Originally posted by rikilii

The point is to experience the content.  Not everybody playing WoW is gear-obsessed.  They want to play the game, have fun, experience a little challenge, and move the hell on.  That's tough to do when only 5% of players can actually access some of the content, EVER.  There's no reason to build a permanent wall between the majority of your players and the top content.

This is exactly what happened with the original Naxx, and with several of the raids in BC.  They're doing this to avoid the same thing all over again.

gosh, how hard is it to understand?

Top-content can be classified as top, only when it is harder compared to all other content. If you make all content accessible to everyone, then you have blown all distinguishing factors to pieces.

Blizzard hasn't managed to find a way to add content to its existing content; they simply swap high-end dungeons with new ones (now dumbed down for accessibility's sake), rinse and repeat.

Originally posted by kujii

Here's how you play WoW and have a real life.  .......

The best way to play WoW is to not play WoW.  Then you never don't have the best gear. 

Why bother questing for gear at level 17, when you are just going to replace it at level 23. 

See how silly these kind of statements look when you take a look at it from just a slightly different angle?

Ulduar is still quite a challenge in parts (and the newest Trial raid too apparently) - it might not be as crazy hard as many vanilla and TBC raids but it has its moments. After all how many "casuals" have defeated Yogg-Saron? As well, after you've defeated a boss a few times and learnt the strategies you tend to forget the many fail attempts it took to get there.

Originally posted by Slainh

Ulduar is still quite a challenge in parts (and the newest Trial raid too apparently) - it might not be as crazy hard as many vanilla and TBC raids but it has its moments. After all how many "casuals" have defeated Yogg-Saron? As well, after you've defeated a boss a few times and learnt the strategies you tend to forget the many fail attempts it took to get there.

I don't think any boss can match the challenge Nefarious posed in vanilla WoW...there were guilds struggling for a whole year till they got him down.

Originally posted by Galadourn

Originally posted by Slainh

Ulduar is still quite a challenge in parts (and the newest Trial raid too apparently) - it might not be as crazy hard as many vanilla and TBC raids but it has its moments. After all how many "casuals" have defeated Yogg-Saron? As well, after you've defeated a boss a few times and learnt the strategies you tend to forget the many fail attempts it took to get there.

 

I don't think any boss can match the challenge Nefarious posed in vanilla WoW...there were guilds struggling for a whole year till they got him down.

There are still guilds struggling in Naxx right now.  Nefarian was hard in his day, but by no means the hardest boss. Chromaggus and Vaelastrasz were both much harder.  Vaelastrasz being one of the hardest fights in the game, because anyone could screw it up.

Currently hard modes are just as challenging if not harder. 

OP,

Try a new MMO or get some sun maybe? Its pretty simple really, not a life changing decision or anything.  

WoW truely is going downhill...I dont play it right now but I see post after post of people complaining about it.

Poor Blizzard.....

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by Galadourn

Originally posted by Slainh

Ulduar is still quite a challenge in parts (and the newest Trial raid too apparently) - it might not be as crazy hard as many vanilla and TBC raids but it has its moments. After all how many "casuals" have defeated Yogg-Saron? As well, after you've defeated a boss a few times and learnt the strategies you tend to forget the many fail attempts it took to get there.

 

I don't think any boss can match the challenge Nefarious posed in vanilla WoW...there were guilds struggling for a whole year till they got him down.

 

There are still guilds struggling in Naxx right now.  Nefarian was hard in his day, but by no means the hardest boss. Chromaggus and Vaelastrasz were both much harder.  Vaelastrasz being one of the hardest fights in the game, because anyone could screw it up.

Currently hard modes are just as challenging if not harder. 

 

Weirdly enough it took my guild longer to down Onyxia then it did for us to kill Vael.  I guess the difficulty of the fight is really dependant on how skillfull the players are.  We had some very good tanks when we started on Vael so it only took us a few treis to get familar with the fight enough to beat it.  On the other hand we were all very green when we started on Onyxia so it took forever to get all of us into a raiding mindset.

You have to take in the fact of the gear and talent trees available now vs.Ony and in reality with those said gear and talents Ony is still somewhat of a challenge if you take in the lvl cap at the time before then and now i mean 80 lvl vs, what 50-55 i can't remember exactly been a long time for me.Ony was a fun fight but took good coordination and execution and a lot of people to complete.Those were truly the good ol days of WoW.

Yeah, 40 people made for much more chaos in a raid on top of raiding still being a very fresh aspect of the game for many people.  Nearly 5 years of raid experience will make any game seem easier. 

Why is Blizzard doing this?

In a nutshell it is another part of their recent push to enable people to "play with your friends easily". In the same vein as their easy character/server transfers and planned faction change capability.

The downside to the steep curve on all progression raiding is it makes it very very dificult for someone entering the progression path later to ever catch up and join their friends in end game content. Beyond a certain point there just is not the oporunity to run the earlier raids to gear up with what you need for the later. This causes problems on several fronts. newer or lesser progressed characters get frustrated because at best they are stuck pugging with strangers in order to get what they need to play with friends, or at worst simply can never get there. Raiders get frustrated because beyond a certain point there is no viable path of replacement folks as their core gets burned out, unless they drop down a tier to work newcommers through the content. And finally experienced geared players have no incentive to make use of the lower tier raid or dungeon content in order to assist those less progressed get through it, so they are either raiding or standing around bored, or grinding alts. All of these scenarios lead to cancelled subscriptions.

Today, with some of the upper tier gear available via badge/emblems, or simply lower level content grinding it provides alot of benefits. Those newcomers can actually catch up. While they will not get to the uberest gear levels, someone starting today could gear to a point where they could easily be well set for Ulduar 10, and be if not top end, at least a viable benefit for Ulduar 25, using mainly ToC and Emblem gear. I know this. My wife started playing recently. She just entered Ulduar  with us for the first time on Saturday. The path to getting her there was not overly onerus or painful. She is playing with her friends and family and making an acceptable contribution to the raid effort, and not simply being dragged along. As a marketing tool and all around fun factor, this is a good thing. Part of the reason she was able to gear up so well so fast was that since the patch there are always several heroic groups running in our guild at any given time. All of our guilds tanks and healers are in play for 5 man content, since they can get items they need from Conquest and Triumph emblems. People playing and doing things with friends keeps subscriptions going. This is not complicated math.

Now there is some downside in the form of the sense of achievement. But at least with Ulduar Blizz did a decent job with the heroic modes to buffer that a bit,a nd leave the challenges there while still letting a much broader swath see and enjoy the content. The Triumph stuff probably needs a little more work, or at least some graphics tweaks so the more challenging stuff looks a little diferent for vanity purposes (yeah they dropped the ball on the t9 armor art and variety).

Overall the benefits to long term player happiness probably outweigh the desireability of catering to the most absolute hardcores sense of accomplishment and vanity.

For my part, increasing level cap is ok but you can evade it. I've seen game with only end-game expansion with new gears and with things that hard to find. The point is, people want everything now or thy give up. WoW is tattly that type of game. So everyone feel the evolution of the game but blizzard are always pushing the level cap because that augmentation keep the most lazy player still being attracted by the game with new amors,wpn and new look. As i remember, WoW is a very easy game and this is why i'm not playing. I remeber in DAoC when you needed to farm a lot of the time the same boss to get you artifact and finnaly you had it after month of patience and hardwork and NOW you were a UNIQUE character. I prefer to have the DAoC feeling of being unique than having the feeling of a kid "hey look my armor is the best of the game but the 30guyz beside have it but i dont care". For my part a thing te killed DAoC is the fact that artifact was more and more and more easy to get. Anyway WoW have always been a eazy MMORPG to reach the maximum of player and they made it. Now i just wait for a hard game that need patiente and time. I'm not a "serious or Hardcore" player but i like when game are difficult because this is why it make it immersive. I liked EQ2 but it's too old now and i still play on DAoC freeshard Uthgard with old config of DAoC. So stop complaining about WoW is always being pushed forward to make it more attractive for most of their subscribers. Like a guyz said earlier, real serious player are a little percentage of the game and maybe they are a little more but they still playing because thy loved owning nwbieas that don't know ow to play and than "Hey dude look at my crazyness rating"