I'm a holy priest, I'm used to soloing slowly and with difficulty. But now i have come back to WOW and started questing in Northrend, and it's so easy it's boring.

Yesterday it was too much, I soloed a yellow (I was 73) group quest for 3 players. WTF???... I couldn't even dream of doing that in BC.

They also really buffed the damage of healing and tank specs.

The group quests are basically broken down into 3 man or 5 man.    The 3 man ones are soloable if you know how to play your character.   Most of the 5 man ones are not soloable, like the fight club in Zul Drak.  

Below average players probably have a hard time with the 3person group quests, just like they have problems in dungeons :)

They stay easy like that all the way through 80. However, there are a few good quest chains available in WotLK. All of them are stupidly easy, but there is one in particular that has a fun ending (Horde/Alliance) and another that has a good story.

Links are spoilers, so don't click unless you want to read up.

Holy priests benefitted from the +damage/+healing merge into spellpower.   So you're probably noticing that.

Do what I do, and do the quests a few levels higher than you - you won't run out of quests before 80 anyway.

The people crying for the lack of challenge are usually the ones doing their utmost to avoid it.

Originally posted by Recant

Holy priests benefitted from the +damage/+healing merge into spellpower.   So you're probably noticing that.

Do what I do, and do the quests a few levels higher than you - you won't run out of quests before 80 anyway.

 

The people crying for the lack of challenge are usually the ones doing their utmost to avoid it.

Indeed. :)) Mobs and quests by the thousands out there, choose how you like to play and the higher you go the better the gear.

I find the difficulty in the Raids perfect. We die about 3 or 4 times on 3 wings of Nax 10 each time with one or two new members who are joining. Every new guy always dies on doing the dance.

Everyone is always laughing and having fun even when we have a wipe.

Much better than the impossible fights in Sunwell. :)))

I am afraid that the new Ulduar will again be impossible for a lot of people who are just beginning to Raid, tx to the morons who complain about "difficulty" on doing open world quests 2 levels below their avatar.

 So open world is your own challenge you seek, complete freedom of doing things above or below your levels.

As for Raids, Blizz has the stats and I think a 4 or more wipes on one boss is about the limit of "patience" in most groups. So I like that.

The whole new expansion has been made a walk in the park area with hand out epics to anyone.

Everyone has the same gear and the difficulty of the game has disappeared. Only part that is left is arena and that has been scewed quite bad if you look at the class / spec balances of arena teams.

 Meh, just want the Loremaster title so not bothered. 

Originally posted by Auxer

The whole new expansion has been made a walk in the park area with hand out epics to anyone.

 

Everyone has the same gear and the difficulty of the game has disappeared. Only part that is left is arena and that has been scewed quite bad if you look at the class / spec balances of arena teams.

you and others claiming its easy should link your mains with that undiying achievement and all the rest of the hard modes done.

ulduar will follow the same style, while it will be harder than naxx, normal modes will still be a lot easier than the optional hard modes. which is reflected in the loot. and btw, the hard modes are much harder from what ive seen on the ptr.

but yeah come back when youve got that armory link for us

 

you and others claiming its easy should link your mains with that undiying achievement and all the rest of the hard modes done.

ulduar will follow the same style, while it will be harder than naxx, normal modes will still be a lot easier than the optional hard modes. which is reflected in the loot. and btw, the hard modes are much harder from what ive seen on the ptr.

but yeah come back when youve got that armory link for us

I find your comment silly. The fact is that WotLK is much easier across the board than any of the previous WoW expansions - questing, 5-man dungeons, heroics and 10/25 man raids. From a business point of view I do believe this makes sense since most players just want to have fun and hard-core quests and encounters require more from the players than what the average joe think is fun. Personally, it makes the game less fun for me. In addition, I do not understand why there needs to be a conflict between hard quests, dungeons and raids and more casual content of the same type. Blizzard is making enough money to create really hard content at the same time as more casual content without just artificially adding achievements such as 'the nude' if you successfully tank Kel'Thuzad without armour. 

Originally posted by Sikhander

 

you and others claiming its easy should link your mains with that undiying achievement and all the rest of the hard modes done.

ulduar will follow the same style, while it will be harder than naxx, normal modes will still be a lot easier than the optional hard modes. which is reflected in the loot. and btw, the hard modes are much harder from what ive seen on the ptr.

but yeah come back when youve got that armory link for us

I find your comment silly.......

Blizzard is making enough money to create really hard content at the same time as more casual content without just artificially adding achievements such as 'the nude' if you successfully tank Kel'Thuzad without armour. 

His comment is far from silly. And I would LOVE to see the avatars in the armory of those SUPER players. :)))

Most people who didn't achieve anything in Wotlk except for accepting world quests at 1 level below their avatar are actually the most silly whiners.

The good thing is that these guys make themselves ridiculous on the offical forums since they have to publish with their official lvl 80 avatars.

And of course there is NO achievement for tanking Kel'Tuzad tanking nude.

Again a LOW - with a plain lie - attempt at having a go at Wow as we are mostly used to see

----

In fact the achievements are made with high quality programming: by having only a 1% of Raiders have those fantastic red and black dragons, they create a very good scaling achievement in the Raids.

I bet my head you don't have these red of black dragons either....

Sorry if I don't believe you are not playing an mmorpg to not achieve status symbols like those awesome mounts or cool titles which gives you far more than the next epic.

It IS so much more difficult to create 8 different scaled battles against one boss than create only ONE version of the same boss. (Sart with 0, 1, 2 , 3 dragons in both 10 and 25 men raid or doing the bosses without deads or downing the 4 horseman within 15 seonds).

Something WotLK will  prolong in its next Raid instance the Ulduar.

By just publishing a plain lie in your post, you don't get much credibility in your evaluation of the game either...

I always had my doubts you play this game seriously as most of your posts are a "hear say" of the past 3 months and NEVER talk about actual gameplay from the last months. As it is always the case with these posts on Wow on this forum. Just look at the Pvp comments. The moment they get published here, the arena is the exact opposite of what some write here (patch 3.08/3.09 as an example).

Burst damage? Already replaced by healer domination. DPS Paladins ? Only 6% represented in today's stats in arena. So the moment guys citing these, IN the game you see sometimes the exact opposite of what Wow critics say.

At the moment WotLK is one big show off of the various achievements in the game AND their symbols. Making FAR more than a single focused Raid game it once was...... but you have to play it to see this of course.

To be honest - the OP does have some sort of point. I remember when I went to Howling Fjord for the first time. It was shortly after WotLK release, and the place was crawling with characters. At regular intervals the cry would come out "can someone help me with the group quest X" and, apart from a very small number of quests, the response "X can be soloed" could be guaranteed.

Then again - both the characters I've taken to the Fjord were 70s, one fully epicced, and the other in blues. So I'm not sure the quests would be quite so easy to solo if you started the Fjord at 68 in green gear.

Originally posted by Antipathy

To be honest - the OP does have some sort of point. I remember when I went to Howling Fjord for the first time. It was shortly after WotLK release, and the place was crawling with characters. At regular intervals the cry would come out "can someone help me with the group quest X" and, apart from a very small number of quests, the response "X can be soloed" could be guaranteed.

Then again - both the characters I've taken to the Fjord were 70s, one fully epicced, and the other in blues. So I'm not sure the quests would be quite so easy to solo if you started the Fjord at 68 in green gear.

The game is being split up in 3:

The leveling process which is easy if being played on the same level. But you only get the best gear for your level if you take on higher levels. And leveling with newly created characters is more difficult than standing in full lvl 70 epics of course.

The Raids which are perfect for me. Allowing comrades to enjoy the ride who never got to raiding in  the first place. And for those WANTING to have those elite achievements and Raid awards can still do the challeging things. Perfect.

The PvP which can be casual and full of fun in ALL of the branches (from City Raids to LW to the BG's) and VERY hard (even much too hard) when doing the rated Arena competition.

----

Throughout the game is one red line though these days and that's achievements. I visit MORE old grounds than ever before in the game. And sheer fun it is. From getting my fishing up with daily quests ... in Outland to have beaten  the eggs bombardement in Skitis in 2 minutes and 15 seconds.

We downed Onyxia with 2 - nice fight btw -  (for another guy who didn't even see the dragon before) and got me a nice 18 slot bag for the bank and 30 gold each.

Tomorrow I do the solo Alliance fishing in Ogrimmar :)) and just had my Thrall head achievement in Ogrimmar. All tx to achievements.

 So the game is just as hard or easy as you would like to play it. If you are a leveler : try doing the quests 3 or 4 levels above your head: they are worth it for the loot alone.

Originally posted by Zorndorf 

We downed Onyxia with 2 - nice fight btw -  (for another guy who didn't even see the dragon before) and got me a nice 18 slot bag for the bank and 30 gold each.

Tomorrow I do the solo Alliance fishing in Ogrimmar :)) and just had my my Thrall head achievement in Ogrimmar. All tx to achievements.

 

When the OP was talking about the previously poor soloing capability of his priest, I couldn't help remembering - wasn't it a pair of shadow priests who were the first to 2-man Onxyia at 70?

You could do what I do now days in almost all MMO's FIGHT NEKKID! And it is so sad that that is what all mmo's are comming to nowdays. And the really sad part about it is it is Blizzard's fault . WOW has ruined the future of all mmo's that's why I have always steered clear of this garbage that is wow.

Originally posted by Wrender

You could do what I do now days in almost all MMO's FIGHT NEKKID! And it is so sad that that is what all mmo's are comming to nowdays. And the really sad part about it is it is Blizzard's fault . WOW has ruined the future of all mmo's that's why I have always steered clear of this garbage that is wow.

you keep thinking that, thats cute

Originally posted by Wrender

You could do what I do now days in almost all MMO's FIGHT NEKKID! And it is so sad that that is what all mmo's are comming to nowdays. And the really sad part about it is it is Blizzard's fault . WOW has ruined the future of all mmo's that's why I have always steered clear of this garbage that is wow.

No problem.

As long as we are having fun, you are the one being frustrated. :)))

I love it when people blame WoW and Blizzard for the fact that no other company can make a game worth playing. Makes me chuckle. Personally I blame WoW for global warming, the upcoming zombie invasion and the fact that the Easter bunny isnt real.

Originally posted by Wrender

You could do what I do now days in almost all MMO's FIGHT NEKKID! And it is so sad that that is what all mmo's are comming to nowdays. And the really sad part about it is it is Blizzard's fault . WOW has ruined the future of all mmo's that's why I have always steered clear of this garbage that is wow.

If you've always steered clear of it, how do you know it's garbage? Or did you just come here to repeat second hand rumours and prejudice?

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Sikhander

 

His comment is far from silly. And I would LOVE to see the avatars in the armory of those SUPER players. :)))

Most people who didn't achieve anything in Wotlk except for accepting world quests at 1 level below their avatar are actually the most silly whiners.

The good thing is that these guys make themselves ridiculous on the offical forums since they have to publish with their official lvl 80 avatars.

And of course there is NO achievement for tanking Kel'Tuzad tanking nude.

Again a LOW - with a plain lie - attempt at having a go at Wow as we are mostly used to see

----

In fact the achievements are made with high quality programming: by having only a 1% of Raiders have those fantastic red and black dragons, they create a very good scaling achievement in the Raids.

I bet my head you don't have these red of black dragons either....

Sorry if I don't believe you are not playing an mmorpg to not achieve status symbols like those awesome mounts or cool titles which gives you far more than the next epic.

It IS so much more difficult to create 8 different scaled battles against one boss than create only ONE version of the same boss. (Sart with 0, 1, 2 , 3 dragons in both 10 and 25 men raid or doing the bosses without deads or downing the 4 horseman within 15 seonds).

Something WotLK will  prolong in its next Raid instance the Ulduar.

By just publishing a plain lie in your post, you don't get much credibility in your evaluation of the game either...

I always had my doubts you play this game seriously as most of your posts are a "hear say" of the past 3 months and NEVER talk about actual gameplay from the last months. As it is always the case with these posts on Wow on this forum. Just look at the Pvp comments. The moment they get published here, the arena is the exact opposite of what some write here (patch 3.08/3.09 as an example).

Burst damage? Already replaced by healer domination. DPS Paladins ? Only 6% represented in today's stats in arena. So the moment guys citing these, IN the game you see sometimes the exact opposite of what Wow critics say.

At the moment WotLK is one big show off of the various achievements in the game AND their symbols. Making FAR more than a single focused Raid game it once was...... but you have to play it to see this of course.

Do not accuse me of lying. Instead do some homework and check what a parable is then read what I wrote again.

And once again you are missing the point: 1) That I believe that Blizzard has done the right business decision to focus on more casual content ("focus groups support that ...") but 2) That they have started to loose the more hard-core crowd since they seem inept at multitasking (creating content for both groups at the same time) AND 3) Achievements are even more synthetic goals than killing pixels on a screen.

And do you even believe in your own arguments? "It IS so much more difficult to create 8 different scaled battles against one boss than create only ONE version of the same boss." Funny way to completely miss the point. Why do you think Blizzard is creating 3 versions of the same fight instead of 3 different boss fights? Because it is harder to rehash the same content in three different ways or because it is harder to make three different boss fights (one easy, one medium and one hard)? Three versions of the same fight is just the lazy man's way of 'creating' content. End of story - even a 2-year old can understand that.

And you will probably get me wrong again. I put more pressure on a Company that earns the amount of money that Blizzard does in terms of content development. RIght now it has been plain bad given their turn-over. When I am optimistic I think that they are putting everything behind SC2, DiabloIII and the next MMO. When I am having a bad day I think that the cash-cow milkers of Vivendi has finally corrupted what is (was?) a brilliant games development team.

You don't get it.    The way Blizzard is doing the 'hard modes' is not because they can't create all new content, it is because they don't WANT to create 'hardcore' only content.    The biggest problem with vanilla WOW is that so much content was created for < 5% of the game's population.   Remember raid2play?  The majority of players were paying for content they were never going to see.

The hard modes are a way for Blizzard to allow almost everyone to see the 'content', but still allow difficult things for the more hardcore players.

If 95% of players never saw Sarth.. they would complain..  but because the normal version is doable by anyone.. everyone gets to see it, and those 95% of players aren't going to complain because they didn't 'see' the content with 3 drakes up... yet even the hardcore guilds on my server still struggle with 3 drakes.

My guild is the perfect example.  We are happy because we've done sarth, and we've done Nax 10.   If things were done like before, then my guild would probably still be only running heroics and would have never seen any raids.. and we'd be paying month after month to run heroics while the devs spent our money creating Ulduar which we would never see either.

Blizzard is being really smart, and well above any other game.  They are spending their money creating content that almost all of their customers are enjoying, and still trying to add some hardcore modes.

Bryan: My point is - why is Blizzard not doing both given the amount of resources? I wrote in another post that AQ20 and AQ40 were perfect examples when things were done right (not discussing the graphical style). AQ20 was very accessible for guilds. AQ40 was quite easy when it came to the first half and then the difficulty ramped significantly. Content for everyone without diluting it either. In TBC Blizzard failed since for a very long time heroics were hard and Kara was the only more casual raid instance which stranded the casual players. Not until very late did they tune the raids to allow more casual guilds to access them and at the same time releasing Zul'Aman.

Maybe I am putting too much pressure on Blizzard but I cannot understand how it can be so hard to get a content release schedule right over the cycle of an expansion for the various player groups that enjoy the game.

Originally posted by Sikhander

Bryan: My point is - why is Blizzard not doing both given the amount of resources? I wrote in another post that AQ20 and AQ40 were perfect examples when things were done right (not discussing the graphical style). AQ20 was very accessible for guilds. AQ40 was quite easy when it came to the first half and then the difficulty ramped significantly. Content for everyone without diluting it either. In TBC Blizzard failed since for a very long time heroics were hard and Kara was the only more casual raid instance which stranded the casual players. Not until very late did they tune the raids to allow more casual guilds to access them and at the same time releasing Zul'Aman.

Maybe I am putting too much pressure on Blizzard but I cannot understand how it can be so hard to get a content release schedule right over the cycle of an expansion for the various player groups that enjoy the game.

It's simply because hardcore players do not stick around and play continously. Look at this thread, among others discussing casuals versus hardcore. Hardcore players, by definition, want to beat the content first and be the best at it. After they beat it once, and then maybe a few more times, they grow bored and quit. Trust me, as a former guild leader of a raiding guild, I have seen burnout. People stop playing so Blizzard loses money. On top of that, then you have casuals, who have never seen the content upset because they are paying for content they will never see.

I think the issue is that many people (in these forums in particular) believe the WOW playerbase is all about raiding and personally, I believe that to be far from the truth. Sure people raid, but there is more to do in game and I know tons of players who care nothing about 10 or 25 man content. They are content playing the game they want to play - maybe its alts, achievements, 5 mans, crafting or whatever. So many people think that raiding is it and everyone who plays WOW wants to raid and its the ONLy reason they play. There is more to WOW than raiding.

Also, I would trust Blizzard with their design decisions. They did not arbritarily decide to make the game easier. I know they have analysts who look at the numbers. They know how many raid, they know how many do quests and they know how many never saw the harder content like AQ40 and Naxx. Why do you think they recycled it? I can tell you that when it first came out, back prior to BC, we had 3 guilds on our server just step foot in there and nobody cleared it. Blizzard knows this and understands their base better than anyone else. They know who plays month to month and who will pay the bills.

The reason they do not do both is simply because its not worth it. The hardcore raiding set is a small niche part of the WOW market. Its the same with the hardcore, FFA PVP crowd. It is often not worth it (cost-benefit analysis) to provide the content. Spend thousands of dollars, dedicate a number of dev team people just for content that maybe 10% of your playerbase will see. And add to that, they will SPEED through the content and then grow bored and unsubscribe until the next content is released.

I totally understand why Blizzard does not release super hardcore content. The issue is that there is harder content. Why do people think the 3D OS does count as content? I think managing 3 drakes in there would prove that your guild is very, very good. Heck, I have only done 1 drake and that is hard for us (casual guild now).

Wait for Ulduar. Do every boss on hard mode and clear it. if its easy, then we will know for sure that WOW is now a totally casual game (since Blizzard is saying how very hard its supposed to be). However, I expect the hardest hardcore guilds to clear it soon and then be complaining about the lack of content. Its the same cycle since the game launched and it won't change anytime soon.

Here is a quote from Ghostcrawler explaining normal / hard mode stuff and Blizzard's view on this subject:

You have a valid concern. However, we tried to come with an answer for that this time. If you want to see the content, go on normal mode. If you want a challenge, go on hard mode. If you complain that hard is too hard for you, then guess what… go back to normal mode. Previously the answer was basically “You aren’t worthy to face the end villain of this game you have invested hundreds of hours in,” which we thought was sort of a lame answer. Now you can see Arthas, but you aren’t going to get his best, most prestigious loot if you aren’t awesome. 

I really don't see anything wrong with this, I am going to have loads of fun doing the hard mode achievements, fighting for World firsts with my guild. At the same time I am happy for other people that can't / don't want to commit as much time to the game as I do, because they can go there and experience the fights and lore of Ulduar as well. I raid for years, because I like it and it is fun for me, not because I want to act superior to other people on some MMO forums.

still yet to see those filled out profiles showing how easy the game is. still probably working out how to use google to find a nice profile with it all done so they can show how 'easy' it is.

no really come on trolly trolls, where ya 100% done wow account, i thought you played the game, should know your armory says everything youve done now. so where the proof of how easy it is?

Originally posted by warty

still yet to see those filled out profiles showing how easy the game is. still probably working out how to use google to find a nice profile with it all done so they can show how 'easy' it is.

no really come on trolly trolls, where ya 100% done wow account, i thought you played the game, should know your armory says everything youve done now. so where the proof of how easy it is?

We have linked stats showing the trolls that not as many people have completed the hard modes and not as many people are clearing content as many think. However, the trolls don't believe stats because it totally contradicts their opinions and beliefs and they are so full of hate for WOW that they cannot bring themselves to see anything but their own arguments. Truly, hate of WOW is bordering on the hate for SOE for SWG - its almost at an unhealthy point for some people.

I agree - I would love to see someone's profile/armory link with complete Tier 7/7.5, 90% of achievements done, full top tier PVP set, professions maxed, top ranked in the arena, etc.....

WOW isn't as easy as people think - they only say its easy because they dumb the game down into one or two words (WOW only has raids; WOW is a grind) to try and make people who play it feel like less of a gamer. That's why everytime a troll appears with a post is always the same old argument and analogy.