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Way back when Wrath of the Lich King launched all anyone could look forward to was the chance to fight and defeat Arthas. wow gold I remember hearing this endlessly, and thinking it myself. After all, anyone who played the original Warcraft games remembers Arthas and followed his descent into madness through the scenarios. Many players feel a special attachment to Arthas and looked forward to a chance to fight him. Blizzard realized this going in and made Arthas fairly accessible throughout the expansion.
Now patch 3.3 has arrived and very shortly players will finally get their chance to face Arthas, the Lich King, himself, yet some are not so happy about it. In fact many players are quite upset that Icecrown Citadel is as accessible as it is, given the fact that it is the home to the grandfather of all evil in this expansion. This brings about the question: Is ICC being so accessible cheap wow gold and even PUGable fair or foul?
Seen as too easy and not challenging enough
Less reason to keep playing if you finish the available content
Less distinction between the hardcore and the casual. Yes, it is meant to be in both lists, I’ll explain later
As more players have raid gear, other content becomes trivial
Hardcore players less likely to stick around in game
Given just a brief list of pros and cons you can see some of the challenges that a developer faces when creating raids. In addition Blizzard intentionally designed Wrath so that as many players as possible could feel more connected to the overall storyline and its main antagonist, Arthas. How does all this affect the base question though - is ICC being so accessible a good or bad thing?
Your answer to this question probably is based heavily on your own bias. If you are a fairly casual WoW player, you are likely completely thrilled at how open ICC is. If you are a hard core raider, the fact that a PUG has a chance probably gives you nightmares. Being not quite fanatically hardcore, but definitely not a casual player, I tend to look at opening up raiding to more players with scepticism, but not quite scorn.
Lord Marrowgar is very simple raid boss for PUGs
I believe players should get a chance to see as much raid content as possible but only enough that it leaves them wanting more. To me that is the sign of a great game, in that it takes casual players and turns them into rampaging fanatics because they want and need more. That means that even though you make more players happy in the short term by opening up content to more players by making it easier, you may lose them in long term by doing so.
If you had asked me a few weeks ago about the accessibility of ICC the answer would be, it is an unmitigated disaster. The first wing was easily pugable the first day it launched by players in nothing but gear they earned from badges and much easier raids. Things did not look good to most raid guilds that saw this as the death of any challenge and sense of reward in a raid.
Ask me now a few weeks later, and I don’t think it is nearly so bad. Players can get into a casual group and down the lower spire pretty easily. I do it on 3 alternate 80’s and rarely have issues getting a group that has more than a wipe or two through the lower spire. Get into the upper spire though and it’s a whole different ball game. Many raiding guilds have not even cleared Professor Putricide and the new blood wing is open already. Usually at this time a PUG group just stops after the lower spire unless they are going through everything super fast and everyone feels like giving it a shot.
This seems to be a fairly decent compromise to me. Also, while players complain about the upcoming raid wide player buffs allowing everyone a better chance to down the Lich King, after all the realm firsts and big raiding guilds get it down is it really a big deal? If this was the first raid in the expansion I would think it was a deal breaker and complain loud and hard about it. However, this is the last raid before Cataclysm, and all the gear will be replaced soon after the expansion is launched anyway, so I am a little more forgiving of this than I otherwise might be.
http://blogger.diknas.go.id/id/baru/solinda/57441/Youth+-wow+gold.html
http://blog.aiudonline.ro/entry.php?w=siner&e_id=686
http://blog.chinaunix.net/u3/111663/showart_2179809.html
http://woddy.blog.radiofg.com/53240/Pulling-Rugs-and-Floating-Cities/
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