This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
I thought Hyjal was released in the same patch as BT?
I understand the concerns people like 25thNov hav about this, but after playing WotLK since release now, and just barely hitting lvl76 yesterday, and not remotely being done with tradeskills...WotLK doesn't need a lot of raiding to launch. WotLK is incredibly epic in feel and size and atmosphere, I find myself stopping and staring at the landscape extremely often. I can't believe that anyone who isn't specifically max-level-rushing and powering through raidcontent, skipping 95% of the xpack in the process, would have a feeling of "Meh, this is so little" any month soon.It's more the opposite, the people who have 8+ lvl70s are taking a lot out of the guild and freezing them since it's about impossible to level them up in WotLK before Maelstrom releases.
Blizzard have done the right thing. It's about time the casual player got to see the endgame content.We do after all pay the same subscription fees as the hardcore players and have been doing so since 2004.
I am sorry, but it really makes me sick how the author, with apparently all the time in the world to play, makes this game and it's new instances sound.I am still in Borean Tundra, questing around the Nexus, in the zone name Coldara or somthing close to that... ON ONE OF my 4 toons!Give me a break, I have to speak up because I am really tired of reading content on sites like this. Don't get me wrong, thanks for the new blog and all, and your contribution.But I mean, I want no part in BETAS... nor reading spoilers on every STEP of the betas (wow insider etc etc)... So this is all new to me.You make it sound like all players have done every zone AND RAID of Wrath, what 5 days after it came out?Give us a break.
With there not being as many currently, it means that with every major patch there will be a new raid dungeon, which is exciting to look forward to.This may also be a way of stretching out the time between expansions as they can release these added ones with patches until the next expansion is ready instead of most of them already being there for us.
There is an article on Wired if you all want an opposing opinion to this article.http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/11/review-wrath-of.html
The significant difference in instance quantity is having 10 and 25 man versions of the same instance. If you're just looking at the pure amount of things to do in one raid reset, there's actually far more in LK than there was in BC. 18 bosses in 25 mans, 18 bosses in 10 mans, makes for 36 killable bosses per week. The release of BC had 12 bosses in 10 mans and 18 bosses in 25 mans, and that's being exceptionally generous including Hyjal in that list. Yes, they were all distinct and unique, but for a 25 man raid, there's actually much more to do now than there was at the release of BC. People couldn't jump into The Eye and Serpentshrine Cavern within a week of release, and even if they did, they were met with overtuned and exceptionally buggy encounters.You may be able to argue that people don't want to do the same bosses every week in both 10 and 25 man versions, but they aren't supposed to. If you hadn't been forced through 10 man Karazhan, 25 man groups wouldn't have wanted to do that either. Naxxramas is huge, but less saddled with trash than Karazhan was, making it a somewhat quicker and more streamlined experience. I don't think most people would argue that is a bad thing.Now, all these points are ancillary to the fact that the initial content is far easier than it was in BC. Guilds are going to "run out of new content" much faster than they did initially in BC. Hopefully, Blizzard has a solid release schedule that will bring us a new tier sooner rather than later, one that will be more challenging. I myself argued for several months that releasing all this content in an ezmode status was a bad thing, but several people from top guilds made the counter argument that they were actually looking forward to a more relaxed beginning without feeling like they had to go non-stop into hard content immediately. Having now leveled and begun to experience the new raid content, I would have to agree with them.
I see a lot of people confusing casual players with bad players. Those two terms does not in any way go hand in hand. What Blizzard has been trying to accomplish is to make raiding more casual friendly, making it less time consuming to be viable for raiding.Now, the difficulty of the raids might or might not be too easy. I can't give my opinion about that matter since I haven't gotten the chance to try it out myself yet. I don't want raids to be easy in any way, they should be difficult and bring the feeling of accomplishment. If not then the purpose of defeating a boss would feel trivial at best.I do not agree with the poster which said that 25-man raids should be more difficult than 10-man raids. The reason is that 10-man raids were created as an alternative for casual players who just didn't have time to gather a large amount of raiders to do 25-man content. As I said, casual players are not bad players, they simply don't have as much time to play. So why should 25-man raids be of greater difficulty when the reason blizzard made this decision is time required to raid?I agree with those who've said that these are the entry-raids and that they will therefore be easier than the later raids. While no one knows if this will be the case, it's what I regard as the most logical assumption. But as I said earlier, the current raids might or might not be too easy. I'll have to make my decision about that when the time comes for me to start raiding.About the matter of there being less encounters available at launch, I will have to take sides with those who say that it's a design decision made by blizzard to allow a more frequent implementation of raids through patches. Instead of waiting six months for a big raid instance, we will wait three months for a medium raid instance. The pros of that design is that people who have beat every raid available wont have to wait as long for the next one to get implemented.All in all I can't say I really agree with the proposed opinions in the article. I feel it's mostly good design decisions being made by Blizzard. So far, at least.