of the "hardcore" crowd would infinitely whinge that this it's merely a sop
> for casuals who don't want to put the effort in …
Luckily they don't pay more then the other 99% of the players. Who cares?
I found the subscribe option. If you run your blog with NoScript, it looks shitty but seams to work.
Now that I added an exception for it… WOW… I like your design.
A small group progression path would be excellent yes. In fact there should be challenging solo content as well. Class quests, and so on. Bring back the days of heroics (at least some) being a true challenge, requiring some CC, focused fire and all that.
I’m at a “step back and check my boundaries” stage as well, not about raiding since I quit last autumn but with regard to the game in general. As a game, I think WoW gets worse and worse from my perspective as a non-raiding casual. It’s great that “endgame” is more accessible than ever, but does every step towards it have to be made more and more easy? What about people who can’t or don’t want to raid? What about people who want something fun to do outside their raids too? What about people who come out of the “faceroll” content expecting the vaunted “endgame” to be as easy, and who are unable to function in any situation requiring awareness and teamwork and the ability to own up to and correct their own mistakes?
Wrath heroics were always much easier than TBC ones. Yes, even the new ICC ones. With better gear being more easily available than ever, why on Earth are these heroics STILL nerfed?
Possibly small group progression will become more of at thing in Cataclysm – and that would be pretty cool, but given that 10-mans are generally considered "lesser" 25-mans, rather than raiding with an alternative emphasis, I'm not sure how it would pan out in practice.
To be honest, I'm not sure what I'd do at endgame if I wasn't raiding – it's just that, even though I just nearly burned myself out, it does give structure and definition. I enjoying doing silly things, of course, and messing around with friends, but just sometimes you need the purpose raiding gives you.
I guess moving greater numbers of the WoW poulation into raiding (wasn't there only a pathetically small number of people who got to see Sunwell?) was Blizzard's gameplan for Wrath – I guess the downside is that it has drawn focus for the rest of the game. I mean, Azeroth is a big world.
It's a shame there isn't a relaxing, bimble through Ulduar style thing you do with friends – unless you never want to see the inside of a raid instance again, of course. I love our Ulduar runs becuase they're still quite challenging but they're primarily very social.
In the early beginning of TBC the 5 man heroics were much harder than Kharazan but the gear in heroics was way inferior. They buffed the gear in an early patch and nerfed the heroics.
But if 5 mans are the most challenging contect you would still have the problem of having to raid to gear for 5 man. It wouldn't help the person who doesn't want to raid.
And to say something on-topic instead of my usual annoyed rants. :p I think it would be best if Emblems of Frost only dropped in raids. The emblem system is great, but I think it worked best when in order to get the most powerful emblems you had to do the hardest content. The Triumph gear is SO good that someone who isn’t raiding, or not raiding yet, DOES NOT remotely need Frost to assemble a good set of gear.
Your rants are always a pleasure to read, Feralan
I think the problem with having frost emblems that ONLY drop is raids is that you 'punish' people who don't want, 10 and 25, every week. i mean I know they wouldn't *have* to but it does put a lot of pressure on folks. The problem is, at endgame and in MMOs, things you *could* be getting, rapidly become things you *should* be getting.
If doesn't matter what you need. It's a game. It only matters what you want.
Can you say why people should not be allowed to get EoF from "lesser tiers of content" besides the fact that they don't need them?
I've been thinking the same myself. We raid 10 man on Wednesdays, 25 man on Fridays, Alt 10 man ICC on saturday, 25 man TotC on Sunday, Algalon/TotGC10 on Monday… now whilst I'm quite happy to do all that if I'm playing WoW anyway, I'm getting to the point when I think I really should have other stuff to do. Some of it boring mundane stuff like tidying the house, yes, but still needs doing!
I've missed quite a few daily heroics and even some of the weekly raid quests (well, twice a week on our battlegroup for some reason). The frost badges will come eventually anyway, why rush them?
Yes, it's embarrassing when you see that washing up has piled up while you were raiding….ahem.
The thing is because you play WoW literally forever – there's always something to do and while you're doing that, you might as well go to a raid because you're there *anyway* … I'm thinking I have to impose some artificial boundaries on myself, and hopefully that'll help me re-adjust my priorities and have more fun in the game! Whee!
Balance is the key. I have had to e ruthless a few times, both with myself and my guild, but spending extra time cuddled with the sweetie watching movies or other nice things, are their own reward.
By the way … I hate sprouts, But I found that there is at least one brand in the States that is actually pretty tasty. My mother is still getting over the shock. (Pictsweet frozen, if you must know).
My recent post First-Best Love
Balance is, indeed, the key. It's just so easy for it to slip – but the rewards are definitely worth it.
I think I'm probably okay on sprouts but a long childhood of being forced to eat them has given me a mental block…and I avoid them when I can
imo it was a horrible mistake to add *current* raid emblems in heroics. Daily or no. Pretty much for the reasons you explained. Let people grind last years badges all they want, but leave current raid content to current raid-contenders.
—-
Let me just derail the thread for a second: Whinge or whine. Why do people throw them around like its the same thing? (present company excluded of course).
Maybe its me, but whine, is something babies do (and grown up people with dorf alts!) whereas whinge is the movement you do when you sit in a chair and listen to your dad tell stories about who he used to pull when he was young.
Do I have a warped understanding of the english language? (well, yes i do, but i meant towards the difference between theese two words)
I think "cringe" is the word you're looking for, when your father sits you down tells you all about the Dwarf hunter he just rolled up…
As I understand it, "whinge" is the British term for "whine". You know us Yanks… dismantling our native tongue one consonant at a time…
@Tam: Thanks for pointing out once again, this is a leisure activity. When it stops being fun, it's either time to find a different way to enjoy it, take a break, or quit altogether.
Logic should never stop my rants!
My recent post Killing the Lich king
DOWN WITH LOGIC!
I genuinely had no idea there was an semenatic difference….
But from the OED which is the source of all knowledge (despite the fact half of it is made up but it's too big to work out which), "To whine; esp. to complain peevishly. Hence {sm}whinging (also w(h)ingeing) vbl. n. and ppl. a.", first written usage 1150: "Mid hwinsunge & mid dreori{asg}um mode hio [sc. the dogs] cerdon ealle on{asg}ean to {th}an hunten" Which, hmm, I guess translates into something like "With whinging (whining?) and sad hearts (spirits – there's not an easily translation of mode, being not a modern concept of interiority), they (the dogs) turned back to the hunter."
Whine, by contrast, burst onto the scene in 1275, meaning specifically a shrill cry. It's 'modern' meaning 'To utter complaints in a low querulous tone; to complain in a feeble, mean, or undignified way.' didn't show up til 1530: Ye haue whyned in the eares of the Lorde saynge: who shall geue vs flesh to eate (which is middle english and therefore the meaning reasonably apparent, so I won't subject my translations upon you.)
I THINK I HAVE PWNED YOU NAO!
Just an aside. I nudged the misfit run off for a 25 continuation night. Although that might change too now.
I generally try to take 2-3 nights a week away from the game, or at least not raid 2-3 nights of the week anyway, just so I’ve got a chance for my brain to recover between sessions. A step backs necessary some of the time else you just end up with the concentration span of a sprout that’s about to be boiled – either that or you end up with a partially chewed microphone
Balance good, burning out bad.
Alas, the Misfit run!
Yes, I think I just had a few weeks of over-doing, which ended up leaving me severely sprouty. I think the thing about WoW is that if you're there, it'll usually hand you something to do … and there's no reason *not* to do it … and then hair tearing and microphone chewing commences…
Just an aside. I nudged the misfit run off for a 25 continuation night. Although that might change too now.
I generally try to take 2-3 nights a week away from the game, or at least not raid 2-3 nights of the week anyway, just so I’ve got a chance for my brain to recover between sessions. A step backs necessary some of the time else you just end up with the concentration span of a sprout that’s about to be boiled – either that or you end up with a partially chewed microphone
Balance good, burning out bad.
I know what you mean.
Ideally I want to do 2 nights, occasionally 3 nights per week raiding. But then I get suckered into the whole "but if I don't go, I'll miss out on the fun the others will have and I'll regret not going (completely ignoring how unfun it's been lately)". *sigh* I have the will power of a goldfish at times. (And that's not going into the whole – "but please come, we so need another insert your class/role").
I did manage to make myself stop doing Argent Tournament dailies in favour of finally levelling up my baby druid. And gosh that was lots of fun. But I keep getting sucked into silly things. "Just need X more Champion's Seals, and then I'll complete the tabard achievement, and then X Seals for the pet achievement – and then I might as well do the mount achievement as well". Grinding the dailies is dull (not stick your head in the oven boring, but not fun either) and it's not like I need another tabard (never wear one, I hate the way they stop at the middle on robes), or a pet (have 69 and usually forget to have one out) or a mount (only ever use my For the Alliance bear and pink holiday mount, cause I'm proud of those).
But it's the completionist in me that desperately wants to tick all the boxes – no matter that the road to doing so is no fun. Yes, I'm weird.
I'm kind of like about cat when it comes to raiding – you know, when it's in the house it'll mew to be out, and when it's outside, it'll whinge to be in
They downed Festergut on 10-man (after bad luck last week) last week and although I'm super happy for them there's part of me thinking BUT I MISSED OUT. Which is entirely sily and borderline unhealthy – sorry, this is a really long-winded of saying I know where you're coming from.
Also I've only ever worn a tabard when my clothing was too indiscreet for public display
Your intro about the unavoidable rat race made me think about work – and for that alone you should be punished in a creative manner.
However, it also made me remember the lovely posters available from despair. I can't find a properly sized one on the original page, so I'll just cheat and link one randomly off the interwebs.
http://scottthong.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/qua...
Yep .. the race for badgers is really more like a deathmarch.
Punished in a creative manner… was that meant to put me off?
The raiding lifestyle got too much for me, and 3 months ago I stopped.
Getting off the emblem treadmill has been one of the best things I have ever done. There are lots of other things you can do in the game that don't require the same comittment. I have taken up PvPing, and I also have a project to use the new dungeon finding tool to get groups for all the old world 5 man dungeons before they are changed in Cataclysm.
I don't regret the time I spent raiding, it was mostly very satisfying. But WoW is a big enough game that I can enjoy playing it when it suits me, and it doesn't feel like a job anymore.
I'm hoping I can maintain some middle ground between raiding and not letting the game turn into a job, since I've been raiding long enough that the novelty has worn off. I'm scooping up emblems when I'm in the mood, but not letting it totally dominate my game any more.
Here's to sanity
I've only done the LFG 3 times in the last week. Lost frost emblems be damned. (I have only done them when guildies have been available)
I did try it solo one day, and it ended in disaster; Pit of Sauron. I saw someone run across a gap at the beginning. I followed, fell and aggroed 3 groups. We wiped and I dropped.
I'll blog about it on my site, but I wanted to give you moral support. I agree with everything you said, and feel much the same way.
BTW, unless there is "casual current" content, I think current emblems are necessary. Otherwise you have ALL the new content out there, and only ~10%(?) are able to actually play it. Frm a paying consumer point of view, that's bad customer service.
God, people can in LFG can be such wankers. I've done this myself, it's easily done. Don't let it get you down. I sent a tonne of reciprocal moral support to your blog after your last post
I agree emblems are necessary, and I believe that people should be able to access relatively easily new raiding content … BUT they need to find a less painful method of delivery.
3.3 was fun for a bit, but I start to realize that I play WoW for its leveling game. Once I've gotten to a point in endgame where I have the shiny loot I had drooled over when I first hit the level cap, I think of that character as "done" and I focus on a different one. I barely played my priest after she got her Ethereum Life-Staff, I've barely touched my druid since she got full tier 7.5. I take a screenshot of how awesome she looks (in my priest's case, get a figureprint) and leave it at that.
I started to realize that once I was raiding three or more times a week for a 5% chance of getting a minor upgrade that didn't even look good on my character (or sometimes not even that, just raiding it out of some sense of obligation to my guild), raiding changes from a fun activity into a chore. I learned that lesson a long time ago, and now I'm always quick to ask myself if what I'm doing is fun, and not waste my time on activities that I'm not enjoying.
My recent post So I lied… I've totally been playing STO for the past week.
"or sit in a crotch pot"
… Wha…?
My recent post Have a break, have a Kit-Kat
I think he’s referring to the slag pot players get thrown into on the Ignis fight. My guild calls it “the crotch pot,” too.
Yes. Exactly.
It's not a hobby or anything
Ignis. He has one…
The "other" thing that annoys me about it is how the content is gated. When Ulduar was released you had all 11 bosses at your disposal if you were good enough to get to and kill all of them. If you were good enough to do Ulduar 10 hard modes you got emblems of Conquest and equivalent loot to 25 man, so it wasn't a big deal trying to keep up. ToC and the Daily Heroic stretched that out and made you do "other" things for those emblems and loots.
I've been feeling a bit apathetic lately as I'm always asked to heal other people's ToGC raids and other things so that peoples alts can gear up, doubly so because they don't have to "pay" for it like 25 man (we use a modified Zero Sum DKP system for 25s). Maybe it's a bit selfish but there isn't a single upgrade left in the old content so there is no impetus for me to go other than the odd achievement crack.
I don't know if the current system is better but it does have that annoying factor where you feel you need to log on every day for at least a half hour for your daily frost emblems like an addict or something.
I got 18 emblems of frost out of ICC10 yesterday doing the approach and 2 wings (haven't done the third yet) and that makes me happy as now I don't feel as pressured into "must do" heroics every day for 2 emblems. Pshaw 2 emblems? I can get that in VoA, or 5 doing the weekly!
I believe you're on the right track as doing more than you want to and are prepared to sacrifice time to only leads to burnout and that's never fun.
Yeah – I got off the 2 Frost a Day Wagon a while back. My runs in ICC-10 and the weekly raid are more than enough. As a hunter, waiting around for 15-20 minutes just to get to queue for a 20-30 minute run, just so I can get those 2 stupid marks just isn't worth it.
My guild doesn't suck. I will get those orbs in time. We will kill all the current content. We *will* be late to the game.
But so what. It's still a game.
My recent post WPL – EPL
Uh huh. Hit full swing right now, and I want to share this FailPUG. It takes the prize.
Enhance Shaman walks in ToC 5 in T9 gear and then swaps it for…wait for it….LEVEL 60 GEAR. With Ragnaros.
Obviously he dies a lot from AoE damage and does miserable DPS. Also he did it for the first two bosses (Paletress lasted forever, he died on that one). And then he bitches at me when everybody dies on Corpse explosion, phase 2 of the Black Knight.
Then healer DC'ed and, and, as a bonus, the ret pally decides that he will be the healer. With no healing gear. Leaved group after that.
PuGs breed my hate for idiots. It isn't healthy (and this week the weekly raid is Malygos. I think that only top-raider guilds will get their frost badges this week)
WHY did he swap his gear?! Maybe he was in his RP set
Or maybe he was just bored of running heroics. But it still sounds pretty mad to me, and maybe the sort of thing you'd with friends and guildies, not random pugs.
But, yes, pugs really do chip away at your soul one gogogogogo after another.
Our weekly raids have all been quite dull – we've had Noth twice, Ignis twice, Lord J twice, Patcherwerk once . Ah the joy of random systems
And why do I remember ?
No it wasn't. For starters, he came of a PvP realm. And the guy thought that he was the shit because he had Sulfuras.
It's ORANGE, he said (caps included).
And being so bitter about a game really scares me.
Ah, well the colour of the item name is better than anything else about it….
Just got to share it. After a full week of FailPuGs, finally killed Malygos. And I'm the motherfucking Champion of the Frozen Wastes.
Ah, I see.
What they should to is add a maximum number of EoF you can obtain per week. This number should be equal to the number of EoF a full clear of the current 25 raid gets you. Every further EoF you would loot is automatically transformed into an EoT. (They already do that for the daily heroic where every run but the first gives EoT instead of EoF.)
That would mean: If you clear every boss in ICC25/ICC10 your done for the week. No need to run 10 man or heroics.
If your raid doesn’t clear every boss, you can run some heroics to get the remaining emblems to help your raid with progression.
If you don’t raid at all, you can do heroics to obtain the badges.
If you have to sit this week from your raid, you can do some heroics to not loose out on badges. You can even do that while being on the bench.
And the nice thing is: You don’t have to run 25 man and 10 man for double badges. But you can if you like and you would still get EoT which can be traded for epic gems.
btw: Is there a way to get e-mail notifications for further comments on your blog?
I hear what you're saying. The ideal solution (in my fevered brain) would be to have each raid boss drop 4 Frost instead of 2. That seems appropriately more rewarding for the struggle. Or perhaps 5 Frost per boss on 25 and 3 Frost per boss on 10?
To be honest, I think the situation is unbalance-able. I didn't dare propose a solution, I only dared to whinge
I mean, obviously it's an arbitrary balancing mechanic, and whatever you do to tweak it – whether it's giving more or less – will bring its own attendant problems.
My guild went and wiped on Toravon yesterday and we had fun. I've actually *stopped* buying emblem upgrades for the time being, because it's more fun to loot them from the TOC bosses we kill. Got a belt last week, sweet! And I'm totally with you on the heroic nerfs. I remember when I was a new baby 80 and the idea of heroics was kind of daunting. I found them engaging for a long time. Now I find them pathetic, but I feel like I have to run them anyway. And I'm offput by the way the whole game seems to be trying to shove you toward the current tier of raid content without asking you if that's really what you want to do. There's no such thing as a casual heroic anymore… you've got to go along with the emblem-mad "I-just-want-my-frosties" crowd, and heaven forbid you don't satisfy them. Hell, I'm one of them, and half the time I can't satisfy them either!
A small group progression path would be excellent yes. In fact there should be challenging solo content as well. Class quests, and so on. Bring back the days of heroics (at least some) being a true challenge, requiring some CC, focused fire and all that.
I’m at a “step back and check my boundaries” stage as well, not about raiding since I quit last autumn but with regard to the game in general. As a game, I think WoW gets worse and worse from my perspective as a non-raiding casual. It’s great that “endgame” is more accessible than ever, but does every step towards it have to be made more and more easy? What about people who can’t or don’t want to raid? What about people who want something fun to do outside their raids too? What about people who come out of the “faceroll” content expecting the vaunted “endgame” to be as easy, and who are unable to function in any situation requiring awareness and teamwork and the ability to own up to and correct their own mistakes?
Wrath heroics were always much easier than TBC ones. Yes, even the new ICC ones. With better gear being more easily available than ever, why on Earth are these heroics STILL nerfed?
And to say something on-topic instead of my usual annoyed rants. :p I think it would be best if Emblems of Frost only dropped in raids. The emblem system is great, but I think it worked best when in order to get the most powerful emblems you had to do the hardest content. The Triumph gear is SO good that someone who isn’t raiding, or not raiding yet, DOES NOT remotely need Frost to assemble a good set of gear.
There's even an achievement for it! http://www.wow-achievements.com/Achievement.aspx?...
My recent post playing at roleplaying
Needless to say, as a healer, I can get group within about a minute, sometimes as quick as pressing the button – so there's a weird, masochistic compulsion to keep on doing it. As if you don't have an excuse or something.
Also there's no rule that says you have to kill current content *immediately* – as long as I get to have a go, I don't mind when it happens.
WHY did he swap his gear?! Maybe he was in his RP set
Or maybe he was just bored of running heroics. But it still sounds pretty mad to me, and maybe the sort of thing you'd with friends and guildies, not random pugs. But, yes, pugs really do chip away at your soul one gogogogogo after another. Our weekly raids have all been quite dull – we've had Noth twice, Ignis twice, Lord J twice, Patcherwerk once . Ah the joy of random systems 
And why do I remember ?
WHY did he swap his gear?! Maybe he was in his RP set
Or maybe he was just bored of running heroics. But it still sounds pretty mad to me, and maybe the sort of thing you'd with friends and guildies, not random pugs. But, yes, pugs really do chip away at your soul one gogogogogo after another. Our weekly raids have all been quite dull – we've had Noth twice, Ignis twice, Lord J twice, Patcherwerk once . Ah the joy of random systems 
And why do I remember ?
WHY did he swap his gear?! Maybe he was in his RP set
Or maybe he was just bored of running heroics. But it still sounds pretty mad to me, and maybe the sort of thing you'd with friends and guildies, not random pugs. But, yes, pugs really do chip away at your soul one gogogogogo after another. Our weekly raids have all been quite dull – we've had Noth twice, Ignis twice, Lord J twice, Patcherwerk once . Ah the joy of random systems 
And why do I remember ?
WHY did he swap his gear?! Maybe he was in his RP set
Or maybe he was just bored of running heroics. But it still sounds pretty mad to me, and maybe the sort of thing you'd with friends and guildies, not random pugs. But, yes, pugs really do chip away at your soul one gogogogogo after another. Our weekly raids have all been quite dull – we've had Noth twice, Ignis twice, Lord J twice, Patcherwerk once . Ah the joy of random systems 
And why do I remember ?
Enjoy your great writing.
Crushridge EU is an easy target. The server is strongly populated by Italians and that brings communications difficulties with other servers. Wow comes with support in Italian but then gives them no server to play on in that language. They are chucked in to the Ruin group as that is where many have come to.
I have played with good peeps from Crush and poor ones too. But then the same goes for any server. The abuse I have seen in PUG's towards people from Crush, hailing from Argent Dawn is astounding. It borders on rascism and shows at best a lack of understanding.
So behave yourself AD and give some love to Crushridge!
Caio.
Thank you for the kind words. And now I'm ashamed – I didn't mean to be Crushridge prejudiced. I think it's just easier to blame and condemn players when you can't talk to them, but that doesn't make bitching about them okay either, and I will try to do better.
Also I'm sorry to hear you've seen so much AD hostility towards Crushridgers. I do kind of wish they'd meet me halfway though – I have tried some halting Italian in an effort to bridge the gap, since it' seems unfair to expect everyone to speak English, but I'm only ever met with stony silence.
God yes, looted, errr, loot is WAY BETTER than bought loot. It feels like a mark of victory, and a fight well fought. Whereas rocking up to a vendor and being all "Um, what triumph gear have you got in stock today, please?" is extremely anti-climatic.
We did UK normal on our cows a few weeks back – and it was genuinely exciting again. It was a challenge, and consequently it felt like a whole new instance. It probably took us the best part of an hour, but nobody minded because it was *fun* (the thing we play games for). You can make instances entertaining again by going with guildies but these days it seems inspite of the content, not because of it.
> God yes, looted, errr, loot is WAY BETTER than bought loot
Depends on who wore it before. I don't want pants from patchwerk… Cyanigosa would be ok.
EEEEEWWW!!! Patchwerk pants!
Funny you should mention ole Garrus, I made the beast with two backs with him last night. We totally got jiggy with it. Just so you know.
He is the Turian for those of taste and discernment. Good on you, Sir.
Funny you should mention ole Garrus, I made the beast with two backs with him last night. We totally got jiggy with it. Just so you know.
You must be having terribly bad luck with the Sanity Tap, I've been in lots of good heroics lately and it's made me wish you could friend people across servers. I have 1 tank and 2 dps, if that makes any difference. I suppose even the tank is fine for my sanity because if someone's being a dick, I count to 5 before I taunt off them.
I used to raid three times a week though and that was too much, so I cut back to just my casual 10man raid, and that's on a Sunday night when I would never do anything social anyway
I made the mistake of blogging about successful runs with the Sanity Tap – I've been cursed ever since.
*weeps brokenly in the corner*
You must be having terribly bad luck with the Sanity Tap, I've been in lots of good heroics lately and it's made me wish you could friend people across servers. I have 1 tank and 2 dps, if that makes any difference. I suppose even the tank is fine for my sanity because if someone's being a dick, I count to 5 before I taunt off them. I used to raid three times a week though and that was too much, so I cut back to just my casual 10man raid, and that's on a Sunday night when I would never do anything social anyway