Looks like finishing quests near level 85 and

[twinkfist]

getting to exalted with factions is going to matter again.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/26725724 ... ve-review/

loved the teron gorefiend quest in shadowmoon for the dps helm with all the spikes on it.

that and gromtors charge...even though it really didn't work for me without the spellpower...loved that axe...already had the burning crusader so i didn't need the other quest axe.

[Archeth]

My mage in TBC got heroics/T4 ready with level 110-115 dungeon blues, and eventually the (admittedly overpowered) BoP tailoring stuff. When I planned my gear a bit, my wishlist also contained one or the other quest chain reward from Netherstorm or SMV, and that was all fine - and it was also fast enough, so someone who's dedicated to running heroics shouldn't worry too much about wasting time gearing up in the first place. As long as there are several paths offering ways to gear up enough to deal with harder heroics, that's fine. Ding 80, start running heroics really was too much.

What I don't agree with is the comparison to TBC that's hinted at by Ghostcrawler, and supported by people in the community. That just doesn't fly anymore, WoW and its audience has changed. We have a lot more people raiding and doing other endgame stuff (like running heroics) than ever, you can't just go back to the TBC model of balancing any serious content around the top 20% skilled players and tell the others who've been doing heroics for two years rather painlessly to adapt or die. This isn't TBC where only a minority of people (at first) bothered to get geared for heroics to farm them to get geared for overtuned raids. As much as my own experience can be viewed as that of someone working towards goals with endgame content in mind, it's not what Joe User did in TBC. I know many, many people who refused to farm dungeons and easy heroics to gear up for harder heroics or raids in TBC, because dungeons and then heroics were hard for PUGs consisting of lots of bads even back then. They instead went to farm S1 and then S2 PvP epics to a) wear epics and b) have better gear than what you got from farming reps and dungeons, the latter of which being painful and slow outside of groups of skilled friends or guild mates. I just don't think this is a model worth pursuing again.

Maybe they agree with the people who think it was sad how some players simply abandoned all questing when they hit 80, and never saw some of the more fun (also, many unfun...) quests in Storm Peaks or Icecrown. On the other hand, I know lots of people who don't like questing at all, and potentially forcing them to run a questline just to get geared to start running dungeons again wouldn't be cool. Same for having to farm reputations, I've never been a fan of World of Repgrindcraft, but with dungeon tabards that's a lot less annoying than it used to be. Nonetheless requiring a certain amount of effort before you turn towards the harder PvE content isn't a bad thing in principle. They just have to balance it right.

However it turns out, it's going to be fun to see how the badscore population adapts to the fact that people are unlikely to be running around in full epics (let alone of 2+ tiers above the content they're running) for a while.

[fuzzygeek]

Not to mention forcing your entire populace to gear up via "kill 12 X" quests on high pop servers is going to be obscenely stupid during the initial rush.

[Bastien]

Not to mention forcing your entire populace to gear up via "kill 12 X" quests on high pop servers is going to be obscenely stupid during the initial rush.

There are already "races", even in just the beta.

[twinkfist]

my server isn't too populated but i'm sure it's going to be a mess once the expac starts.

i am hoping that there will be more quests like the cipher of damnation, the gorefiend quest and the nexus-prince shaffer quest.

the rewards were pretty nice and they also looked pretty nice as well.

[dmok]

my server isn't too populated but i'm sure it's going to be a mess once the expac starts.

i am hoping that there will be more quests like the cipher of damnation, the gorefiend quest and the nexus-prince shaffer quest.

the rewards were pretty nice and they also looked pretty nice as well.

The quests were also "fun" since they felt like they were heading somewhere, and led to a reward that you could actually use and hold onto for a good period of time. Most of the level 79-80 quest rewards in WotLK were used for like a day or so until you replaced them with a heroic drop, making them feel far less desireable.

[Chunes]

Pretty much just invert everything Archeth said and that's how I feel.

I want blizzard to make it hard to get geared. I want to have to compete to kill the 10th nethersquirrel needed to finish the quest I need to get some good piece of gear. I'm so bored with all my epics being spoon fed into my mouth by a system that was designed to maximize INCOME GENERATION for blizzard's parent company.

/rosetint
/hardcore
/rawr

[Mcduffie]

overtuned raids

Why is this phrase in your vocabulary?

[Flex]

Pretty much just invert everything Archeth said and that's how I feel.

I want blizzard to make it hard to get geared. I want to have to compete to kill the 10th nethersquirrel needed to finish the quest I need to get some good piece of gear. I'm so bored with all my epics being spoon fed into my mouth by a system that was designed to maximize INCOME GENERATION for blizzard's parent company.

/rosetint
/hardcore
/rawr

Ideally Crafting and Normal 5 mans should give you the gear needed to tackle first tier of raiding and heroics, with the odd high end quest reward filling in slots, such as a trinket or weapon or jewelry piece.

[fuzzygeek]

Pretty much just invert everything Archeth said and that's how I feel.

I want blizzard to make it hard to get geared. I want to have to compete to kill the 10th nethersquirrel needed to finish the quest I need to get some good piece of gear. I'm so bored with all my epics being spoon fed into my mouth by a system that was designed to maximize INCOME GENERATION for blizzard's parent company.

/rosetint
/hardcore
/rawr

I'd be okay with this if there was some kind of recourse for the situations where, say, some max level asshole who doesn't even need the quest critters but is one-shotting them so no one can quest in the area. IMO on PvE servers you should be able to kill the opposite faction at any time. On PvP servers you should be able to kill people in your own faction too.

On the one hand I would really, really hate it (I played a holy priest for all of classic) and I really, really hate PvP. On the other hand, it would be fascinating to see how social dynamics would change.

[Loras]

On PvP servers you should be able to kill people in your own faction too.

I've been dreaming about this for AAAAAAAGES!!!!!

[Noradin]

Pretty much just invert everything Archeth said and that's how I feel.

I want blizzard to make it hard to get geared. I want to have to compete to kill the 10th nethersquirrel needed to finish the quest I need to get some good piece of gear. I'm so bored with all my epics being spoon fed into my mouth by a system that was designed to maximize INCOME GENERATION for blizzard's parent company.

/rosetint
/hardcore
/rawr

I'd be okay with this if there was some kind of recourse for the situations where, say, some max level asshole who doesn't even need the quest critters but is one-shotting them so no one can quest in the area. IMO on PvE servers you should be able to kill the opposite faction at any time. On PvP servers you should be able to kill people in your own faction too.

On the one hand I would really, really hate it (I played a holy priest for all of classic) and I really, really hate PvP. On the other hand, it would be fascinating to see how social dynamics would change.

Great! The asshole would stop one-shotting the quest critters and start one-shotting the questers

[fuzzygeek]

Great! The asshole would stop one-shotting the quest critters and start one-shotting the questers

I imagine the questers could band together and take him down. It'd be a good teamwork exercise!

But I've always thought they should implement an anti-griefing system such that every time someone X levels higher than you killed you outside of a BG, you gained X stacks of "Vengeful Fury" that would decrease damage taken from the ganker by (10*X)% and increase damage done to the ganker by (10*X)%, buff lasts 30 minutes, and deaths caused by someone with VF incur X% durability.

Blizzard doesn't incentivize ganking as there's no honor gain, but I don't think they do enough to disincentivize it. I don't think they should necessarily penalize it, but some sort of built-in leveling of the scales might be nice. See: tenacity.

[Tantrim]

Great! The asshole would stop one-shotting the quest critters and start one-shotting the questers

I imagine the questers could band together and take him down. It'd be a good teamwork exercise!

No it would be an exercise in futility, if the people subjected to player killers band together to prevent player killing the player killers will band together, end result: they win again. They prevent your questing. You however win nothing

If you disagree with the previous paragraph pvp servers were meant for you anyhow, why change normal servers to be pvp servers when pvp servers are there

[PsiVen]

The progression path that TBC ended up with is what we're talking about seeing again, not the one we started with. There were a lot of severe problems with TBC raiding that came together to make a very inaccessible experience. An expectation to go 10->25 with the same people, tuning based around mass consumables, TK gated by an overtuned Magtheridon who was considered by everyone to be T5 progression even though he was intended for T4. That was all horseshit. Fix those, make 10/25 versions of everything, and the rest is all fine; you can even imagine Sunwell being the same way except that their health drops by 5% per month until it reaches 30%:

Tier 4: Magtheridon's Lair (1), Gruul's Lair (2), Kharazhan (12)
Tier 5: Serpentshrine Cavern (5), Tempest Keep (4), Zul'aman (6)
Tier 6: Black Temple (9), Mount Hyjal (5)
Tier 6+: Sunwell Plateau (6)

The only thing missing from this layout is heroic mode, which we know is coming back and will diversify things further.

Tier 7: Naxxramas (15), Obsidian Sanctum (1)
Tier 8: Eye of Eternity (1), Ulduar (13/14)
Tier 9: Trial of the Crusader (5)
Tier 10: Icecrown Citadel (12), Ruby Sanctum (1)

It's pretty easy to tell where the low points of WotLK were. Naxx didn't even have hardmodes, and Sunwell gear was good enough to clear it on day one of level 80. Ulduar normal loot wasn't better than Malygos/Kel'thuzad and neither was Yogg's. Trial of the Crusader was way too short for a full tier, and easily made Ulduar hard mode loot redundant.

Tier 11: Throne of the Four Winds (2), Blackwing Descent (6), Bastion of Twilight (4/5)

This already tells me that the first tier in Cataclysm is going to have a lot more to hold the interest of progression-minded raiders.