Maybe it’s not for you and that’s okay

Disclaimer: this post contains ranting and anger and my frustration over some players. If that’s not something you want to read, feel free to skip this, I understand. The next post will be happy again.

WoW community is usually amazing. I’ve met so many nice, welcoming, positive and smart people. And then there are the others. Those who criticize every single thing in the game without trying to understand the design intent behind it. I read blogs, watch youtube channels and listen to podcasts and the thing that bugs me the most is when people don’t understand that not everything is for them. I’ll give a few examples from recent months.

Pet Battle Dungeon

Not everyone likes pet battles and that’s okay. I do, so I appreciate that they did the dungeon. It’s new and exciting content and so many people enjoy it! If you’re not one of those people, just keep doing what you like doing in game and ignore the dungeon. Don’t say that it’s stupid or that no one asked for it and or that Blizz should do something else instead. The dungeon is not a bad idea, it’s just not for you. And if you change your mind about pet battling, it’s always there if you want to try it.

Developer Q&As

I love the developer Q&As. I found some of them more interesting than the others because not all of them cover the parts of game I’m interested in. The one about itemization was not my favourite because I don’t care about geat much. And that’s okay. But I realise other people want to know about itemization, that’s why they did the Q&A and answered players’ questions. I heard someone criticize it because it didn’t get them excited for the game. That’s not what it was supposed to do! Not every Q&A can have exciting news and gorgeous trailer, some are just information about itemization. If you don’t care about itemization, the Q&A wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t for you.

Mage Tower Challenge

Blizz said this would be hard, almost impossible to do at the start and you’d need great gear and great skill to beat it. It’s available now and people are complaining that it’s hard and they can’t beat it. I’ll give it a try but I know that I might never get the afrtifact appearence, the same way as I might never get the one from Balance of Power quest, because I don’t raid. It’s not for me.

They might change the difficulty or tweak it a bit but unless you’re super awesome at playing <insert your class> and you don’t have BiS gear, you are probably not able to finish it now. And that’s okay. You won’t be able to one-shot mythic Tomb of Sargeras when it comes out, so why do you expect to one-shot this? Maybe it’s not for you now. Maybe you need more gear and learn the strats better or maybe, you won’t ever beat it. And that’s okay. It’s designed that way

 

I understand when players want something that is a reward from part of the game they don’t play and they are frustrated (those PvP mounts I’ll never have because I’m not that good at PvP break my heart!). But you can’t have everything. And that’s okay. It’s also okay to just walk away from part of the game and don’t do it.

I’m definitely not saying you can’t talk about the game or give constructive feedback. Just think about what you’re saying. Is the challenge a bad design or is it something that is not for you right now? Because not everything is for you. And that’s okay.

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12 thoughts on “Maybe it’s not for you and that’s okay”

  1. The Mage Tower challenge has NOTHING to do about your class performance. The challenge is not about knowing your class. It doesn’t teach you to perform best dps, about positioning, crowd control, interrupts or anything a good dps should do.

    They put you in a stress test situation that you would use nowhere in game – in this particular challenge-only environment. In game, you don’t have to kill very fat and one-shotting you mobs in a marathon. In game, you have dungeons and raids that you perform in a group – and in challenge you are basically supposed to kill a dungeon boss solo without other dps, tanks or healers to support you.

    Strats won’t help here. The challenge is gear based, not skill based. Considering that the pre-quests for challenges were quite fine to do, it’s got to be expected that the challenge could be completed at the same gear level. And where’s this scaling when it’s required? It feels like a cheat on players, and this is frustrating.

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  2. I apologize for being a bit critical of it. I knew it would certainly be difficult. I had read a few of the Priest forum posts on it. Even one from someone in 870 gear. I am not much ahead of that. I do like to think I have a fundamental grasp of my class. I have managed to get Proving grounds Silver for two expansions. I am definitely not a gold anything kind of player. Mostly I wanted to poke my head in to maybe get an idea about just how hard are these. How can people be having so much difficulty. In order to understand why someone may have an issue, you have to give it a look. There have been many things in the game that I have faced, many challenging things, jousting at the argent tournament, doing arena PvP, the Dragonwrath staff, and so many others. There have been times it was harder because I had an older PC, there were times I tried and failed at less than 50% and would go away, and get a little more focused on playing with different talents required for a fight, or would improve my gear a little. There are some things that I just cannot do, and even 20-30 levels higher, they still frustrate me. But occasionally I will go back and give them a try.

    This challenge. Is one of those things I wonder why they devote development time to. The quest is orange, so it is part of the story. I have to help this guy rescue his brother. So there is the underlying impetus to do the quest to continue the story. To be honest, if I did not know it was an appearance reward thing, I would have just thought it was part of the Artifact Weapon quest chain. Going in I knew I would most likely not even come close. But I lasted only a few seconds. And that can be very frustrating to anyone. Certainly I know gear will help a little, but it reminds me of old arcade games where there was a set pattern you had to follow with millisecond timing and if you missed even one, you were dumping in a quarter to go again. But this was so unbalanced, I think it may have been rolled out too soon. When you read that it is designed for skilled people in heroic gear for the raid that hasn’t even been released? I think it may turn off and away those people that enjoy collecting appearances.

    Sorry I was one of those adding to the pile of those with complaints.

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    • The fact that it’s a part of a story is the only thing that bugs me a little bit, I’d like to finish the story myself and not just read it on wowhead but it’s not too much important to me.
      Maybe it is unbalanced and will be changed in the future but some people have actually completed it already. I doubt it was a lot of people but still, they were able to finish even without heroic gear from the raid that hasn’t even been released. That’s why they devoted development time to it, for those people and others who just need more gear. Not for me.
      But I definitely understand the frustration of those who went there, didn’t know what to expect and were one-shoted. That’s something devs could work on, maybe add some way to indicate difficulty of the quest.

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      • I thought it was funny the other day when I ran the new dungeon. There was Illidan running along with us, but I had not finished the quest for collecting things to advance the story. When I finished I had a completed quest turn in. I guess they realize there are some parts of the story people either can’t or won’t finish, but have to, so you will just get credit. Perhaps it is similar here.

        I do think a great many people will be upset. I did a whole series of quests on patch day for the Artifact weapon, and this seemed to be a continuation. Most certainly not something to stash away for two months while we wait for the raid.

        There has been quite a few quests that I have just abandoned, because while on the surface you think you have to do them, Class Hall mostly, they are just flavor quests with a decent reward, if, you do them in current content.

        But the only way to find out is going to WoWhead. And that is a problem. We should not have to rely on 3rd party sites to fill in the blanks.

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        • From more reading on the Priest forums, it appears that there is one must have Legendary, and that you may need more than 4.17 million health, because one attack can damage you for that much. I do see where some, in 910 level gear, with the one Legendary are getting through it. Some have even tried using stamina flasks to boost their health. People are trying. Which is good. If no one tries, they cannot collect data they need to balance or fine tune. I do hope they make a post about it. Even if it is just to reiterate what was said in the Q&A. Which unless you watched, or read the posted interview, you would not know. I think they are getting better communicating. But some things fall through the cracks.

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          • I agree that the importance of quests is not always apparent. Why is the Balance of Power questline a huge exclamation mark on my map? It’s “just” for an appearence and I can’t do it on LFR so it requires more effort than the rest of quests in game (at least for me).

            I wonder if it’s even possible to have all the required information in game. That must be a huge challenge from Blizz and I think they could work on that more.

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            • I agree. I think they have let it go to the hands of data mining sites to fill in the blanks. I remember when Thotbot was the huge resource. But now an days, pretty much an entire patches quests and story are published even before they are live. Because we can just go look it up, we consume it faster, so they have to give us more, but we consume all of that and want more. Maybe if they cut off all data mining and we had to go search for things the old fashioned way, we would certainly grumble about it, but in the end we would not be complaining of too much to do, and maybe that would give them more time to get the bugs out and create more compelling stories, with a bit more information than we see now.

              Nah, who am I kidding. We will always complain and want more. Lol.

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  3. Good morning Ann.

    My view is that not everything should be easy, but also that to dangle something that is what I want, whether a cinematic, mount, title or transmog, then take it away by making it exclusive to “the good players” is just being cruel, maybe even a touch sadistic.

    So, not easy, but not so hard that I come to resent both the item and WoW for putting a thing out of my reach.

    Hard/Sooner is already in game, with raid mounts automatically awarded to people who get a Tier down while still relevant content. Lowering the drop rate after that is okay, even if painful, because it’s supposed to require effort and pain, just a different kind.

    Taking that mount permanently away though, like the moose, just feels like punishment.

    Also, thank you to the many friens hip moose people.

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    • Hello!
      I’m not a fan of taking things out of the game completely either. I started playing in WoD and I’ve missed out on a lot of content which makes me a bit sad, especially MoP legendary questline which had interesting lore. But it’s Blizzard’s decision to take it out of the game and I need to respect that.

      “to dangle something that is what I want, whether a cinematic, mount, title or transmog, then take it away by making it exclusive to the good players is just being cruel” assumes that you are entitled to everything in WoW. You didn’t have it at the beginning so no one is taking anything away from you, (I assume) you just saw it through datamining or Blizz presentation or on another player. It’s a reward for something and you have to do that to earn the reward. If you can’t/don’t do the thing, the reward is not for you. That’s what my post was about.

      I don’t think I agree with it being exclusive to “the good players”. You only need skill (which can be practiced) and gear (which comes from other places than just raiding). You might have a chance even if you’re not a mythic raider. And if you don’t, I’m okay with it too, because not everything is for you.
      I feel bad for people who really want the artifact appearence. It sucks that they might not be able to get it but there are other appearences available from other parts of the game.

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      • I wonder sometimes about Blizzard. In the end it’s all just pixels and the only real thing we will take with us is our memories. So in the end, a sparkly item is pointless but their idea of creating a fun evening or memory is less and less, I find.

        But that’s my problem. I’m just sad about it since I still love parts of this game. I just wish those parts weren’t sometimes locked away.

        I’m not as into combat as I used to be, that’s not the experience I’m here for anymore.

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