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    World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

    Game » consists of 10 releases. Released Nov 13, 2008

    Travel to the arctic continent of Northrend in Blizzard's second expansion to the most popular MMORPG ever made.

    3.2 and "Dumbing Down the Game"

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    haethos

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    Edited By haethos

    I recently came back to WoW after an 6-month hiatus that spanned the "end" of the TBC expansion (Essentially August 2008 - February 2009), and started playing a bunch again until now.
     
    I was a "hardcore" raider in TBC, raiding 20 hours a week and ended up quitting when my guild broke up bashing our faces into Brutallus. I've been catching up with this expansion by leveling up a new class (a rogue, lol) and learning the ropes of the new raids. 
     
    Seeing as how I experienced the end of TBC, I'm not surprised at all at the massive negative response to 3.2. It's been criticized as making the game too "noob-friendly", allowing "bads" to get gear and generally closing the gear gap between the "hardcore" and the "casual".  
     
    I don't think that 3.2 was a detriment to the game whatsoever. Look at it from Blizzard's perspective. Their development team had a budget for creating content in WotLK, and too many players were not penetrating into endgame PvE content. All the while, they were expected to keep rolling out new content for players at the cutting edge, resulting in a ton of content not even being experienced by a ton of players stuck doing the initial raids.
     
    How many players out of their subscriber base had never even stepped foot into Ulduar? How many guilds were stuck running Naxx, OS, VoA's and the like to meet a minimal gear requirement to even step foot in Ulduar 25? On my server (Gurubashi) I'm not even sure Yogg had been downed before the nerf. With 3.2, guilds can now experience the full breadth of content, and individual players now have the means to establish themselves as having some relatively good gear, even if their guilds cannot down bosses in Uld 25.
     
    The way I see it, the game is not getting "dumbed down". Think of it more as Blizzard giving players the means necessary to raid more advanced content, rather than a gear giveaway to "baddies". Core raiders that have invested a ton of time to get their gear have a right to be indignant, but having more players experience more content doesn't suddenly invalidate the countless hours spent raiding.

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    haethos

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    #1  Edited By haethos

    I recently came back to WoW after an 6-month hiatus that spanned the "end" of the TBC expansion (Essentially August 2008 - February 2009), and started playing a bunch again until now.
     
    I was a "hardcore" raider in TBC, raiding 20 hours a week and ended up quitting when my guild broke up bashing our faces into Brutallus. I've been catching up with this expansion by leveling up a new class (a rogue, lol) and learning the ropes of the new raids. 
     
    Seeing as how I experienced the end of TBC, I'm not surprised at all at the massive negative response to 3.2. It's been criticized as making the game too "noob-friendly", allowing "bads" to get gear and generally closing the gear gap between the "hardcore" and the "casual".  
     
    I don't think that 3.2 was a detriment to the game whatsoever. Look at it from Blizzard's perspective. Their development team had a budget for creating content in WotLK, and too many players were not penetrating into endgame PvE content. All the while, they were expected to keep rolling out new content for players at the cutting edge, resulting in a ton of content not even being experienced by a ton of players stuck doing the initial raids.
     
    How many players out of their subscriber base had never even stepped foot into Ulduar? How many guilds were stuck running Naxx, OS, VoA's and the like to meet a minimal gear requirement to even step foot in Ulduar 25? On my server (Gurubashi) I'm not even sure Yogg had been downed before the nerf. With 3.2, guilds can now experience the full breadth of content, and individual players now have the means to establish themselves as having some relatively good gear, even if their guilds cannot down bosses in Uld 25.
     
    The way I see it, the game is not getting "dumbed down". Think of it more as Blizzard giving players the means necessary to raid more advanced content, rather than a gear giveaway to "baddies". Core raiders that have invested a ton of time to get their gear have a right to be indignant, but having more players experience more content doesn't suddenly invalidate the countless hours spent raiding.

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    CL60

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    #2  Edited By CL60

    No..they are definitely dumbing the game down and ever since the launch of BC, the game has just been getting worse and worse.

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    Radar

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    #3  Edited By Radar
    @CL60 said:
    " No..they are definitely dumbing the game down and ever since the launch of BC, the game has just been getting worse and worse. "
    If you want to be like that, they've been "dumbing" down the game ever since WoW left beta.
     
    This cycle has been going on ever since the game has launched; Release a new instance, allow the top end guilds to clear, nerf it to hell to allow everyone else to experience it, rinse and repeat.
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    DJJoeJoe

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    #4  Edited By DJJoeJoe

    The most recent changes are real bullet-points for 'gripes' when I was playing such as being able to create a Human Hunter. What's surprising is the scale of these changes, going as far as to not only allow flying in the old lands but to revamp key zones there so they are fresh for everyone again. So the next expansion you'll not only be getting the normal content of a new land/instances there but also retouched and reworked leveling areas and new high end content in the original zones. Plus 2 races with their own leveling areas as we've come to expect, and basically all that is laid on top of the same bump in content we always get from each expansion such as a bump in level cap and all that. It's really amazing, and sort of a shame that I stopped playing not 3 months ago.

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    Brewmaster_Andy

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    #5  Edited By Brewmaster_Andy

    As someone who used to be a hardcore raider (20+ hours a week) and finds himself suddenly lacking time, the new changes are pretty welcome. The fact that I can head online when I get home on the weekends and get a PUG raid for pretty much anything is pretty sweet.
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    deactivated-5c5cdba6e0b96

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    @CL60 said:

    " No..they are definitely dumbing the game down and ever since the launch of BC, the game has just been getting worse and worse. "

    I couldn't agree more, I remember pre-BC you had to work for your gear and someone with a set of epics truely had no life and world pvp was for fun and kicked ass, thats all down the drain and is one of the reasons I won't be playing anytime soon.

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