Back in Burning Crusade, I remember hitting level 70 relatively late - about eleven months into the expansion. When BC came out, my shaman, Tarbhad, was only level 30, and at the time he was my main. This was due to a combination of factors: leveling in Vanilla was quite slow, I was still quite new at the game (I thought spirit would be great regardless of spec as it would limit downtime! And that one should not focus too much on one particular talent tree, lest you neglect some of your other abilities,) and I had fairly early on discovered the joy of making alts.
It took until October or November (after a January release) for me to get my rogue, Darsino, to 70. Later, I decided to level up Jarsus, my Paladin, thanks to my discovery of how awesome it feels to tank. So by the time I hit 70 on what would become my main, many players had been at level 70 for nearly a year. This was back in the days when threat was a serious issue - the definition of good dps was one that would never pull off the tank. People would compliment good tanks by saying "wow, I can't pull off of you," as if this is something that should be regularly possible.
The concept for heroics in Burning Crusade was that they should be quite difficult indeed. In fact, the general consensus was that heroic 5-man dungeons were more difficult than Karazhan, the "big raid" of tier 4. (Karazhan was extremely popular for this reason, as well as the fact that it was the only 10-man raid, and was also goddamn cool - seriously, while they should never change Karazhan in a revamp, I would be absolutely overjoyed to see them make a "sequel raid" à la Blackwing Descent. I would be lying if I said I hadn't idly written ideas for a "Lower Karazhan" raid.)
Anyway, the point is that the barrier to entry for heroic dungeons was pretty intense, especially for tanks, though the need for good crowd control options and top-notch performance by dps and healers meant everyone really had to push to get into them. With no dungeon finder, you had to convince people that you were worth taking, and of course most people hold others to higher standards than themselves. Thankfully, there were seven normal-mode level 70 dungeons (and in fact, they rewarded the same gear on normal and heroic mode, only with extra epic loot off the final boss) so you still had stuff to do if you weren't going into heroics.
Wrath of the Lich King dialed down the difficulty to a fair degree. While you were still likely to wipe on occasion, and even hit a wall at times (Loken in Heroic Halls of Lightning was one of the most infamous) and you did need to gear up to a degree in the four normal-mode level 80 dungeons, there was less coordination required and by the time people had Naxxramas-level gear, heroics could be cleared with ease. (By the end of the expansion, most heroics were completed at breakneck speeds, often lasting a mere 10-15 minutes or so.)
While Wrath was a very popular expansion (frankly, it was my favorite,) there was a very, very vocal minority that complained it was too easy. Admittedly, the ease of the heroics led to a certain intolerance of slower runs or players with low dps, but for the most part it was fun. Blizzard attempted to fix this in Cataclysm by returning to the Burning Crusade-difficutly of heroics (and also got rid of epic rewards in heroics, a decision I find sad as it was always fun to get that super piece of gear on the final boss.) The result was that many of these dungeons were fairly brutal, and in fact I think a very large number of people quit the game because of it. Eventually, the 4.3 Hour of Twilight heroics brought things back down to Wrath levels, or possibly easier.
So now we come to Mists. The definition of a heroic dungeon has changed. Oddly, it has actually become what I originally thought it would be when leveling up in Burning Crusade. There are no "level cap dungeons," like Arcatraz, Utgarde Pinnacle, or Grim Batol anymore. Instead, upon hitting level 90, and assuming you've at least done a fair amount of Townlong Steppes and Dread Wastes for quest rewards, you are more than geared enough for these dungeons.
We are, in greens and quest blues, at a place where we had been with Wrath heroics when dressed in tier 9 or 10 epics.
At least for now, the only seriously challenging 5-man content is, appropriately enough, Challenge Mode. This new feature is not exactly "double heroic mode," though it is more difficult. It does not reward gear (other than stat-less but very cool-looking transmog sets) and also does not reward you for being well-geared, as your iLevel is downgraded to the maximum. I do not know how popular this feature is, and while I'm sure I'd like to try it out at some point, the lack of gear rewards and the hardcore bent of the feature mean it's probably not for me. Anyway, the point is that for most people, there's basically no barrier to entry for 5-man content.
Blizzard has claimed that they want to focus people on the LFR side of things in order to progress through content (assuming they aren't raiding normal or heroic modes,) as they feel that it was too easy to skip raid content in the past thanks to the very high-quality epics gained from new dungeons, such as the 232 (equivalent to Trial of the Crusader) gear coming out of the Frozen Halls dungeons in 3.3, or the 378 (equivalent to Firelands) gear coming out of the Hour of Twilight dungeons in 4.3.
On one hand, I get their reasoning. Ulduar was famous for being both one of, if not the best raid ever made, and also being too-quickly pushed aside in favor of the far inferior Trial of the Crusader. There was far less incentive to run the epic, 13 + 1 boss raid (the +1 being Algalon) with gorgeous environments and awesome-looking gear when the 5-boss raid almost entirely taking place in the same room and with no trash whatsoever was giving out far superior gear. The 5-man added with Trial of the Crusader awarded 219 epics, which is what 10-man Ulduar gave out, so you could, after running Trial of the Champion enough and gearing up with Emblems of Conquest (which were the 1-per heroic dungeon boss in patch 3.2) just head directly into Trial of the Crusader without ever touching Ulduar.
A similar thing happened in Cataclysm, with the Hour of Twilight dungeons granting perfectly good gear to get started in Dragon Soul, which meant you could pretty much ignore Firelands.
So the intention, apparently, with Mists, is that they want non-regular raiders to use LFR in order to gear up for the next tier, rather than running 5-mans. This way, you'll see the raid content leading up to the final raid.
The problem I have is that LFR, perhaps inevitably, sucks. Oh, as a way to see the content you would not otherwise, I am fully in favor of it. After banging my head up against tier 11 and finally only downing a single boss in Firelands, I all but gave up hope that I would ever fight Deathwing, yet only a couple weeks after 4.3 was released, I got to destroy the destroyer and see the epic conclusion to the expansion.
The point of LFR, as it was originally introduced, was to let non-raiders see the big moments previously only available to raiders, and I think it does that fine. But as a way to gear up?
I am not suggesting that they get rid of gear from LFR - this will keep people incentivized to run it and thus provide groups for those who have not yet seen the content. But I also think that a robust stepping-stone system in the form of new heroics with every raid patch has been a very welcome and enjoyable addition to the game. Sure, the Zuls were a pain in the ass, but I thought (and I think a lot of people would agree) that the Frozen Halls and the Hour of Twilight heroics were great (ok, Hour of Twilight itself was a bit bland, but still good! An escort where the dude you're escorting holds his own!)
The mere existence of LFR means that people who want to see the raid content will see it. In the months and months that a raid will be out (and even after, because presumably we will still be able to queue for Mogu'shan Vaults when the Orgrimmar raid is out) people will certainly be able to see it, and be able to appreciate the work that was done. Frankly, even if we wind up outgearing the old LFR raids, I imagine anyone who is curious will at least check them out.
In all honesty, I think that heroics should continue to serve the function that they have in Wrath and Cataclysm - providing something that can be done many times a week for a chance at decent gear and valor points to potentially buy better gear. We're still very early in Mists, so we'll have to wait and see what Blizzard winds up doing.
No comments:
Post a Comment