Who the hell is timmy

I also agree with Truth. I stopped raiding a several months ago and since 3.0 I can just sit in LFG and a pug can actually DO kara very safely. I remember earlier when trying to pug a raid would get you a few badges at best, but it's now entirely viable, especially because a lot of the larger guilds don't even go into t5 or lower in their normal schedule. It's pretty rewarding to have casually built up a prot set, and then have a chance to actually MT some content before lich drops and all my gear becomes outdated.

Although it will suck because WotLK content will no doubt be a great deal harder than the kind of "easy" instances and raids people are used to doing right now

Who the hell is timmy

I think he's referencing the TCG term "timmy", a timmy is a person who enjoys fun things, creates weird unique decks/talent builds, doesn't really follow the top end stuff or metagame, enjoys the backstory enough to be pissed if the backstory is changed for game reasons, does stuff based on his favorite characters, etc. The casual player, in other words.

That's the gist of it anyways.

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But yeah, this is their model and it works a lot better than the alternative EQ model where new players never ever have an opportunity to see it ever. This is great and all, but it actually wastes Blizzard's money in the long run since they pay people to design content that 99% of the fanbase won't ever see.

This way, they make the most out of their money, new players can experience "the past", the oldies can go back and check it out for good times, etc.

There's really no good reason why they shouldn't do this. Anything you could say against it would be stupid/not as profitable. The only bad part of this it is that right now the Hand of Adal and such are still being handed out thanks to a bug (but will be removed soon), and on a couple of servers the AQ gates are reopening, but thankfully that's being fixed too (and it might have been fixed already, I just got on the PC so!). But beyond those bugs being fixed & taken away, it doesn't really matter or affect anyone.

Sorry I disagree with this. It might have made things too easy for the super guilds out there like yours and DnT, but even many Illidan killing guilds would not get to see this content if this hadn't happened. Can you honestly give me a good reason why making content more accessible to more people is a bad thing? Should less than 1% of the player population get to experience Kil'Jaeden? Is that really a good use of developer time?

Well my point was more, the new talents alone made everything easily clearable, the 30% hp nerf on top of that is overkill, not that I begrudge people seeing Sunwell. Just seeing a fight is not seeing it "as intended" or even close to it. F.E you can go and kill Illidan and never even see a phase 4, a scripted part of the fight, because he just dies too damn fast to get it off. Or to put it another way, beating some tuned down castrated version of the bosses for a month is not really "experiencing" the content much more than watching videos of the fights are.

But that would happen anyways when people hit 80 and get all the new gear and tried to do that content over! The HP nerf was so casuals who maybe can't afford everything RIGHT NOW can do it (they can make their way through without all the enchants, gems, Glyphs, etc.). It's good for business (see: latency issues caused by so many people relogging in and shit.), but it shouldn't really piss anybody off either, so it's kinda win-win for Blizzard/everyone else.

EDIT:
But yeah it kinda sucks that some fights go too fast, they should have playtested it a bit more so that all the phases still happen but it's still easier.

they had this cool bug for a while where swapping your ranged slot would heal you to full (its fucking impossible to kill anyone of equal or even lesser level without it). but i was mainly having fun infecting bankers, quest mobs, etc in shatt, we even found out being zombie makes virtually all mobs neutral.

also timmy is a general term for any bad/stupid casual player, ESPECIALLY ones who dumbed down content is aimed at.

fun with zombie (Click to reveal)

they had this cool bug for a while where swapping your ranged slot would heal you to full (its fucking impossible to kill anyone of equal or even lesser level without it). but i was mainly having fun infecting bankers, quest mobs, etc in shatt, we even found out being zombie makes virtually all mobs neutral.

also timmy is a general term for any bad/stupid casual player, ESPECIALLY ones who dumbed down content is aimed at.

You're stupid and elitist and it's hilarious. So because someone is not a hardcore sunwell raider they are casual or bad? The fact of the matter is that most players don't find it fun to spend hundreds of gold on consumables and then wipe for hours on excruciatingly hard content. Your metamorphasis from casual idiot to some big bad elitist Death and Taxes raider is pretty hilarious. You rode coattails into some super guild who can kill kil'jaeden and now you have derogatory terms for players who can't compete and think that you YOU should have all the content catered to you.

So yes bob, you are an elite master of this game, your skill at pushing scorch and fireball is unparalelled, you are the only one worthy to see cool fights like Illidan and Kil'jaeden. You obviously need something to feel superior about, if the unwashed masses start wearing the same purples as you.... you might get so... angry!!!!!!!!!! TIMMIES!!!!!!!!!!

its not even entirely sunwell, even the most simple things were dumbed down. everything from karazhan to kael to kil'jaeden. everything that was in some way challenging has been turned into a retard faceroll. attunements are another one too. i mean, spending one extra week an instance, MAN THATS SO ROUGH.

timmies are also the same idiots on the forums who complain they can't get a stupid non combat pet to drop from headless horsemen and now they can't get their achievement.

plus with wrath coming they had a HUGE work around for this by making 10 man faceroll easy for people, and making all the of the 25 mans actually fun and challenging. but we can't have that can we?

Also they're on record saying "sunwell was way too hard we won't make anything like it again heh". I don't know, I don't see the problem myself, seeing its a six boss instance right at the end of the expansion, of which two bosses were majorly hard. To me thats done what its meant to, the hardcore that want the challenge get what they need to keep them playing and holding the banner for the non-hardcore guilds, who can easily clear BT and probably get 4/6 without too much trouble. Seems fine to me.

Does this mean we'll have Illidan level difficulty for the last instance of WoTLK? That would fail rather spectacularly, Illidan was a gigantic let down for the poster child of the entire expansion and the final boss in the game for many months. I don't want to get to the frozen throne and have Arthas be all FEEL MY ICAAAAAA FYAAAAAAA and leave obvious marks on the ground to move from, summon some random undead and then at 30% tirion runs in, Arthas goes OHNOEZ TEH ASHBRINGER and gets one shotted.

sometimes there's ica fya, stay out of the ica fya

Fuck Timmy, how dare Blizzard give people that don't raid 6 days a week in a video game a chance to see all the content they paid for!

i dont get your argument at all bjb!

the entire point when you make an MMORPG is to design a set of goals, then make those goals pointless (either by making new content, or doing that and making the previous content easier so it can be experienced by more people) and make new goals (this is called progression). Blizzard makes content initially for the hardcore, so that they have a temporary advantage over most people, and then dumb it down for the lower end because it's way more profitable for them to do so.

them making it easier doesn't affect you at all however.

-the content is easier??? well you can gear up more people a bit faster before WotLK. (this is a bonus to you if you have to gear anybody up)
-b...but...my achievement for doing it when it was hard??? no one's going to give 2 thoughts about Kara or if you beat Kil'Jaeden when he was uber hard or even uber easy in 3-4 weeks anyways. All this does is let the people who haven't done it get to see it before no one gives a shit at all. In 3-4 weeks you'll be replacing all those hard earned epics for a bunch of Northrend greens anyways. You're not going to be going into Kara, or Sunwell, or anything in 3-4 weeks, so why does it matter?

if you want to play a hardcore MMORPG, where the content is super hard, never made easy locking the casuals out forever, and you have maybe a 5% chance each night to actually do it, World of Warcraft is not your game. WoW is not a hardcore MMORPG. It was never marketed as a hardcore MMORPG. It will never be a hardcore MMORPG.

Blizzard is first and foremost a company about accessibility, whether that is PC spec accessibility or making content that anybody can do, but the better players can do faster, that is what they are about. World of Warcraft is very much a casual MMORPG (one of the most casual MMORPGs ever made) that is meant to be very accessible to everyone. If you don't like this, then you are not playing the right game. The right game in this case would be Everquest or Lineage 2.

Like, how does this negatively effect you or the top end raiders at all, now, so close to WotLK when no one's going to care about TBC raids anymore? Maybe we can better understand your points (so far its just fuck the casuals in a casual MMORPG which is dumb.) if you explain how this seriously negatively impacts your experience.

Imo the whole "most wow players are casual ergo all content should be casual" argument is kinda flawed since, the amount of content in the game reflects that balance anyway. A mistake a lot of "elitists" make is using the word casual as a byword for "bad", its not - its perfectly possible to be casual, to raid 2-3 times a week and still clear the majority of content in the game, what all this dumbing down is directed at is not casuals per se but players who are just flat out BAD. You know, the kids who challenge you to a duel, lose and then claim you cheated by using stealth or something, that kind of player. And you have to ask whether these kind of fucktards warrant the rampant nerfs and lowering of standards that degrade the game for the decent players, I mean if you're shit and can't complete Half Life on easy, you don't email Valve repeatedly saying DIS TOO HARD and edventually they send you a patch where the mobs don't fight back.

In the end its only really two bosses (M'uru and KJ) that are really so hard that you probably won't kill them without raiding 4+ days a week, which is pretty much the only content that is directed at the "hardcore". Thats 2 out of 50 or so bosses in the pve part of the game, so in incredibly rough terms its about 2% of the total content directed at the hardcore, which is probably about right. And the thing is, what Blizzard runs the risk of is losing the hardcore demographic entirely, and once that happens the playerbase will decay from the top down until all that is left is pvp rogues in honour gear running around going BAM HEADSHOT *random 4chan comment*. But maybe they've already commited themselves to this who knows, working on Diablo 3/their new MMO since they probably know the bottom will fall out of WoW after WoTLK anyway since they used all their cards in terms of lore.

Or to put it another way - challenge is good and what made WoW popular among gamers in the first place and led to it being the gigantic cash cow it is now, taking it away is an admission that Blizzard are more or less done with the game and couldn't care less about keeping it good anymore.

This game has never been hard aside from a few bosses that have had bugs, and like 4 raids. PvP is simple R-P-S joke fest, PvE isn't much beyond that, the grind to get to the top is piss easy.

What led World of Warcraft to being the gigantic cash cow it is is good marketing technique in Asia to acquire a 6 million Asian player fanbase thanks to it being the only casual MMORPG that is made by a big company over there, and in general, just its casualness and simplicity, not its challenge.

(also they haven't even come close to using all their cards of lore.)

The game had already built a reputation before it even launched in Asia, and it wouldn't have been as successful over there without that however clever the marketing, and back then the game was more about challenge than now. Not that it was MASSIVELY HARD or anything but it had goals which were nevertheless reasonably difficult to achieve (deflecting arguments about r14 requiring no skill just time blahblah), which is what kept many playing since the game didn't throw gear at you back then.

And they've used all their main lore hooks, Arthas, Illidan, KJ etc.

The game had already built a reputation before it even launched in Asia, and it wouldn't have been as successful over there without that however clever the marketing, and back then the game was more about challenge than now. Not that it was MASSIVELY HARD or anything but it had goals which were nevertheless reasonably difficult to achieve (deflecting arguments about r14 requiring no skill just time blahblah), which is what kept many playing since the game didn't throw gear at you back then.

And they've used all their main lore hooks, Arthas, Illidan, KJ etc.

All their main lore hooks from WarCraft 3 maybe, there is a ton of WC1 and WC2 stuff and Sargeras.

But it didn't build any reputation at the time, in fact initially the game suffered many problems and no one really saw it as THE mmorpg that would topple the Everquest and Lineage 2 empire. In fact, prior to gaining its Asian markets, WoW held the average sub number. The only reputation it had was it being casual, and I don't know how you can say it was more about challenge as a reputation considering the Asian market version landed before the Honor changes, and any of the hard raids were put into the game. It was very casual. This is before they even had Battlegrounds.

first off, there are casuals who actually know what the fuck they are doing, they either choose not to, or cannot play as much as other, but are still not fucking idiots, e.g. understand basic mechanics, know how to gem/gear/enchant, etc, timmy is the other part of casuals who want access to everything for minimal to no effort, or just bad players in general. just clearing that up if anyone didn't get that part.

second, its not now that so much the current raids that are a disappointment (even though they are somewhat, with clear times down from 4-5 hours to under 1 and a half) its what they've released about wrath. as nova pointed out, nothing of sunwell difficulty will make its way into wrath, leading everything to be cleared in two or three nights of progress, which means any of the cutting edge guilds will have the bosses down in a day. if tbc was a guideline for anything we'll have all these shit instances that take no time to learn and farm, and then 8 months of nothing new.

also, how many more lore figures could be in wc1/wc2? all the dragonflight aspects are in wrath (except deathwing, but has been hinted at several times). sargeras is a huge one, but i remember reading somewhere he ceased to exsist in a physical form or something dumb, but someone can correct me on this if im wrong. medivh was in karazhan, if only briefly. idk doesn't seem like a lot left! garona would be cool to see.

(deflecting arguments about r14 requiring no skill just time blahblah)

why are you deflecting this argument when it's true

first off, there are casuals who actually know what the fuck they are doing, they either choose not to, or cannot play as much as other, but are still not fucking idiots, e.g. understand basic mechanics, know how to gem/gear/enchant, etc, timmy is the other part of casuals who want access to everything for minimal to no effort, or just bad players in general. just clearing that up if anyone didn't get that part.

second, its not now that so much the current raids that are a disappointment (even though they are somewhat, with clear times down from 4-5 hours to under 1 and a half) its what they've released about wrath. as nova pointed out, nothing of sunwell difficulty will make its way into wrath, leading everything to be cleared in two or three nights of progress, which means any of the cutting edge guilds will have the bosses down in a day. if tbc was a guideline for anything we'll have all these shit instances that take no time to learn and farm, and then 8 months of nothing new.

also, how many more lore figures could be in wc1/wc2? all the dragonflight aspects are in wrath (except deathwing, but has been hinted at several times). sargeras is a huge one, but i remember reading somewhere he ceased to exsist in a physical form or something dumb, but someone can correct me on this if im wrong. medivh was in karazhan, if only briefly. idk doesn't seem like a lot left! garona would be cool to see.

Designing an instance to cater to less than .001 percent of the population feeling it is a challenge is STUPID AS FUCK. I'm glad they will never replace anything as hard as sunwell, don't lock out 99% of the population from an instance.

only Bads can't do sunwell

This shit makes me laugh, that somehow good players who raid once a week can clear sunwell np and that it's only lack of skill that stops the majority of the wow population from doing the same right?

not time investment at all!!

Also I could do everything required of a prepatch sunwell mage WITH MY DICK, this fact is very important.

As far as I can tell the only reason I can see for hardcore raiders to care that other people will get to blow through an easier version of what they did however many months ago is that their accomplishment (large time investment) will seem diminished. I suppose I wouldn't mind them implementing a new system where raiders can get their played time shown after their guild tag to make it easier to see who's awesome when slash posing in front of ironforge bank