Uber – Not Just For Raiding Anymore

Or, “Mudflation – Now in Strawberry Flavor”

I should preface by saying I raid in WoW 2-5 times a week, and raided in EQ for far too many years. That’s to defuse the inevitable “u don’t know raiding!!1!!” comments I’ll see emailed to me, in between the mortgage refinance spam. It’s been fun to see my gear scale up from AH Bargain Bin, to mostly blue, to purple. And of course the power gain is handy. My solo ability has gone from adequate to quite fine, and I no longer have the endurance of a wet napkin. Having the ol’ mana bar last longer always helps too. That’s the primary carrot of raiding – new, more powerful items and gear you can’t get elsewhere.

That is, until that scantily dressed harlot known as Miss BC swings by.

As the items begin to leak out of Beta, it’s apparent how much power we all gain. A priest going through the very first dungeon got a blue staff with stats better than Benediction, with better effects. Compare this to an item with a 50% drop rate of a boss in a raid zone just to start the quest (chest will always have either the hunter or priest quest item, but you do have to kill him to get it, which is no simple task). Then there’s the quest to heal a bunch of ghosts, and the long long camp for the other half of the epic, or for the 1k gold the AH wants for the item. And it’s not alone. Many blues, in addition to having 3 sockets (has anyone seen one with less than 3, btw?), have stats equal to today’s MC/BWL gear. I saw a level 61 green quest reward with stats over many of today’s purples. The power gap between raider and non-raider will be eliminated for some time, it seems. Even the tier 4 armor comes from a 10-man instance! I can’t even imagine what the raid gear will have.

But, like Peter Parker might have said, there’s a price for this power. Many level 60 normal mobs seem to be as tough as what we’d consider an elite today. Yes it’s beta and things can change, but this is how most games tend to do things. New stuff, even equivalent in levels, will hit harder since players would do so as well. To go with the extreme, and easiest target, EQ, you had original EQ with Nagafen hitting for ~150 hp to Depths of Darkhollow bosses that do 3k hp AE’s. When South Karana was changed (the first time) years ago the new gnolls were hitting for 300+hp a pop, which was insane for level 30 mobs. When they were fixed (down to ~120hp or so), a dev had stated they would never make something intentionally that hit that hard. Always found that amusing, later on.

So as you peruse the not-really-leaked BC info and drool over the new, easy-to-get epic stuff, remember that old chestnut about the milk and the free cow.

Oh yeah, no cow level in this one. Gotcha.

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Oz

Jaded old gamer, and father of gamers, who's been around long enough. Still, he's always up for giving the Next Big Thing a whirl.

8 thoughts on “Uber – Not Just For Raiding Anymore”

  2. I don’t play WoW so barely understand what you’ve said (lol), but isn’t the continual addition of NEW! MORE POWERFUL! features just an “obvious” (though, IMO, reprehensible) part of any MMOG’s marketing tactic? By nerfing what the older players already have you force them to play more just to keep up, thereby keeping people “in the game”.

    Speaking of which, the other day slashdot linked to an interesting blog about giving up WoW for RL. I can see where the guy’s coming from – MMOG’s can be addictive despite (or because of?) the grind :-)

  3. The difference here is that the 60’s who have purple gear right now spent hundreds to thousands of hours climbing the ladder and farming for it. Now, 60’s who don’t want to have to deal with a pretentious “hardcore” guild to be allowed to attend an unflexible, mandatory schedule of raids to build up enough dkp to get a purple, won’t have to. They’ll either buy the expansion and hop through the Dark Portal to claim a few greens or pick them up in the AH, skipping the MC grind completely (and possibly other raid instances, as well). What I’m wondering is how this is going to affect the current raid schedule. Will the 60 raids have max levels like some of the new dungeons? Or will a vastly larger percentage of the player population now be able to see BWL, Nax, and AQ40?

  4. Would think a full 40-man of lvl 70s would trivialize MC pretty much. Be interesting to see how that will play out tho.

  5. It stands to reason that the bulk of Burning Crusade will eventually end up tuned for the ‘average’ current L60 player. Quite what exactly that means is hard to say – how many people on average, do raid regularly and work up through the purples and Raid Sets? Or is a more average level of equipment somewhere around the T0.5 mark?

    Will the majority of players heading into the new lands be raiders or soloists?

  6. I think it’s great that BC is going to put us all on the same page again. I don’t have the 4-8 hours 3+ times per week that is necessary to even apply for an elite guild, so being able to gain new weapons and armor by soloing again sounds fantastic. I also like what I am reading about how the new dungeons aren’t designed to take all day long. I wouldn’t doubt it if this revamp prompts many players who have canceled their accounts, to come back because now they actually will have a chance to gain epics with half the drama.

  7. I respectfully disagree with most that has been said here. I have some very reliable information out of the BC Beta that suggests that players wearing mostly AQ40 and Naxx gear will be unlikely to replace many of their gear slots before the level 67 instances. In fact, it has been sumised by these same raiders-turned-testers, that most top raiding guilds will skip these midtier instances with minor upgrades at 67 and go right to the top tier raid zones at level 70.

    I have seen about 50 screens now of gear, both crafted, quested and raided and I will say that it is clear that Blizzard is going to play to the ‘very skilled by lacks 6 raid night a week’ crowd. It will be possible for small guilds or groups to navgate some of the toughest encounters in the game and to aqire gear near the level of the highest raid teams.

    To say that level 70 will trivialize the current raid zones is an understatement. Look at any game currently in advanced expansions staged and look at the zones we used to raid there… ghost towns. That is the way of the MMO. Most servers are already seeing that effect with Molten Core. My guild no longer runs MC or BWL, and it is not uncommon to see 2-3 MC PUGs going in a given day. There is a video of a 5-man group killing Onyxia… we can 20 man MC start to finish with no deaths if we felt like wasting the time… so ya they are already trivialized by Naxx and AQ and add another 5-6 instaces and 10 levels into the mix and they will fade into memory.

  8. http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Columns.Detail&id=176

    For some reference to some of the information I hinted at in my previous post regarding loot and loot differences.

    Also a comparison of a level 70 epic crafted item and a drop off the first boss in Naxxrammas:

    Black Felsteel Bracers (Epic)
    Binds when equipped
    Wrist Plate
    446 Armor
    +30 Strength
    Durability 55 / 55
    Requires Level 70
    Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 17.

    Source: Recipe

    VS.

    Wristguards of Vengeance (epic)
    Binds when picked up
    Wrist Plate
    407 Armor
    +24 Strength
    +10 Stamina
    Requires Level 60
    Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.

    Source: Drop (Instructor Razuvious: Naxxrammas)

    Note: Crit rating and % to crit are the changes being implimented in 2.0. It by no means 17% to crit. 1-17 is probably a slight upgrade.

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