“Epic Myths”
Welcome to the 3rd part of the Disparate World of Warcraft series, hosted by “The Zen”. It took a while, but I’m back once again with a little bit of wisdom to our newer players and even some old. There are a lot of myths to WoW, a lot of legends. These may impact the game you play, this may not. However, it lets me sleep better at night that I’m able to spread some of this knowledge to people who have been misinformed by the World (of Warcraft) and the players within it.
The first and most important one is the myth of instances and raids. First and foremost, the days of Molten Core and Blackwing Lair are over. Blizzard originally expressed a need for making instances shorter, especially after runs such as Sunken Temple and Blackrock Depths extended from 2-4 hours long, sometimes longer. The first instance, Ramparts, can be easily run by a mediocre group in about an hour. Later on other instances existed that took 45 minutes or less to clear, such as Auchenai Crypts, Sethekk Halls. These instances had limited numbers of bosses to make the instance fulfilling while making it as short as possible. Instances no longer take long to complete (though they might take a while to group for them). Raids were built almost the same, and some hardcore players were upset at it (asking for the Naxxramas feel again), but Karazhan was easy enough to be broken into parts. Zul’Aman was made to be small and short, and even gave the challenge of trying to finish it within 45 minutes for players in BT and MH. With a reset timer of 3 days, it was more like a casual instance than a raid for most players in the PvE game. The fact is…IT DOES NOT take forever to do instances or raids. Find a guild that works with your schedule. You may not get to Illidan/Kil’jaeden (or Arthas), but you will be able to enjoy the encounters.
With Wrath of the Lich King’s arrival, instances will be tuned to be less than an hour run for the average group (it was mentioned in the interview). So if you have a discipline priest or resto druid doing DPS, you can still finish the run in less than an hour. It was designed so that people who believed Battlegrounds were more time efficient would take a second look at instances. However, not everyone is open minded to change, and it will take a while for everyone to want to PvE again. And Blizzard is pulling out all of the PvP cards early, so there might already be a completely separated community of PvErs and PvPers early into Wrath.
Another myth is that PvP is the “best way to go“. The fact is, it isn’t. PvP is good for PvP, but as I mentioned in a comment in Part 2, PvP did not give out epic gear to begin with. If you went to Karazhan and downed 4 bosses and got something out of it 6 months into BC, you were epic. If you beat Kael’thas before Season 1 went to honor, you were amazing. Everyone who was in the arena brackets before Season 2 came out were PvErs and PvP gear did drop in 25 mans. I’m not saying PvP is bad, but one must realize that the reason why people are PvPing is not because of time or being “casual”. It’s about getting “epic” gear in the least amount of time. Anyone would do that, casual or hardcore. I put the word “epic” in quotation marks because the effort put into getting them is hardly “epic”, but arena gear is somewhat earned. (Some PvErs argue that Arena players should get a box that randomly decides their gear to emulate boss loot, but that’s just spite.) PvE is worth it, and I hope that if you get the chance in Wrath to participate in raids, please do so. Right now the people doing heroics recruit people within the guild, which is why you don’t see a lot of groups forming. Tanks and healers like to be with DPS they trust, and they should probably start trusting people more…they believe in the myth that most DPS are retards in PvP gear. Which is likely true about some, but not all. See, it goes both ways.
Another thing to add...Blizzard did say the reason there is a separation of gear is to make battles last longer in PvP, to give a better feel of battle, strategy, use of skill. So enjoy the resilience, because Arenas do give a sense of strategy and skill, and that's what the purpose of high stamina and resilience gear is. Just an extra note.
Instances were harder to get done AFTER Season 1 came out, never before. When people started to separate into PvPers and PvErs, the tanks got absorbed into guilds that raided. Less tanks mean more gear for those tanks, which means less instances they needed to get done to get what they wanted. Two to three tanks in a guild meant they were always doing instances with those guildies, so they never bothered for PuGs, and quickly started not to trust PuGs.
But don’t give up on BC just because Wrath is coming out. One of the biggest myths I believe out there is that Wrath will be coming out in November. Going by the time table that BC was on, I don’t believe November will be the release. It will probably be January. The end-game raids haven’t been fully tested yet, the pre-Wrath content patch notes are not out, and the patch would come out about 2 months before Wrath comes out, so given that the notes won’t be out until at least mid-to-late September, the patch will be out in October or early November (they always give us a month or so to sweat the notes and test the PTR), and Wrath will be pushed to January, the release date probably being announced late September.
I figure it’d be fun to look at some detailed stuff going on in our game, so I’m not sure what the next chapter is, but it’ll probably be about tanks, grouping, classes, and maybe some interesting information that I’ve dug up on Wrath.
