How the Casual Gamer Has Ruined World of Warcraft

Your Gearscore Sucks

We see it all the time in trade chat. Such and so raid is looking for more people to join, BUT... you have to have some outrageous gearscore. For those who are are new to achieving level 80 or haven't played the game but for only a few months, this might seem perfectly alright. However, what you don't know is that the game was never heavily gear dependent. I will be going over how the game has changed and for the worse. I will go over what was expected of a raider; how people achieved great gear; and how skill ruled the game.

Before Gearscore Was Even a Word

There was a time when they had not cracked the gearscore code. People had to rely on other things to determine if someone was worthy of going on a raid. What did they rely on you ask?

• the reputation of the person that was hopeful to go on a raid
• looking at their gear and knowing the class of the person and how the gear perfectly matched the person's class
• only guilds went on raids, there were no such things as PUGs

Let's go over each of these points in depth. I will show you how removing this system in a game that relies on its own social aspect to make for a better experience of everyone. I will also compare some much harder games to the current system.

Your Reputation Could Make or Break you

Back when WoW was much much smaller, people had reputations and you were made or broken by your actions in World of Warcraft. That meant if you ninjad something, you really did get black balled from any possible raiding or getting into a guild. You would be kicked out of a guild if you did anything that ruined your reputation and hence the reputation of the guild. You were also put on a list by the more experienced guilds as a persona non grata.

You could go to a message board and see posts about people that did things that were disreputable. That meant that not only were you outed to your guild, but everyone on the server, and the whole game, actually the world since it's on the internet. This was especially true of serious offenses, like ninjaing in a raid. Even if you were stupid, it was considered bad, like a hunter rolling on something that is perfectly suited for a tank or healer.

With the current changes, people no longer care about reputation. Why? Because gear is ridiculously easy to come by and you can simply kick someone and get a new idiot to take their place.

When a Guild Master Was Capable of Looking at Your Gear to Determine Your Skill

WoW has always had obscure gear rules to challenge the player to think outside the box when gearing themselves. What am I talking about? I'm talking about a paladin wearing cloth. I'm talking about a hunter wearing leather. I'm talking about a tank wielding rogue weapons.

If you didn't know your class sufficiently to understand these slight nuances in the game, you would seriously under gear your character and do less damage, or generate less threat or heal for less.

It was the excellent guild master that knew every class in the game to such and extent that he could look at your gear and tell that you knew nothing about both your class and specialization. I was once applying for a guild and they asked that I have "good gear". I got the beast gear I could at the time which were not only blues, but blues that were better than epic gear. When the guild master called to inspect me, he knew I had the beast gear and knew they were pieces that were not easy to get. So in blues and a couple of greens I was invited into the guild to be a raider.

Why do I include that story? Because raid leaders and guild masters of today would not know that a blue out of some obscure dungeon was better than a beginning epic. Today they would dismiss you out of hand and probably put you on their ignore list.

But could a guild master know you had skill by looking at your gear? Yes! If you knew your class so well that you were wearing obscure blues and greens that were focused on some aspect of your specialization, the guild master knew two things:

• you knew your class to an elite status
• you knew your spec to an elite status

It is highly improbable that someone with such an integral knowledge of their class could be unskilled at the game. You can't get to intimate knowledge of your class without knowing the skill to use it.

When You Had to Join a Guild to Raid

There was always this separation of the game into two groups: the casual gamer; the hardcore raider. To be a hardcore raider you needed to be in a guild. A hardcore raider schedules his life around raid time and the raid is scheduled around everyone's life. To be invited to a guild meant that you agreed to raid at their raid time. There was no way to get into a raid without first being in a guild. No one wanted to raid with someone:

• they did not know
• that did not know their class
• that did not know the raid
• that had a bad reputation

Remember one fine point. And, this is a fine point that escapes new players of World of Warcraft. Gear that was more powerful than the instance you were raiding was unheard of. It was only after raiding for months that a guild could finally breath easy and do an instance without any trouble. It was only then that they would start PUGs.

The casual gamer simply played the game for fun; didn't have time to play for long periods; didn't have every day to play; didn't want to invest time into a single task that might take him months to accomplish.

However, it has been the casual gamer that has been the loudest about his lack of raiding and / or gear.

The Beginning of the End

Blizzard is in the business of making money, not making a better game. Normally the two are opposite. In its infinite wisdom, Blizzard started listening to the casual gamer.

• casual gamers wanted to raid
• casual gamers wanted the epic gear
• casual gamers wanted the tier gear
• casual gamers wanted to not think about what gear to get to fit their class

With all of these demands Blizzard slowly changed the game to be easier and easier. At first these changes only affected the lower level. The end game was still held in reserve to those who were serious about the game. Blizzard reasoned that they must make the beginning game much easier for everyone to understand and therefore enjoy and purchase a subscription.

Due to their changes of making getting to the end game easier, more and more casual gamers achieved the highest level in the game. Then you had a much larger population of people that did not know their class and who did not raid. Blizzard finally changed the end game to be easier and easier.

People went from raiding Naxxramus in blues, to requiring people to be in epics coming into Naxx. They quickly forgot that Naxx was the first instance that dropped epics at all.

With this mindset the entire game went down hill. People started requiring higher and higher gearscores to do content that did not require it.

Gearscore the Straw That Broke the Camels Back

Finally the addon gearscore came out. You could now look at someone and determine what their gear's level was. You could also check online and get their gearscore. Gone was the necessity of the raid leader or guild master to know the game so much that they could look at your gear and determine your skill.

It has been a failure on the parts of the raid leaders and guild masters to depend on gearscore. I have found that gearscore is useless. I was in a basic heroic instance with a mage that had a gearscore of 5400. He pulled 1.5k dps. End of story. I have been in regular instances where the healer dripping in epics let the tank die, along with the rest of the party. Gearscore is useless.

Be that as it may, the changes Blizzard has made is akin to gold sellers. Once people start buying gold, they can then buy all the best gear that Bind on Equip. Once people have access to this, then people see that more of the population is walking around in much higher gear. They then come to expect everyone to have higher gear. This is effectively what Blizzard has done. They have made it easier for people to equip higher gear and so people expect higher gear from everyone.

The end result is that terrible players are walking around in pristine gear. Now no one knows who is a joy to play with and who is and absolute nightmare. I expect it will only get worse. Unless the new expansion makes the player concentrate on the skill aspect of the game, I see no possible way to fix this. You will end up with very frustrated end game players that want the casual gamers to go away and Blizzard wanting everyone to enjoy the full content of the game.

All that being said, the very end game instances still require skill. You cannot get around it. Being dressed up, still does not account for skill. I think it is going to be a big disappointment when the casual gamer gets dressed in the highest gear possible only to find that their skills do not match the gear they are in.

I say go back to reserving Player vs Environment equipment for those that acquire it in raids only and leave the non-skilled players to do player vs player games.

We just had a player join our guild raid dressed in full pvp gear and he had the same gearscore as my healer paladin. After a couple of fights it was found he healed 1/3rd of what I healed. He was removed promptly and someone else was invited. The only reason he was invited was because of his gearscore.

You might be saying "he's in pvp gear though." Other than adding the "resilience" stat to his gear, all of his gear was gemed better than mine and he had far superior spell power than my paladin. He was just a terrible player. He had no idea of what to do in a raid, nor how to heal.

Gearscore is useless. You could buy gold in the game and end up with 200,000 gold and simply go the the AH and buy full crafted gear that could put your into nose bleed gearscore overnight. Who would know? They would simply look at the gearscore and take you into their raids. Then find out your skill is zero.

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World of Warcraft: Best Hunter Advice Evaaaaar!!!

10 Rules of Being Da Bestest Huntard

Hunters seem to need more advice the most out of any of the classes of World of Warcraft. No class is as complicated to play than a hunter. They have nearly every armor type they can wear, excluding plate mail. They can wield nearly every weapon in the entire world "of Warcraft". And, they have to concentrate on nearly every state in the world "of Warcraft." It is obvious that with such diversity that it is confusing of how to be da bestest huntard. Not only are those basics confusing, but there is even more. They do most of their damage from their ranged slot item, unlike other classes. They have melee weapons that sit there unused for most of their hunter life. So those two slots of melee weapons need to be da bestest they can possibly be. Now add in that they are responsible for keeping a beast at their beck and call, who also does damage. This beast they have, they have to train to do tricks and give talents to, on top of their own talents. Finally, they have to armor themselves and understand how to shoot so many shots all in a few seconds. Luckily, they can fall over and pretend to be dead if they ever get in trouble. Doing so much damage all at once, they get in trouble a lot.



So here is the advice and rules for being da bestest huntering:

1. the first rule of huntering is to roll a hunter. If you iz not a hunter, you iz doing it wrong.


2. the second rule of huntering is to bathe the pet. Guilds do not like smelly pets and will not invite you to raidz.


3. don't forget to be hunter. I cannot stress how important that part iz.


4. the third rule of huntering is "every weapon is huntard weaponz" The more spell powerz on a staff, the better. It probly is for you. I mean why would the healer want it, if it weren't awesome. They just want to steal it from you. Those bastards!


5. make sure you roll a hunter. All of this good advice will not work if you're not a hunter.


6. the fourth rule of huntering is "if a druid rolls on it, you should roll on it" just to be safe. If you're wrong and it's some silly healer plate mail item, you can always vendor it later for cold hard gold.


7. the fifth rule of huntering is "if the mob leaves the tank to attack you, shoot it some moar". I mean, when itz dead it can't hit you any more. AMIRITE?


8. the sixth rule of huntering is if you're only shooting 3 mobs, send your pet to get moar mobs. I mean, the more the merrier. And then you can show off your super leet Volley Shot AOE [area of effect] shot, that does ridiculous damage. The best way to do this is to put your pet on aggressive to attack anything it sees.


9. the seventh rule of huntering is if anyone in your party is doing more damage than you, they must be cheating. I mean, all you do is damage, so you're the king of damage. If anyone else, who isn't the king of damage is doing more than you, then that should send a red flag up, that they are doing something wrong. Report that immediately to a GM. As a follow up, post it on the Blizzard message boards and complain vehimently, to make sure it is taken care of in the next patch. As a final follow up, go onto the test realms and tell the GM's there. Clearly, they didn't realize the impact of it and it is not a part of the vision that anyone should be doing more damage than a hunter.


10. The tenth rule of huntering is you must constantly test your party, to make sure they are worthy of playing with you. As such, make sure you cast misdirection onto the healer. This way, if you agro any mobs, they will go to the healer. The healer is the ideal candidate for this because... they heal. If they cannot heal themselves, who can they heal. They aren't worthy of being with you, if they cannot handle that. Next, while everyone is resting and drinking and eating, go and get more mobs. If they cannot handle a suprise attack, they aren't worthy of being with you. Make sure you feign death if they come to attack you. Why should you suffer if your party isn't worthy of you. Next, test each shot individually, to make sure your party can handle minimal damage output from you. If they wipe because you are doing your minimum, then they aren't worthy of you. If they can, imagine how great you would seem if you did your maximum damage.

With such a complicated class, it is no wonder there are so many questions for huntering. I hope these rules make you da bestest huntard evaaar!!!

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The Final Battle of Arthas: Patch 3.3

World of Warcraft Unleashes the Litchking

The ultimate stage of the latest expansion of World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Litchking is upon us. The ultimate villain of the entire lore is being unleashed in this patch 3.3. We finally meet and face Prince Arthas. But, don't rush out and think you're going to meet him right away. Apparently you have to unlock him. You start a quest line that begins the chain for unlocking him.

This chain however is done through 5 player instances. So while the encounter is a 10 and 25 man raid, the quest line itself is doable with a regular group... and speaking of regular group.

You will now be able to do cross realm groups. So forget about sitting all day looking for a group. Or, forget about making sure you log in 9-5 on your realm to catch a group. With cross realm groups, you'll have a wide variety of people you can team up with. So you can do badge runs all day, to your hearts content.



There is also quite a bit of changes coming in place.

- Classes: will not start out with their signature powers - for example rogues start with stealth and dual-wield etc... No longer will you have to quest for your signature powers or wait for 10 levels before you get them, or longer in some cases where the quest was hard, and no one is ever around any more in those zones.

- Summoning stones: no longer will you not be able to summon if you're 10 levels above the instance. You can rush your lower level buddies through instances, and summon them using the summoning stones.

- LFG: as mentioned above you can now group cross realm. The entire LFG window has been revamped. It's far ore detailed and you can see people's comments on mouse over. Also, the number of instances queued for is no longer just 3 [thank god]. However, you now have a vote kick from a group. There is possible abuse in this feature. But, group loot is set to a minimum of need before greed and you can't change that aspect of it. No more mages needing on plate-mail.

- Instance requirements: some instances now have minimum requirements. So if you don't meet the minimum gear requirements, you won't be able to enter. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing.

- Need, Greed, Disenchant: a new selection is avialable in the loot window, disenchant. If there is an enchanter that is high enough skill in the group, selecting disenchant is an automatic roll like greed. If everyone selects greed/disenchant, the item is automatically disenchanted and the highest roller wins. Need, always beats either of them. And, the enchanter never touches the item.

So there are the highlights to patch 3.3.

Oh, I almost forgot. Players who take part in groups who have one or more members who have been matched with them randomly from within the Dungeon Finder will receive extra rewards, up to and including the coveted Perky Pug non-combat pet. The more random players with whom one groups, the faster the pet can be obtained.





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