World of Warcraft

I think alot of people will agree with me that WoW has become bias against the regular gamer. The ultimate end game, Black Temple, will only be seen by about 2% of the gaming community. Because you dont have the "badass" gear or you actually have a life and cant devote 6 hours to raiding or make every raid. I have a 70 shammy and ive done ssc/tk many times. Alas, my guild decided I didnt make enough raids and there I go. I think MMO's should make these end game raids more accesible to the average gamer. Let everyone play the WHOLE game.

I'm taking bets against someone will mention welfare during this thread.

Originally posted by yesuconn

 I think MMO's should make these end game raids more accesible to the average gamer. Let everyone play the WHOLE game.

raiding and "solo player" content are 2 entirely different styles of play

WOW has offered raid lite -- 10 man

I have the badass gear.

I got it from running 5 man dungeons.

I think Blizzard did really well in rebalancing this game so that casual gamers could keep parity with raiders. TBC was a marked improvement from the old world in this regard.

Making raids is considerably less fun than washing the dishes. If you are the kind of person that expects it to all be done for you. That someone else should be able to make that time when you yourself cannot be bothered, you shouldn't have much to moan about when you don't get an invite.

Raids suck. Raiders suck. If you are going to raid you need to develop a thick skin for rejection.

If you don't want to get rejected, organise them yourself. It doesn't take 6 hours, it takes the same 30 minutes you spend sitting around online waiting for your invite. Only you aren't sitting around dueling, you are getting a load of blagging whispers and guilt trips from lazy buggers who wouldn't make the same effort for you.

Originally posted by yesuconn

I think alot of people will agree with me that WoW has become bias against the regular gamer. The ultimate end game, Black Temple, will only be seen by about 2% of the gaming community. Because you dont have the "badass" gear or you actually have a life and cant devote 6 hours to raiding or make every raid. I have a 70 shammy and ive done ssc/tk many times. Alas, my guild decided I didnt make enough raids and there I go. I think MMO's should make these end game raids more accesible to the average gamer. Let everyone play the WHOLE game.

Look at it this way.  It's 2% of the players, but Black Temple is probably less than 2% of the game.  That's 2% of the game, for the top 2% of the players.  That leaves 98% of the game to the other 98% of the players.  Seems about right to me.

Im not a "lazy" player and I dont sit around for half an hour waiting for an invite......as i said before i work alot and i also like this game alot. It just seems that "elite" guilds form and they are the ones that get to experience the whole game. I dont see that as fair.....i cant play the whole game because I work too much? I pay the same 15 bucks as the next guy....but as you say the "elite" players (aka live in your moms basment and have limited interactions with other people) get to experience the true end game? Meh i say make it more accesible to everyone. Or does that scare you "elite" players that someone in orgrimmar might be running around in the same gear as you?

Originally posted by yesuconn

 does that scare you "elite" players that someone in orgrimmar might be running around in the same gear as you?

but with you last post,

seems more like a plea for "gimme my epic gear"

most mmos have *time sinks* with rewards for those timesinks

- its got little to do with being elite

Originally posted by yesuconn

as i said before i work alot and i also like this game alot. It just seems that "elite" guilds form and they are the ones that get to experience the whole game. I dont see that as fair.....i cant play the whole game because I work too much? I pay the same 15 bucks as the next guy....but as you say the "elite" players (aka live in your moms basment and have limited interactions with other people) get to experience the true end game? Meh i say make it more accesible to everyone.

You're not missing as much as you think.  I'm not a full blown raider, however I know some and I've done just enough raiding myself to let you in on the dirty little secret that all those guys in purples don't want you to know....looks around nervously....whispers....It's not all that great.

Let me give you a little insite into the "raiders" world.

1)  They spend almost the whole week "preparing" for their raid.  Doing dailies to earn enough gold to get the latest enchants and buying the reagents needed to make pots etc.

2)  Often times there's a lot of bickering and fighting over who gets to go and why and who will get what gear if it drops and who's on top of the DKP chart and so on.

3)  On raid night they'll sometimes wait around for an hour or more for the raid to get started hoping that they'll get a raid invite.  And you can't simply go play the game while you wait because if you're not at the raid launch point ready to go, you won't get an invite.  You ever see a large group of players all standing outside of Kara doing nothing but jumping all over each other?  They're waiting around to see if they get "picked".  It's more pathetic than the kick ball game in 4th grade.

4)  If they don't get "picked" they're expected to leave that character near the entrace to the raid on the off chance that someone will have to drop from the raid and someone else will be invited in.  If you're not ready and waiting, you won't go and not only that but you'll be asked to explain why you weren't just waiting around to go.  Now you can if you want sometimes log off that character and play an alt as long as you keep listening on Ventrilo or something else so if something should come up you can immediately drop whatever you are doing and switch to your main, so no going on instance runs or grouping up or anything else that might make the raid wait.

5)  Depending on the group, you will spend an awful lot of time mowing down trash mobs for little to no loot for the chance to kill the boss with the nice loot.  For the next 15 mins the raid leader will explain the boss fight to anyone who doesn't know what their job is and there's almost always at least 1 person who doesn't know.  Should anyone fail to do their job well on the boss, most likely it will result in a wipe of the raid group and another 30 minutes to regroup, rebuff and listen the raid leader AGAIN explain the boss fight emphasizing the part that just got screwed up so you can take another shot at it.  When you finally do manage to kill a boss, about half the time something drops that no one really wants because they either already have something better, it's of a type they can't use or they are waiting for something better to drop and don't want to use their DKP points.

6)  At the end of the night, if you're lucky you have managed to save a pot or 2 for the next raid encounter, only had maybe a 20 or 30g repair bill and perhaps actually replaced a blue with a purple who's stats are only slightly better than what you had already.  And when I say a pot or 2, I'm not talking about a super mana pot that can be picked up for a gold or 2, I'm talking about those ones on the AH that sell for like 5 or 10g apiece or something like that. Yeah, you're expected to have those if you want to be a hard core raider otherwise you risking being humiliated because your damage is so poor or your healing so weak that someone will swear you must be sleeping half the raid.

So before you start lamenting that you can't play the whole game, you need to actually talk to someone who does play the whole game and ask them if I'm lying that it's not all it's cracked up to be.  Why do you think there are so many posts all the time from raiders saying that end-game sucks?  It's not because they don't like the purples, it's because those purples don't come about easily.  Oh you can get purples alright, but I'm not talking about just any purple, I'm talking about the ones with the killer stats on them.  Believe me when I tell you that the person worked damned hard to get that purple. 

Unless of course you like your games to be more like work than fun?

Blizzard got it 1/2 right with the "standard" dungeons and the "heroic" dungeons.

That way, the standard ones are easy enough where everyone can run them and complete them, but the heroic versions take skill, coordination, and a higher gear level. By completing these heroic dungeons, you get better rewards.

The reputation grind to unlock the heroic mode is a little too much IMO.

The questions is, why haven't they done the same for raiding? Have standard and heroic difficulty settings for raids.

The standard raids are much easier then the current ones, but the gear levels are much more comparable to the heroic 5-person dungeons.

Put Tier 4,5,6 gear into the 3 tiers of "standard" raids and put the Tier 7,8,9 in the "heroic" raids.

This way, everyone has a much better chance of at least seeing and experiencing the content, but the "hardcore" raiders who possess the dedication, skill, coordination, and effort to do the "heroic" raids end up with the greatest rewards.

It'd be a PERFECT opportunity to bring back some of the older raids too. Make "heroic" versions of MC, BWL, AQ40, and NAX for groups of 25 level 70 characters. Even bring back heroic versions of ZG and AQ20 for groups of 10 level 70 characters.

Or even take out the Tiered gear from the standard raids, just put in the non-Tiered armor and weapons, and save the better stuff, the Tiered gear