Last couple days I’ve been talking with a few friends about the heroic or epic feel of the game. This was spurred by the recent Cataclysm class previews. My friend felt that the game was making players too over powered and he feels that what he wants is and I quote
“To have the ever loving shit beaten out of the raid by a boss. Like seriously have Deathwing be so badass he just looks at us and we die.”
I replied with a little snark informing him that he could always level to 60 and turn off xp and raid classic content while it still existed, whatever was left of it.
To me the game is taking a logical step in many ways, I mean let’s take a look at all the things we’ve done in the game (and by we I mean as a collective player base).
- Defeated an elemental lord
- Defeated the son and daughter of the aspect of earth and the progenitor of the Black Dragon Flight
- Defeated and old god and his followers
- Defeated troll tribal leaders and their god
- Defeated the Lich Kings floating citadel and his right-hand lich
- Cleansed the home of Medivh
- Defeated a Daemon lord
- Stomped a troll hero into the dirt
- Defeated a power sucking Prince of the blood elves
- Defeated Illidan
- Restored the sunwell while repelling a powerful Eredar
- Trudged through the snow and ice to set fire the the Lich Kings floating citadel AGAIN!
- Killed the aspect of magic
- Beat down ANOTHER god and the servants of titans
- Slapped around the custodian of the titans
- and Dethroned an undead king
/breathes
So… Yeah. Safe to say we’ve done a lot right? but if you look at it it’s been big bads right? So why shouldn’t we feel a little powerful right?
We’ve all had those moments too, where after a boss goes down or a particularly hard fight is won where you want to stand up and thrust your fists in the air and yell in victory. I know it’s just a game, but you can’t help but feel accomplished sometimes. For me it’s those moments of the harrying first kill. My guild’s first Blood Queen (25) kill, there were only two people left standing. Me and the feral druid stood over her corpse amid a sea of raider bodies. It may sound weird but in that moment I felt really good at the kill, being so close to that wipe and trying EVERY trick I had to stay alive / res / keep someone up long enough for the DoTs to tick was heart pounding, and that kill is among the ones I savor the most. I count that as one of my heroic moments in the game, where I felt that this could see this as a scene from a movie or book and wanting to throw my hands up victorious in the air and scream my defiance at this villain that had stood in our way threatening death, and nearly delivering it in full.
In every story I’ve ever read as the main character got more powerful, so did his enemies. We are about to go up against the corrupted aspect of earth. EARTH. That little thing all of Azeroth is comprised of. Safe to assume he’s going to be something of a jerk right? So with all the class changes happening I think it’s in good form that we are starting to feel well…. uber. It fits with the progression of the game.
Also consider that encounters are changing. The way we handle fights now is for the most part pretty linear. Don’t stand in fire, don’t stand in front of the boss, let the tank get aggro etc etc. Even the current mechanics can be boiled down to simplistic measures in many cases. In Cataclysm however the dynamics of each role are changing. The mechanics of each class are changing and this is going to allow developers to make more interesting encounters.
Me, I’m looking forward to Cataclsym and all the changes. I’m looking forward to having to approach different encounters differently. I look forward to feeling like yes I am powerful, but still have a damn good challenge ahead of me. I’m looking for more spells, more encounter mechanics, harder mana regen. I’m looking forward to feeling like the team I belong to earned EVERY kill with sweat blood and perseverance. I don’t think we’re overpowered, I just think we scale with content!
So how about you? How do you feel about the changes coming? Do you think they are over powered? Do you have a heroic moment to share? A well earned kill?
That’s it for today folks, until next time, Happy Healing!
Since I play a Holy Paladin, I can’t comment on the changes to come, since I don’t know what they are! I’m a bit nervous about them because I love the way my Paladin plays right now,and I feel like we’re in such good shape.
It’s hard to know if changes are going to be good or bad until people can start playing around with them and getting a feel for them. When you read about changes in a blue post they largely exist in a vacuum — they may look good, they may look bad, but you really don’t know until you start to test them out in the actual game world, against the abilities of the boss and see how they synergize with other players. I do expect a lot of QQ until people start getting the hang of things.
Epic fights, the one that stands out to me is our first Nalorakk kill in ZA — both tanks dropped with the boss <10%. A rogue Evasion-tanked while the rest of the raid threw the kitchen sink at him and somehow got him down the rest of the way. Maybe not epic, but certainly memorable!
“To have the ever loving shit beaten out of the raid by a boss. Like seriously have Deathwing be so badass he just looks at us and we die.”
Have him go try and 3 man Cthun and see if he still feels OP.
Don’t forget that the “powerful Eredar” is, in fact, the (non-titan) head of the entire Burning Legion. Small detail that one.
We’ve had a couple pretty epic moments over the course of Wrath in our guild. We had an early Hodir kill where the only person left alive was a bubbled Ret Pally.
Our first Rotface kill ended when the sole tank left alive (me) burned down the last 100K of his health. (Our tree was still alive too, and holding his breath the entire time.)
Our we’ve had one or two firsts (can’t remember which ones anymore) over the course of Wrath come AFTER the enrage timer had expired.
Going back to BC, our guild FINALLY got Mag down one week before 3.0 dropped and would have denied us access to “Champion of the Naaru.”
I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever felt TOO powerful. Then again, I’ve never been in a guild that pushes the bleeding edge of content or does much in the way of hardmodes. ICC 10 is still keeping us pretty humble.
Even in theory, though…10 people taking down the Lich King? The guy who’s responsible for the hundreds of thousands of undead all over Azeroth? Sure, why not. Afterall, we are pretty extraordinary. Just look at all the other stuff we’ve accomplished.
.-= Saniel´s last blog ..Play "The Time is Right!" Win Prizes! (Seriously.) =-.
In Vanilla wow on my Hunter in BWL I kited every Single Dragonkin on our first Razorgore kill
Single Tanking everything on my Pally in Karazahn the day after they made Pallys viable tanks
It will be 9 weeks and 10% in buffs come next week’s reset and only one guild in the world has managed to fully triumph over the end boss of Wrath. Consider that the first guild to kill KJ in Sunwell, what was declared by Blizzard to be one of the hardest instances they ever made, did so only after a month of attempts. (Granted, they weren’t limited, but we’d still be fool to think that top world guilds aren’t throwing multiple raid groups at the encounter.)
If that isn’t “[having] the ever loving shit beaten out of the raid by a boss” I don’t know what is. I can tell you, when LK finally does bite the dust under my clomping blue feet, it will be one hell of an epic moment and certainly the pinnacle of my Wrath raiding (with Yogg 0 a close second).
.-= Vixsin´s last blog ..The Shaman Teaser: Deconstructed =-.
Guild first Malygos kill: *everyone* died, but we got the kill anyway because the final few ticks of the dots killed him before he reset 🙂
well sadly i have no epic moments as a healer in raids, but when i was around 62 and leveling i got into an all dk group and me, a holy priest for ramps. We were stuck on nazan and vazruden and as we were about to give up we decided to give it one more attempt. We got him down to very low health and everyone but me had died. as the healer there wasnt much i could do, so i bubbled Pom’d and started dotting him up as i ran away. He 2 shotted me, and ran back to reset, as i sat there in spirit of redemption and watched. As he was crossing his way back over the bridge, he died =D yay superpriests!
Raids have always been stomped on. Back when Onyxia was new, she would burn us to the ground, tossing people into her whelps with her tail, and generally making us try time after time until we got lucky. As a mage, I remember the time when nearly everyone died, and she turned toward me and extended her claw, hitting me for 3/4 of my life and then falling over dead. Six people of 40 left standing. Epic.