The discussions surrounding if Blizzard is making World of Warcraft too easy with the removal of various attunements (basically all of them) and nerfing boss encounters and what not -- have been around for a long time.
Ron, a newswriter for Gaming Today (part of filefront.com) have shared his take on it all. He's calling the article "Don't Worry, Blizzard Isn't Dumbing Down World of Warcraft".
Judging from the forum posts I have seen, one of the more controversial changes coming in the 2.4 patch is the removal of attunements for the Mount Hyjal and Black Temple 25-man raid instances, and the introduction of gear that can be purchased with Badges of Justice that is on par with Hyjal/Black Temple drops. At first glance, the non-MMO player would wonder why this, of all things, would be a point of contention. Personally, I wonder what mindset makes players think this is a bad idea.
A perfect place to see what I am talking about is this thread. A player named ‘Fsgadgdsafhg’ offers up the following opinion:
All the T6 raiding guilds old and new are dumbfounded and hung up on the insane devaluing of their arcievements. Everything we worked for raidnights after raidnights, week after week is getting handled out for frickin Badges.
Its one thing that attunements are lifted… Trashmobs and early bosses will take care of the trash guilds. But for christ sake why hand out gear, and now gems too for as much effort as running Heroics. How is it comparable to the countless hours of attunement process, the consumables,the effort?
At least pretend that hardcore raiders are important and introduce some kind of reward or recognition.
This represents what I believe to be a fundamentally flawed viewpoint. This represents the elitist, exclusionist attitude that many casual players have long said makes MMO’s less fun for them. The idea that giving more players access to dungeons or loot devalues the accomplishments of those who have already completed those challenges is ridiculous. Why? It’s simple.
Is it simple? Well, read the entire article to find out.
Comments
You did make some points I agree on. But hot damn, use a comma or something. But yeah. Epic gear has become the new rare (blue) gear. Only thing to aspire to gearwise is orange :(
you now what i agree with that i have been on wow since the damn game was on beta i remember busting my ass in mc and bwl and zg to get good gear spend at least 8 hour in freaking mc got tired took a 9 month vacation came back and all i see is free freaking epic everywhere and people with no skill,,, blizz is chaing stuff cause alot of these cryieng noobs go and cry about oh this is to hard if it is quit you jackasss yeah am mad i work my ass off for my gear and also the bg like wtf we cant even kick people out the raid or make are own raid we need enabler now and stuff ,,, alliance section has way more defense then horde ,,,anyways i think blizz is trying to plz these stupid noobs with free epic what about the peopel that show loyalty to the game huh... yeah i said it damn it i got more where that came from
WotLK is coming, they're just giving others the chance to experience end-game before it hits.
This is the nature of MMOs, to be completely honest. I've seen it before in previous games, and it'll pretty much always be the case. As content ages, it becomes more accessible to the general public. Blizzard is simply embracing this, rather than trying to prevent it.
Thank you, someone understands what's actually going on here.
Yes, Blizz is in for the money, etc etc, but that's only the bottom line, Making a good game covers that without issue.
But Fnazze hit the nail on the head, and it's something that I've been asking for for a long time: The ability to see content without having to be a hardcore elite. Everyone already knows who the top guilds are on their server and in the world, this isn't taking anything away from them, it's opening it up the the people that would otherwise have absolutely no chance to see it. It's incrimental "dumbing" until the release of WotLK, which will reset the "ladder" once again. This answers the wants of both the hardcore and the more casual.
Personally, I think WoW has become 'too easy', but this isn't necessarily just due to the changes coming in 2.4.
Recently I leveled my 4th character to 70. The previous three happened before the changes to XP in pre-Outlands questing, the 4th after the changes, and the difference is night and day. Pre-change, I would count myself lucky to get a level+ a day, with some heavy questing. After, I got from 56.5 to 60 in a long 6-hour grind and I still had leftover rested. I also managed to skip Tanaris almost altogether using my pre-change leveling path, and nearly Feralas as well.