Today's update: Two too late fixes and one huge QQ (WoW)

[thistlechaser]

Oh WoW, I was so in love with you for giving out so many more details than FFXI ever did... then I learned the pain of all the stuff you don't tell your players. Listing only some of the changes a patch brings seems almost worse than saying nothing at all.

This morning I read the patch notes. Had no big reaction (there was one 'too late fix' listed, but it was no biggie). Then I logged onto the game.

XP in AV (PvP BG) has been cut by 60%.

FFXI would have at least said "XP has been adjusted", which everyone would know would mean a nerf. Why did WoW say nothing? Why did I have to learn from word of mouth?

Yeah, I can agree there needed to be an adjustment, last night on guild I said it would be nerfed soon, but 60% reduction? Look up "draconian" in the dictionary and you'll find this nerf.

Too late fix #1: PvP dailies. Now the NPC will only offer you quests you can accept. So from 11-20 you'll only be offered WSG. 21-50 only WSG or AB. Why couldn't this have been done, say, back when I was those levels and kicking the NPC because nine times out of ten I couldn't accept the daily?

Too late fix #2: This one actually hurts me, not just annoys me like #1. AV levels have been adjusted. Now a bracket is 50-59, 60-69, etc like the other BGs. Not only did I have to wait a level longer than others now will, but this is going to kill, totally kill, my effort to get 100K HKs. How? Once I hit 80, I'll be BGing only against other 80s. Matches will be less frequent, and there will be a hell of a lot fewer kills. Blah.

All in all, this is just so amazingly frustrating. Happily I was not in a rush to get to 80, but I wasn't enjoying my time in AV so I didn't exactly want to be forced to do it more for the same XP... It's really the next-to-impossibility of getting to 100 HKs that's making me sad.

Stupid WoW.

QQ

Comments

[achika-soladia.livejournal.com]

You could lock your exp at 79. =p

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Hmm! Do you still get honor when XP ... oh wait, no. Then you go into the twinks' BG instead of the main one, things are even slower (read: dead) there. :/ Good idea for a moment! :)

[achika-soladia.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, I forgot about the separate twink/non-twink BGs. Well, I tried! =D

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

You did! :D

[citizenbleys.livejournal.com]

Patch day always sucks. Brewfast dailies were bugged today. got up early (5:30PM) to do the last daily I couldn't do before maintenance.

5:30: Each mole machine spat out about 30 dwarves instead of four. Seven people at camp. Estimated time to fail: 30 seconds

6:00: World server went down in the middle of event. Got back in, fail complete.

6:30: Each person got one mug. They did not regenerate, and 90% of the time you could not pick one up from the table. I think the Horde knocked out 4 dwarves before they stole the beer.

7:00: Only bug was an obscene amount of lag, but half the Horde was there. I'm pretty sure I saw Thrall staggering about singing Barret's Privateers. Won, barely.

a 5 minute daily should not take 1hr30mins to complete, but that is patch day for you.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Blarg!

a 5 minute daily should not take 1hr30mins to complete, but that is patch day for you.

Agreed. :/

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

So...they introduced leveling through pvp just a few days over a month ago, they saw the problem with the pvp dailies, and they fixed it that quickly, and you're complaining? Your obsessiveness to level so fast is not their fault. You say the xp leveling this way sucks, but it obviously does not since you've managed to level faster than I did through questing on my priest (took from late March to mid June to hit 80 and I was 23 when I really started putting a lot into the character in March) when I don't even have a job.

Also, you hate AV, so why are you doing it? Why not do Eye of the Storm now that you're of a proper level to do it?

QQ indeed. Why on earth do you make everything into a second freaking job?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

You say the xp leveling this way sucks, but it obviously does not since you've managed to level faster than I did through questing on my priest

You're leveling slower than me? It had been taking me 12-15 hours to get a level in PvP. I'm leveling "fast" because I put the hours into it, not because PvP is faster than PvE.

Also, you hate AV, so why are you doing it? Why not do Eye of the Storm now that you're of a proper level to do it?

XP and honor in AV is (was) four times faster than any other BG. More importantly, the queue time in AV is (was) much shorter than any other one. Used to be under a minute for AV, now it's about 15. Eye of the Storm queue is insane. I waited nearly two hours to get in tonight, then finally had to switch to an alt so lost my place in the queue. Add the queue time on to the BG time and you get going on three hours for a couple thousand XP. That sucks.

they saw the problem with the pvp dailies, and they fixed it that quickly, and you're complaining?

The dailies issue was the very smallest of my points. It's the only one that does not hurt me.

QQ indeed. Why on earth do you make everything into a second freaking job?

*points to the hours per level figure* If I spent an hour or two a day on the game, I'd still be level 21.

PvP was far, far, far from perfect before the giant nerf (hello getting no gold, no drops, no skilling of weapons or gathering, no armor from quests, no rep, I could go on an on). Anyone who levels through PvP only has a right to be annoyed.

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

So you don't think it's a wee bit unreasonable to expect a system that was retrofitted onto a five year old game to work perfectly for the extreme users all at once? The game was not set up to have leveling occur through nothing but pvp.

I'm certainly not a fan of everything Blizzard does, but really, Thistle. You work in software testing. You have to have some idea of how complex programming can be. Think about what a huge change this was to try to add on.

Your battlegroup must seriously suck. I don't pvp often, but my random sampling of it has never had me waiting that long for any BG I've ever tried.

And do you really expect me to believe that you're treating this as a job just because you couldn't level otherwise? If you are taking that many hours per level and you were able to level that much in such a short amount of time on the calendar, especially compared to a chronically ill stay at home mom who can't do many things other than those done in a sitting position, you are playing way too damn much. It is not good for you. Go do something else for a change. You do this with everything and it is bad for you. It drives me crazy seeing you hurt yourself this way.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I'm certainly not a fan of everything Blizzard does, but really, Thistle. You work in software testing. You have to have some idea of how complex programming can be. Think about what a huge change this was to try to add on.

If my company took one of our products, cut out more than 50% of the features, said nothing about the change to our customers, and sold it for the same price, what would happen?

Your battlegroup must seriously suck. I don't pvp often, but my random sampling of it has never had me waiting that long for any BG I've ever tried.

I can't speak for other BGs, but as of yesterday's patch, two BGs have never once been used yet (Isle and Strand). Not one fight there in more than 24 hours now. The queue was bad for all non-AV BGs before, now it's horrible for all and "only" bad for AV.

Go do something else for a change.

It's not like AV PvP takes all my attention -- it's the least attention-requiring of all the BGs. I watch TV/movies while doing it, chat with people, RP over party or whisper, brush the cat, clean the house, pay bills... (That's one thing that has always annoyed me about AV and something I posted previously about: It's so big you just don't matter. I could auto-run at a tree the whole time and it would make no difference.)

[naikitty.livejournal.com]

not because PvP is faster than PvE.

Actually, before the nerf, it WAS faster. I spent a day questing, then spent a day AVing. AV was nearly twice as much exp in the 71-80 bracket for less effort. It needed to be nerfed, and badly. It -was- fun while it lasted, but no one should level solely on PVP. That's not how WoW was designed. :3

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

You mean the developers didn't intend for all of your level 1-80 to be done without questing?!? Madness I tell you!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

WSG doesn't become available until 10, so it's impossible to do 1-80 without questing! ;)

I'm kind of sort of tempted to do this again, just starting at 10 instead of 18 or whatever I was when I started (18 or 19...). I seem to recall hating WSG at that level though, I think it was only when I hit 20 and could go to AB that I started liking it...

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

You could totally grind from 1-10 just killing mobs without quests so HA! :P

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ha! You're right! :D *ponders*

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

but no one should level solely on PVP. That's not how WoW was designed. :3

Maybe not originally, but they wanted PvP to be a viable option. At the moment, it's not.

However, if they adjusted it once, they might do so again. Either way, I'm less annoyed today. It still sucks ass, but why do I care? It's not like I wanted to be 80 anyway (that's not sarcasm, I have no need to be 80 and do have need not to be 80).

The only thing that still annoys me is that this was a secret nerf. I had thought Blizzard was better than that; I'm sad if I was wrong about that. Oh, that and the queue time, that needs a fix and badly. (If two BGs (Isle and Strand) have never yet been done since yesterday's patch, not in our whole battlegroup, there's something wrong with the queue system.)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

AV was nearly twice as much exp in the 71-80 bracket for less effort. It needed to be nerfed

I never disagreed that the 71-80 needed to be nerfed (though do with how harshly it was), but when all the previous brackets took ~12 hours of AVing per level... Can you imagine it now? 24 hours of AV to level once? That is neither fair nor reasonable. Hell, you get better XP/hour in FFXI's version of non-questing XP (Campaign battles). When FFXI is better than you, you know there's an issue. :P