A while back I wrote a post called “The Raider Code.” Back when I wrote that post LFR was not what it is today and we did not know how much it would change the game. My wipe threshold used to be in the 100s because I used to not mind at all teaching the fights to other people. Today raiding is a different game. Nobody has the patience to learn a fight anymore. There is a video of it, there is LFR, there is just one wipe. There is no wipe Threshold, bosses should just be dropping at the sheer size of our purples. I see people geared better than me under performing all the time, and I asked myself why is the gap so big? I think the answer is LFR.

Cataclysm started to create the division between people that enjoyed learning mechanics to kill bosses and people that would just rather not die even once. You can be very good at WoW, good at questing, good at gathering, good at the auction house; but just like with any other skill practice is what will make you good at those things. I like raiding, I have done it since late BC and had plenty of chances to die because of mechanics. However, the learning curve was different for me than someone that started raiding in this expansion. I have died to mechanics over and over before, so I know that standing on something that makes me lose health will kill me. I have done content when even a couple of second of standing on something or not reacting to means everyone dies. Those mechanics are things I do without even thinking now, but not everyone has had the same number of wipes I have. Another factor is computing power. I was reminded of this not too long ago when I had to play WoW on a 2 year old laptop. The game has changed so much in this last couple of years that it almost feels unplayable. I say almost because even though I would not dare to raid on a slow connection I was able to complete an LFR. That is where my issue comes with the game today, LFR is killing the game for me.

I used to be content doing normal modes most of the time and heroics when I could get a group going that wanted to wipe a little more. Today, that same group can only do normals. Its weird but content has become so challenging that to have progression rate of any kind the mechanics have to be super complex on the surface. I would not say challenging because in reality none of what we see today in LFR or normals is really challenging with a group of seasoned raiders, however to think that someone that has been only raiding LFR can do normals is unrealistic.

A lot of people that used to play before are now content only seeing bosses via LFR. That alone poaches the numbers of normal raiders everywhere. After a couple of weeks of clearing an instance or completing the part of the legendary quest they need there is really no incentive to keep playing. Better gear with a little more stats is not enough. Being able to upgrade that gear with valor is not enough. There is really no intensive for someone to wipe 100 times trying to do a boss in normal if they can just go to LFR and LOL 6 Deternimation stacks DERP!

Raiding used to be an exercise in learning mechanics at a certain pace. Some guild could do 30 pulls in one night, others only 10… now most groups are tired after just a handful. Why would you want to have a repair bill if you can just do LFR? It really makes no sense to wipe over and over for just a little more item levels and stats. I really can’t argue with that point and sometimes I question my sanity for trying to still raid normals.

I am curious though, and the reason for this post is kind of to find out within the player base we have in our guild, what kind of players do we have today?

Making LFR harder or normals easier won’t solve the problem either. I know LFR itself is making me want to stop playing WoW because of the toxic behavior that almost every group has. A tool like LFR should have a ranking system that will allow you to rate other players… then again, they would never do that in WoW.

Some days I feel like not playing WoW anymore. There are tons of things to do in the back yard, a lot of more reading I want to do, learning another language… the list goes on and on. Then I actually jump into the game and use it for what I have always used it for, catch up with a friend about their week. Since I started playing WoW the social aspect is what has kept me logging in again and again.

I got really close to quitting WoW last week. Weather is getting nice, I just got back from a quick bike ride and I thought, man I really don’t want to log into the game at all. Then I realized something, I was not enjoying the social aspect of the game anymore. The game to me has always been about doing things with my friends, be it raiding, PvP or just the grinding of questing was all done with friends and had a blast. I was raiding with a group I was getting to know and liked, but the format (25 man somewhat progression oriented) and the pace (3 days a week) was simply not for me. I started to dislike the game and it made me take a step back and look at why I was playing the game.

Cataclysm really killed the game for me in many ways. MoP revived it in some ways, but the daily grind killed it for many of my friends. We were left with a small group of people that still wanted to play but simply not the numbers to do so. For a while we struggled trying to do the raid thing until people just not showing up became an issue. We thought a larger group will be the solution but it really was not.

Blizzard is getting better and better about tuning, not just raid bosses but the game overall. It does not take a whole expansion to fix the big issues but rather a patch.

The beginning of MoP gave us a wonderful new place to discover until the moment we started to play our alts and realized that we had a lot of content to redo with them… the problem was that it was the same content we already did with our main. Cataclysm had done a huge disservice to all of us getting us used to instant catch up for alts, instead we were met with the reality that if you wanted an alt with a max profession you would have to not only get that toon to 90, but you also had to do the whole reputation grind. If you wanted to get that toon ready for raiding… good luck, drops are not easy to come by and the valor gear is double gated (valor points + rep to buy them). It really punished the people that got used to having a stable of max level characters to raid with… I think it hit harder the medium level guilds like ours that relied on alts to do more than just one raid group a week. While you can argue that LFR is for those people, the fact is that LFR unless you have 25 people you know is an exercise in patience… I dread joining LFR… LFR is worse than pugging.

So that burned a lot of people out.

Then this last patch came out and things got a little more stable again. There is no instant catchup like there used to be, but you can very easily jump from regular to heroics to LRF now. The drop rates are way more forgiving and the last 2 rep grinds are almost enjoyable (unless you want to do them on an alt.) This is a great time to come back to the game. In one week of Shield Wall dailies and new Thunder Isle with some luck you can be ready to join a raid team. The story part is also pretty amazing, and if you want to take your time and just do one part at a time it is actually quite a great piece of story telling.

I know this post is all over the place but since I have not blogged in so long I just wanted to put some of it down just to get it out.

I guess what I am trying to say is that overall I am enjoying WoW and mostly because of the social aspect. I still love playing with my friends in a relaxed environment. I am not interested in heroic raiding anymore, just normal raiding seems to be a good difficulty. Getting Firelord or two healing Spine before MoP came out were not the experiences I thought they would be… mostly because I was not doing it with my friends. The most fun I have with this game is downing a new boss with a group of my friends. I have to keep that in mind and continue to have fun with the game, I have never cared about geared and I already proved it to myself that I can play at a more hardcore level… it is just simply not for me. I have a lot more fun making fun of Froto or Kati for standing on something or blinking off the ship

One of the features that I have been looking forward to is challenge modes. When it comes to content and lockouts, the game has made it so my friend Froto once he is locked to the instances for the week he has nothing to do. If I did not have alts I would be on the same boat.

I pride myself on being a decent tank and a slightly better healer. We have exceptional players in the guild right now, but we are a couple of people short of a solid 10 man raiding wrecking crew. That said we do have an amazing challenge mode team. We have always dominated dungeons and have been doing speed runs just to compare with each other. Now there is bling involved which will make it even cooler.

There has been a lot of crying from 25 man guilds that not giving them a higher status when it comes to rewards killed them. I did see that in the old server when a belt dropping 3 weeks in a row lead to gear drama and a 25 man groups demise.

I seem to be in the minority with GrumpyElf. I don’t care about gear. I do however like mounts and titles. Gear to me is an annoyance that has created nothing but drama. People seem obsessed with collecting it and when they do, they feel like they are done and don’t want to collect it for others. I think if we all kept our awesome gear for a whole expansion with new content, the game would be more enjoyable.

Gear has become a meaningless grind and I think the fun will be in challenge modes.

I mean, you can get legendaries that the next expansion makes useless. That just does not seem fair after all the work you put into them.

I don’t hope it kills raiding altogether, or raiding guild themselves. I do think that it will be people like me that like the challenge with a group.

The fun in raiding has dwindled for many. Even thought the game has grown to a healthy size, the raiding population at the hardcore level seems to be shrinking. The biggest reason is that not many people have the amount of time or stomach it takes to wipe to a boss 400 times. I however enjoy trying to figure out the best pull for every trash group in a dungeon. I think having hardcore guilds figure out the most effective way to do something takes the fun out of it. Gear makes it so instead of having fun with encounters we want to maximize kills so people get more gear.

I think challenge modes will be happy mediums.

I am still trying to figure out what the right speed will be for our guild. Do we want to be ready to clear regular dungeons and start on heroics ASAP and make that the progression level? or do we want to kill a boss per week and make the content last?

People will have a week to check things out, hopefully I can recruit a couple more people for permanent spots and we will have a raiding meeting to iron things out. I am very excited about pandas and pet battles… but I can’t wait to see what challenge modes will do and how they will change the game.

I don’t think it is a secret anymore, the people at the top 100 guild raiding level believe that “Raiding is for ONLY the RAIDERS!” They are really not interested in anyone else joining them. The more people that become better and become “raiders” the less “special” they feel.

The question really is, who are truly the raiders?

WoW has an issue with labels. Raider is probably the one that most people want to use for themselves but nobody really understands anymore. Raider is a catch all term for anyone that goes into an instance that requires more than 5 players. However there is a big gap from a person that killed Kelthuzad when Naxx was a 40 man and someone that killed Deathwing in LFR.

Time put into the game aside, there are plenty of BC and Wrath babies out there that are now raiding, there are huge factors that change how you look at those people.

The raider code is kind of an attempt at further defining that, but in reality a raider has been and will be defined by their gear.

If your gear says heroic and your ilvl is maxed out, you are at the top of your game. You might not be a hardcore raider, you might have been carried… but in the end the prestige of that gear is there.

Some of those people are now really troubled by the fact that anyone can now have a 4 set.

That used to separate people that could do progression vs people that could not. Now that 4 set capability is available to not just LFR babies, but normal mode teams.

Before the LFR our raid team had maybe 2/3 people with 4 set per tier if we were lucky. Now we have about 15 toons with 4 sets. That makes a huge difference. Something that was pretty unattainable for us before because of luck (some tokens seemed to never want to drop.) or just lack of progression, is now there.

The agility trinket that would have taken us probably months for our 2 hunters to get, I think they both have now. I remember deathbringers will almost broke up our raid team before. Once piece of gear… and so much drama. Can paladin’s really benefit? Why is that hunter getting it if so already got it… oh no we pug one DPS and he wins the roll for the trinket I waited 4 months for! I do not miss those days.

Now in our normal raid everyone passes on gear if they have the LFR version. I don’t even have to use loot council or points anymore to track gear. We know we can fill the gaps later. Same thing when I pug, I give loot to their toons because I am raiding on an alt with LFR gear… it does not hurt me, it helps other raid teams. (I prefer to pug normal with other guild teams rather than full trade chat pug.)

So from my point of view this is all unicorn and rainbows, but Raiders of the hardcore flavor are starting to say that “bads” don’t deserve 4 set. The same people that don’t understand that LFR is really not tuned or targeted at them, now feel that others don’t deserve the 4 set.

Is this whole prestige thing really that important to people?

I simply don’t get it, and not because I cannot attain it either… I am sure if I put enough effort into it I could probably be in a guild raiding more competitively, but I like raiding with my friends and our wives.

So I don’t think making it easy to gear right now and 4 set available to everyone is a bad thing for the game or for raiding. How do you feel about it? Seriously… is someone like me not worthy of a 4 set? Should we go back to a place where only a couple of people are able to attain it on a normal mode raiding guild?