Laelia wrote:
On what basis am I "out of touch"? I played the game for much of WotLK and for about 3 months of Cata. I may not play the game the same way you do, but the game was not designed solely for your enjoyment.
Logging on occasionally and whimsically doing something is not "playing the game". You don't need to play five hours a day, but your perceptions are so far out of whack it's clear that you don't have a proper frame of reference.
Laelia wrote:
As for "the game is more grindy, and more poorly tuned, than ever before", did you even play vanilla? Levelling was grindy, instances were grindy, pvp was grindy, even high end, otherwise well-designed raids had grindy aspects (getting enough warriors geared for 4HM, for example).
Yeah, I did, thanks for asking, and no they weren't, instances and levelling were way less grindy in Vanilla compared to Cata. That's not my "opinion", it's objective fact, and it's objective fact as demonstrated by measurable reality.
A modern instance, all modern instances, are endless packs of between three and five mobs, and the occasional super-elite, going down a really long hallway. Wipes are rare and usually the result of general failure. No communication is necessary and the challenge is very marginal.
Strat/Scholo/BRD, and every other vanilla instance, had diverse layout. Even instances like SFK/WC/RFC/SM, which were in principle long hallways, did not feel as such because the environments had a more complex, detailed and organic layout. There were random pats and odd mechanics that required learning and communication, quests that required cooperation, etc.
Cata levelling, same deal. The revised classic world, to a far greater extent than its original form, consists of endless and vastly more predictable permutations of
-kill X non-elite mobs
-kill this one "!" mob
-kill X mobs and collect Y item
-bombing runs and Simon Says
Yes, vanilla questing was time-consuming. But what made it less grindy was that quest chains weren't so predictable that you could know what the next quest would ask you to do before even seeing it. That has nothing to do with years of experience but the simple fact that vanilla quest chains were fundamentally unpredictable in a way Cata chains are not. Good example would be the Fenris Isle quest chain: no amount of experience would allow a player to guess each step of the chain or expect the head to even drop off those gnolls.
None of that is strictly my opinion, based in some way on my own interpretations. What I have described is the material reality of the game content.
When I say that it is clear that you are out of touch with the game, this is what I mean. Your view of the game as "improved" or "more balanced" or "less grindy" is only intelligible in the context of taking platitudes at face value without any meaningful experience to compare them against.
Laelia wrote:
Class abilities were generally terrible, for a time you could take 40-man raids into 10-man instances, clearing those instances with appropriate numbers took hours and hours of clearing dull trash before you reached dull bosses, gear had bizarre stats (spirit on warrior plate), PvP wasn't close to balanced and getting any rewards took a ridiculous amount of grinding. The fact that you're praising it retrospectively just proves my point #1.
No, what proves #1 is that all those flaws you cite were less consequential than what Vanilla did right, which was establish an immersive and compelling game world that was worth playing.
Instances (of all formats and difficulties) have never been more dull (no, never), and balance doesn't count for shit if the game isn't compelling.
