Inc rant.
I've got some issues with World of Warcraft, but I find myself still playing it regularly a year after I started. WoW is one of the most time-consuming
games I could ever possibly fathom playing, simply because of the way Blizzard has changed the
game's general structure.
This is all nothing more than my personal opinion, but let's have a look at the game before The Burning Crusade was released, or as some people call it, Vanilla WoW. In Vanilla WoW, the game was much more simple. Once you had hit level 60, which was the level cap up until TBC was released, you basically had two possible avenues to pursue. You could either raid dungeons with groups (PvE), or fight against other players (PvP) in battlegrounds or throughout Azeroth if you'd chosen to play on a PvP server. And of course the option to do both was available, and still is. Regardless of the route you decided to pursue, your first step after hitting 60 would be to go out and get your Tier-0 armor, and replace your current gear with that. This could be easily accomplished with four friends, in as little as a couple of nights or more, depending how much time you spent playing WoW.
After you earned your T-0 armor set, you were ready to begin along the path of your choice. If you wanted to become a notorious PvP threat, you would spend your time in battlegrounds, accumulating as many kills and honor points as possible, trying to move up the ranks. As you moved up in PvP rank, new, better armor and weapons became available to you, as well as a new title associated with each rank. Identical armor was given to both Horde and Alliance players for the same rank, the only differences were the actual names of the ranks, and looks and names of the armor. An avid
gamer - that is a player who spent time on WoW every day - could move up to the next rank every week if he or she was willing to spend the time PvPing, and the armor and weapons available to those who dedicated the time to earn the title of High Warlord (for the Horde) or Grand Marshall (for the Alliance) was outstanding.
If you chose to raid, you would go out and earn your T-0, same as a PvPer, then gather 19 friends and step into Zul-Gurub, the first "endgame" dungeon. As you and your raid group progressed through ZG, you became better geared, outfitting yourself for the next step: the Molten Core. Or, since MC required 40 players and a fair bit of gear farming (gogogo fire resist), you could go from ZG to Ahn'Qiraj 20 - the first section of the much more advanced AQ40. Most raid groups chose to join with another which had also finished with ZG, and move onto MC, because the dungeon was well-known for being nothing more than a zergfest, meaning just about any group could successfully complete the dungeon, regardless of their skill levels or raiding experience. AQ20 was fairly easy as well, but required slighty more coordination than MC, and again, only 20 people.
I just realized that at this rate, this post will be 100 pages long. Long story short, if you wanted to raid, you learned to work with your guild members and each player learned to do his job in the raid, and do it well. You started with ZG and progressed through the instances at a rate set by nothing but your guild's overall skill and determination. At this point in the game, a player wearing a full set of gear from ZG would be able to perform about as well as a player ranked 8 or 9 through PvP - the highest rank being 14, which took an immense amount of time to earn, because of the "curve" type PvP system Blizzard had in place. Only a certain amount of people would promote each week, on each server, and as I said earlier, the gear available at rank 14 was definitely sought after by a lot of people.
Then came the day we found out Blizzard was redesigning the PvP system almost entirely. Instead of progressing through PvP ranks, players would now be awarded honor daily, rather than the weekly update that was in-place before. The "best part" was that honor would now hold a sort of monetary value. Now you didn't have to work hard to achieve Rank 14 for those amazing weapons and armor pieces. Now you would purchase those pieces of gear using the honor you accumulated while PvPing. This made the game much more balanced for people who didn't have immense amounts of time to devote to
World of Warcraft, negatively dubbed "casuals" by the more avid
gamers. This patch was welcomed with open arms by casuals and other so-called lazy gamers, but the people who had spent months working to earn their High Warlord or Grand Marshall status were furious, and in a way, they had the right to be. To give you an example of why this was, you need to know a bit more about the PvP system. There were 14 ranks total. No matter how often you PvP'd, you could never promote more than once a week, because Blizzard set it so that honor only updated once a week - every Tuesday morning during weekly downtime for maintenance. It took the average player three months or so to hit rank 10. That's if the person played every day. To hit rank 12 took an additional two months or so. Rank 13 took yet another month, give or take a week. In order to hit rank 14, dedicated players took
vacation from work or school and spent 12+ hours a day doing nothing but playing World of
Warcraft for two weeks. Even then, some players couldn't manage to make the cut. Knowing that, I believe it's easier to understand why people who took the time to do this were furious.
The whole point was that the gear difference was so incredible, Rank 14 almost became a status symbol. Nobody in mediocre gear would ever fight a Rank 14 player one on one, in some cases even with a number advantage. The one big difference between Vanilla WoW and TBC is simple. In Vanilla WoW, a player with raid gear could perform exceptionally well in PvP, and vice versa. In TBC, a player wearing full raid gear will be slaughtered by a player in full PvP gear, even if the gear is at the same level of difficulty to earn. Likewise, a player in full PvP gear will not be able to perform well in PvE.
Why? Because of another exciting change, called resilience, which became active with the release of The Burning Crusade. Resilience is a stat that's only available on PvP gear. Essentially, what it does is reduces the amount of damage a player takes when being attacked. PvE gear doesn't have any resilience on it. Instead, to make up the same amount of item points, Blizzard stacks either spell damage, spell penetration, attack power, or melee +hit on the PvE gear - all stats that improve a player's performance in endgame dungeons, where the targets are higher level NPCs.
To wrap this all up, I'll list some of the things
I personally feel have changed the game to the point where it's become almost completely flawed. I've already discussed some of these things, and I didn't even mention some others. The list is as follows:
-Resilience - PvP has become a
contest reduced to nothing more than outlasting your opponent. What used to be decided by individual skill is now decided by gear. If two players have equal gear, it will be impossible for certain classes to beat others, because of Blizzard's rock-paper-scissors approach to the different classes in PvP.
-Flying Mounts - Because of their low cost, almost every single level 70 in the game now has a flying mount. Because of this, ground travel is nearly nonexistant in the Outlands, save players who haven't yet reached level 70. The problem with this is that it has effectively removed "World PvP" from the game. World PvP meaning PvP outside of battlegrounds. In Vanilla WoW, world PvP was an enormous part of the game for anyone playing on a PvP server. You chose to play that type of server, and like it or not, you were attacked by members of the other faction very regularly, often caught by surprise. This made the game more challenging, more spontaneous, and generally more enjoyable for a lot of people. The lack of world PvP in TBC is one of the most common complaints WoW players have.
-The difference in gear - It's been said (and not just by me =P) that the difference between an exceptionally geared level 70 and a poorly geared level 70 is currently as great as the difference between
any level 60 and a level 30 in Vanilla WoW. In other words, it is virtually
impossible for a new level 70 to kill an accomplished level 70. What this means is that Blizzard, as a single entity, has contradicted itself in the most extreme
fashion.
Remember the PvP patch I mentioned? The one that removed the PvP ranking system? That patch was put in place to make WoW more "casual friendly," or more enjoyable for less avid gamers. With the difference in gear at level 70, they've done the exact opposite. Once you hit 70, the game begins, because if you plan on doing anything well in WoW, you need to be well geared. All because of the extreme difference in gear at the level cap. This unfortunate change is what altered WoW in the biggest sense.
In Vanilla WoW, it didn't matter if you'd been level 60 for a week or a year. You had a fighting chance against most players, and if you wanted to raid, you could jump in and begin your progression through the PvE aspect of WoW (which was, and still is
very enjoyable, in my opinion).
The thing is, I play WoW for PvP. I enjoyed raiding for a long time, but the original reason I started playing the game was for PvP, and the whole way it worked was outstanding to begin with. Blizzard has ripped the heart and soul of PvP out of World of Warcraft. Like the PvE, PvP has become nothing more than a gear-check. The difference?
There's better AI in the PvP. -.-
