I guess you could say it was a balance issue, but it depends on your viewpoint. To me, it was basic math gone wrong.
As announced on the WoW forums here, players are getting their honor downgraded by 30%. Apparently the massive surge of people with HWL/GM PvP gear got a bit of attention. I know there’s a good amount players in my guild with 4 or so pieces already, and one completely done, I believe.
I may be jaded, but I can’t help but think of the many times this has happened with insert_random_mmorpg_here. A bit more testing, or a bit quicker action would have prevented the fun the forums will have with this.
On the good side, maybe this means the queue to get in will be reduced? Muhahaha.
I agree it’s typical. Unfortunately, it never fails to screw the casual player. EQ did the same thing with their expansions. Kickass drop rates for the first few days while hardcores geared up, then nerfed drop rates when the average folks finally got to it.
Sure there might be a guy out there that has the whole set. But he was going to get the whole set *regardless* of whether it’s 10 or 15 days play time. Casuals, however, now may not get any (but likely 1-2 items) which could have been 3-4. So how was balance preserved exactly?
It’s preserved because the amount required to get higher items is exponential. Because of the lower rate of decay at lower levels, a 30% reduction will set the casual player back a couple weeks of casual gameplay, perhaps, but the potential HWL/GM will be set back a month or more of 6 hours a night PvP grinding.
So that’s why I only got 250 from an AV win today when I normally get high 300’s up to 500. PvP gear will still be fairly easy to get. Doing “semi-harcore” PvP grinding on a server where alliance take 10 minutes to get into WSG/AB and 50 minutes to get into AV, I was able to make 6k in a day pre-change. Reduce that by 30% and you get 4200…which, truthfully, won’t set me back but maybe a full day or two for an item.
Unfortunately, waiting in BG queues constantly gets tiresome, so I tend to take a break every other day now because you begin to realize that you’re wasting a ton of time in queues…Oh, why didn’t I stick to leveling up my horde mage instead of going back to my alliance one. This is disappointing, but not heart wrenching.
They changed the pvp system to help out the casual players but they forgot about the hardcore pvpers. The system needs to be set up like the xp system; the less you play the more 2x xp you build up. That way the hardcore can still be held back from getting the top items in a week and the casual still has a chance to eventually be able to afford one thing.
I personally don’t see what’s wrong with getting the PvP gear quickly. While I’m not a big GW fan, I do agree with the way GW handles its armor by not making the game (at least the last time I played it) all gear dependant to balance PvP around strategy/gear, not numbers. And it’s not like Blizzard is hurting raiders by giving the casual player decent epics because PvP gear is made for PvP, not raiding. Raiding gear has much more benefits in terms of set bonuses and overall stats for raiding.
That should be strategy/skill…
The PvP gear is supposed to be sparse, because it’s supposed to signify a lot of work and *supposedly* skill. The more common it gets, the less of an honour that becomes, until everyone comes around to the notion that it’s just one more thing we’re supposed to grind.
Except, of course, that they built their entire game around grind. What the hell did they thinkw as going to happen when people were given one more number to try to raise?
I’m going to go out on a limb here: static raids are stupid. PvP rewarding PvE is stupid. 99% of all end game content is stupid. Something new needs to be done, and if it means that the most grindtastic assholes are left out in the cold, so be it.
I agree, but what I meant is that so long as it’s difficult even for hardcore players to achieve, it won’t be on the checklist of places to spent 100 hours. Hell, the fact that it’s currently along the lines of 500 hours with decay on that makes it an unlikely goal.
They have 6 million subscribers because grinding is really addictive. Whether people ‘like’ it or not is irrelevant, they just can’t put it down …
Yeah, I know. I just wish that it wasn’t really addictive, or rather, I wish they’d come up with a more enjoyable form of gameplay that is as addictive. I think it’s going to take someone coming up with a good, solid way to procedurally generate content in such a way that it doesn’t “feel” generated before that’s going to happen, tho.
For that matter, I’d love to see the stats on how many people ever actually reach the end game in WoW. Last I heard, only 10-15% of players ever participate in even one raid. I think there’s basically the grinder/PvP endgame folks, the alt-itis folks, and the ones that just want to see new stuff, then quit for a while when there’s no new stuff. I’d also say that the “happy grinders” make up a minority, perhaps a solid minority, but a minority nonetheless. Put another way, I’ve never seen someone say, “Wow, I dinged 2 days ago, and I’m so glad I’ve got another 2 million XP to level!”
It’s funny… Lately, I’ve actually been finding it easier to get into grinding on a new MUD than grinding on a new graphical MMO. Don’t know why, could just be an efficiency/ease of access thing.