- Profession related
items such as materials
and patterns
- Bags
I hope the bring the item enchants and these things back.
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Member
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Member
Why should i donate for 284 and 277 lvl trinket? 271 and 264 lvl trinket are good enough for both of pvp and pve. To be honestly, there is not much differences between them. Since the leader in my guild have known the players can get 271 lvl items, he has a question " who will donate for items later on".
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Member
Is it fair for the palyers who are skilled and lucky?
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Member
dont know if you are lucky or not but you can get tha item on some alt or save it for a rainy day
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Banned
True 271 is a bit too much... but i would not feel this way and be happy about the changes if I had not donated all i284 i want on my toons already (going to be making a bg arc/fire mage from votes in first year or two xD)
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Member
So to brake it down if i need 2 years for an armor set i will need to vote like 100 days for each item. I wonder if many players will actually do that but time will tell.
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Member
I honestly don't see a reason why twink gear should be removed? At least keep the brutal gladiator for each class and BiS weapons.
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Member
I. OVERVIEW:
I would like to also alert staff to the slightly confusing wording of the first post, which makes it appear that these changes are already MADE, instead of being PROPOSED / phased in. The two sections referring to "removals" & "changes" are also confusing as they both contain things that are seemingly labeled as being gone forever already. I think this is creating some drama or misinformation in the replies, which would be eliminated if it was re-worded slightly to make it a little clearer. I *THINK* I got the jist of what's happening after reading the first few pages with staff replies. I did read the entire thread as usual after that however.
FIRST OF ALL, If a mod would like to delete this post (due to its length/content), and simply copy the contents into a PM and send it to the person/group that will be reading this stuff during the item-shop change deliberations, I AM 100% fine with that. The #1 thing I am NOT TRYING to do is cause drama, or create hysterics about this. This post may have the capacity to do that however. Please just PM me if you do that, so I know all this typing didn’t go to waste ;)
You also said you would be reading every post and taking them to heart, so I hope you spend time reading my post as well. IMO, TLDR is insulting to any thinking-human with an actual mind, so I will not include one here. I always take the time to read long posts, because that tells me I am dealing with someone who has put thought into something, and is therefore worth reading. Usually this also means the post is not based on a childish emotional response, or a lack of reading comprehension (but not always), and contains some useful information. This post is aimed at the warmane staff who WILL read it (hopefully), and NOT everyone else, so please don’t flame me, or these ideas because they may apply to you. I am not in charge and am NOT implementing these ideas. Changes listed within this giant fortress of text WILL NOT BE POPULAR with a large segment of the warmane population however. So be it. I still believe they would benefit the community at large.
I would also like to say that there are FAR too many people in this thread prattling-on about ONLY ONE aspect of the proposed changes. They are going into hysterics about some kind of perceived slight by warmane regarding high-end gear availability, and nothing else matters. This is skewing any kind of rational discussion about how a point shop could/should work effectively. It is also creating a very 1% vs 99%, class-system, donator-or-scrub, discussion here which isn't helping anyone. The system as a whole needs to be looked at, and talked about. Right now we have over 13 pages talking about the endgame PVE item availability, and a tiny handful of posts bringing up other issues / concerns.
While I acknowledge that endgame PVE has always been the largest demographic of WoW, I am also well aware that those people are also the MOST VOCAL demographic. A cursory look at blizzards history of pve vs pvp (or any other) bugs, the corresponding forum rage, and the rate of said bug-fixes is very telling. Blizzard's own interviews have never tried to hide the fact that WoW, as a game, is PVE. PVE is the focus, has always been the focus, and was the focus of the game from day one. PVP was an afterthought that only got the TINEST support (battlegrounds) almost ONE YEAR after the game launched. Arenas were added YEARS later, and then blizzard even went back to say that arena was the company's GREATEST MISTAKE AND FAILURE... PVP is NOT the heart of this game, and anyone who plays this game to mainly PVP has some masochistic issues TBH.
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II. MY EXPERIENCE:
That being said, I mainly PVP... lol. I also enjoy questing and being out in the world though too (this comes from my time playing vanilla). I enjoy professions, exploring, and collecting items in the world as well. I enjoy twinking (more from a project angle, than a combat angle - I am a "Johnny" not a "Timmy" type of player). I love soloing old content whether it’s with my mage or my BM hunter. But as far as current-endgame PVE dragonslaying with a guild... it’s just not my scene, and it never was. When a new expansion came out back in the day, I would THEN go into the previous expansion's dungeons and raids with a couple close pvp friends just to check out what blizzard created. We would do that once or twice, and then we were bored and continued on with our PVP. I guess the point is that I enjoy almost all the aspects of the game, but my views are NOT clouded by an obsession and investment in endgame PVE items, which seems to be the only thing people care about here.
I have played WoW since March of 2005 (pre battlegrounds). I played this game for over 4 YEARS ON DIALUP INTERNET sitting at 2-10k latency at all times. I played this game through all of vanilla and its lag, que's, bugs, grinding bull****. This also happened to be one of the best & funniest times I have spent with other people in my entire gaming career which began in 1985. I then played all of TBC, with its massive lines of people waiting outside the stores to buy it, and which ended up being possibly the only way to make the vanilla game better - they nailed it with TBC we all thought. Then WOTLK appeared, and holy **** AWESOME! I played all of that. That's also when all the "wrath babies" hopped on the now-trendy WoW train however. Man, wrath was so great though - those kids had good reasons to start playing, and us old-timers all understood that. I made my pvp videos, played with several groups of people, and life was good back then. I then went on to play for all of cata. I liked cata for the game play mechanic changes of certain classes, but hated it for the fascist stance blizzard took in managing the game and its players. Whenever I read posts about how cata was the worst expansion in the history of wow, I laugh. It certainly was NOT the worst if you mainly PVP'ed and were playing certain classes (in that regard it was either the best or near the best). I did not FOTM reroll. I had been main-ing a fire mage since the day I started playing YEARS earlier. The things I was doing to entire teams of players in battlegrounds as a fire mage during cata were utterly devastating, brutally broken & overpowered, and also comically fun/addictive.
When I see players bashing on cata I figure they were on the short end of the class changes (arms warriors, etc), or were endgame PVE'ers. I read many forum posts from PVE'ers during that time which RAILED cata as sucking for PVE. Since the majority of players in general are endgame-PVE'ers, it makes sense that all you really hear about cata is how bad it sucked... "MOP was much better" I always hear from those same people. That does make sense from a PVE perspective. I also hated cata for more reasons than I listed, but I was having SO MUCH fun with my close arena partners and our long-time class mains, that I didn’t care about the rest of the game really. That fun all came to an end with mists though. I will only say this about panda-land: I hesitantly played it until patch 5.3, and then quit retail wow forever, due to several reasons that are unimportant now. That PVE'ers bashed on cata and loved MOP makes sense, but the PVP'ers had a different experience, let me tell ya. This is not a 100% case either, as I know of some people (ie famous youtubers making REAL-life money via playing WoW) that enjoyed MOP pvp. That’s fine - power to them. But I had over 20 PVP friends that were playing every single day during cata having an absolute blast, and NONE of them continued playing MOP to the end. Tiny sample, and just my experience... Yup, and it may not reflect yours. But there it is.
I guess I just wanted you (warmane staff) to know that I have been around the block with this game in general, seen how the players interact, and most importantly how gear matters in the game on all levels for a long-*** time. I also understand how much different the private server environment is, compared to retail. I have been playing on various private servers/expansions since 2009 (intermittently), and full time since I quit retail. I have not actually been on molten/warmane (specifically) for that long compared to others here (about a year and a half), but I have played quite a bit in that time. I have gotten a solid feel for the vote system before the wipe, after the wipe, and now I am reading about the proposed changes. I feel like I may be able to at least assist you in the implementation of this new system, by giving you insight into how the common man views gear, getting that gear, and its impact on them in the real world... of warcraft... lol
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III. PHILOSOPHY OF AN ITEM SHOP:
Creating a coin & vote shop on a private server is tricky business. It becomes even harder if an existing system has been in effect FOR YEARS, and has been slated for a re-work. This is what you are doing now, and it will have major ramifications on the server for years to come. The ideal time to do this was during moltdown, which I understand would have been impossible with all the other (more important) things happening. The problem is that NOW, the same situation exists on the server that was in place before the moltdown happened unfortunately; and fixing it may turn ugly.
You have clearly stated you want the coin & vote shops to be closely aligned, which is a good idea. In fact, there should be NO difference in them at all. You should calculate a simple coin-to-VP ratio, and perhaps an additional modifier that increases BOTH values depending on how extra rare, hard-to-get, flashy, or impressive item [x] is, compared to a similar item/ilvl gear [y]. 1 coin = x VP, and keep it uniform for all items. For example, the epic undead horse mounts that cost a few gold, are technically the same (functionally) as the baron's mount, but clearly those two items are NOT equal. One should cost a certain amount for being an epic vendor mount, and the other should cost a different amount for being a hard-to-get epic, plus random drop, plus whatever other modifier gets attached. This is an example only obviously.
When a player looks up the baron mount on the coin shop, he sees [A] coins. When he then realizes he needs to pay rent this month and looks it up on the vote shop, he sees [A's coin cost converted to points] = [B] vote points. This should be the same for every item you offer, no exceptions. A player should never see variations of that conversion factor, and they should never see an item available in the coin shop, that they cant get in the vote shop. Remember that DONATIONS are given freely, with no expectation of reward, or it defeats the purpose of the donation. Warmane provides coins for donors which is a nice bonus and THAT should be the reward of a donor. When donors get SPECIAL access to items that voters can't get, or players can't ahieve in-game without rediculous factors being involved, we get an ugly class system like we have today on the servers. One example I remember is the frostwolf charger mount vs the stormpike ram. They are the mirror AV faction mounts but one was much more expensive than the other. Regardless of some server-specific reason that may have been setup like that, there should be a standard, universal coin-to-point calculation so everything is uniform and easy to understand. All items available should exist for both coins and points. Easy.
This approach also eliminates any "class" system from developing, and would create a far less donor vs non-donor environment than exists now. That fight is one of the most toxic & brutal that exists on these servers, and can only really be healed when both groups of people have access to the same items OUTSIDE of the game (through the shop). Obviously, IF you are going to allow people to use real money to help with the server costs, then they SHOULD be able to get the items you are providing faster and easier than someone who is just logging in and clicking a button though! It RIGHTLY should take MUCH longer to get the items with points, because without a top-100 list to "help" promote warmane, non-donors aren’t actually doing ANYTHING for the server except physically being a body on the server. The advantage the donors have is that they get the items they want instantly without having to wait.
It should be said here, that warmane's success has been largely affected by its big population (of which 99% are non-donors - again that figure may be off, this is an example only for ease of understanding). All those non-donors ARE helping the project in the end however, because without them, it would be a very low-pop BiS server of just the 1%, and that is NOT sustainable because eventually those people would get bored of not having under-geared scrubs to beat up on, and will leave the server too. Equality is good in this regard, and NO ONE who is using JUST vote points would/should have a problem with it taking longer to get that same item a donor gets for his real money instantly, as long as HE CAN GET IT, eventually (even if it takes months of voting).
Also keep in mind that this divide only exists because there is GEAR in the item shop in the first place!
The moment you put GEAR into an item shop, be it for money (coins) or voting or both... you have problems to deal with, that players take seriously as you have seen in this very post. Humans will take the route of least resistance, and if they can get an item with RL money or with vote points, they usually will (although there are always exceptions). In a perfect world, a private server project would not need money coming in, because the founders would be billionaire philanthropists and were doing it out of love and charity. In the real world however, a shop is necessary, or the project dies. A sad truth. This is where the kicker comes into play: What items belong in-game only, and what items should be allowed via other channels (coins & points)?
Shadowmourne is the lightning rod of this issue, and I will use it as such. In retail you were lucky to ever see one period. Classes, abilities, encounters, battlegrounds, etc are NOT designed to see MULTIPLE shadowmournes in use, because blizzard purposely made it be ultra-ultra-rare. I have played on almost every single major US server that mattered from tich, to blackrock, malganis, kiljaeden, illidown, KT, doomhammer, and tons of others (shout-out to battlegroup 9 players!). I only ever saw ONE person with a shadowmourne and he was getting spammed by players about it to the point he logged off. It was so rare that people who got it made videos of themselves getting it, for its own sake. A few made pvp videos to show the rest of the world what kind of broken ridiculousness they were missing out on (ie klinda 7). The endgame final tier gear of an expansion was always like this, and T3 players that were in guilds capable of clearing naxx before it was GONE, had the same thing going on for them ("a T3 mage is coming.. holy **** I never thought I would see one, RUN AWAY!")... Right into TBC and ... "SUNWELL GUILD PREMADE GUYS, screw this, AKF"... and onto today.
Fast forward to molten 2015: So you don’t have the insane, ridiculous, totally F'ed crazy *** KILLME shadowmourne questline operational on the servers. Ok that’s understandable - scripting nightmare probably. So you added it as a drop on a couple raid mobs at very low rates. Ok perfect solution! THEN you offered it in the item shop... Huston, we have a problem.
Now "Pay to win" may TECHNICALLY only mean you MUST use real money to acquire [an item] because it’s not available in-game legit. Trust me when I say that it's not looked at in that way by most people. The issue IS NOT the "haves" vs the "have nots" either. It’s about [perceived status]. Now that concept in a video game is laughable to an actual adult who has faced real responsibility, tragedy, financial issues, family loss, or a thousand other things. But remember that this is the era of social media, after all. People today are more concerned about status than they were in the 80's (a bizarre trend, and something I never thought I would see). Also factoring in is the average age group of players on this particular private server.
Young + status driven + ultimate in-game items/gear/tiers avail for money/vp = disaster.
And this concept extends to THE ENTIRE endgame item tier. It’s not really about "skillmourne" in the end. It’s about people being able to BUY (or vote) for the best gear in the game, instead of earning it traditionally via playing for it. From the view of the 99%, or new players checking out the server, or old retail vets like me, or other things like that... this is just failure of epic proportions.
THE ONE THING that keeps the morale up on a server is the gear chase. New players NEED to see veterans in fancy endgame gear, and even BiS items running around. They need to feel that chase and desire to keep playing, and to keep the server alive. Being a lowly lvl 60 mage in blues seeing that T3 frostfire epic mage one-shotting newbs in BG's KEPT me wanting to play, play, play, earn, grind, whatever I had to, to get where that guy was. Seeing that FULL WRATHFUL badass bladestorm 3 crafted-pvp-set wearing suckers to death in 1 global gives those poor players 2 things: The first is frustration that there is such an outrageous gear discrepancy... and secondly it gives them THE GEAR CHASE DESIRE. They think "man when I’m full wrathful I’m gonna **** that guy up for doing that to me". This is the essence of the server community when you think about it. WoW is about gear, it always has been, and without new players chasing that gear, the server dies. It may not appear dead when you look at some arbitrary population count, but the spirit of the server is long dead. When that new player sees 5 dudes wearing BiS with shadowmournes in front of the bank, and then checks the item shop and sees every piece of endgame gear avail for money, EVERY SINGLE OUNCE of server legitimacy evaporates instantly for them. At that point they either keep playing because "its either that or homework... lets go get some DRAGON EYES!"... or they just laugh and find another private server on WHATEVER expansion that doesnt feature an item shop like that. Bad for everyone.
New players coming into THE CURRENT system don’t get that chase anymore, with the current system. When they see someone wearing the mighty shadowmourne these days, they think (and usually say in chat): "oh big shock, ANOTHER LOLMOURNE donor scrub - 10th one I’ve seen today in JUST this city". Is that guy in full wrathful? "Well he donated for most (all) of it and has no skills - that’s how the system works here - this sucks". And those things MAY VERY WELL NOT be the case. That shadowmourne COULD have been the lucky drop of the century for that guy, does it matter at that point? That full wrathful guy could be Swifty playing on a hidden/secret warmane alt, and he is just GOOD and earned that entire set. It doesn’t matter because the PERCEPTION of the entire server is one that:
"You have BiS, so you must have spent money to get it. You suck & this server is not legit."
When you DONT have endgame items avail in the item shop the perception of the server is:
"Holy **** you are geared. You must be pretty good! Your guild rocks, AND I WANT ALL THAT TOO."
It may or may not be true in either example - the first guy may have spent 2 years gearing up legit and the second guy may have been carried by guildies and sucks balls. But again, it doesn’t matter to the newb who is thinking of playing here, or the regular dude who is gearing up slowly. That bad perception is here NOW on these servers. The single only solution to this entire mess is to NOT ALLOW FINAL TIER GEAR INTO THE SHOP. Not for coins, not for points, not for your firstborn. And ESPECIALLY no legendaries. Having legendaries available for money is such a slap in the face of the population, I can't even fathom how that was allowed to go live.
Allowing entry level epics is a TOTALLY different scenario. Those are pretty easy to get. Those can be gotten by just about anyone with some minimal time invested. I would go as far as to allow the bottom TWO tiers into the item shop probably. Make that second-to-worst epic tier (~ furious ilvl gear) much more expensive than the entry lvl (~ilvl 200) stuff. The best gear in the game (the final two tiers imo) needs to be available ONLY IN GAME, so that the morale of the server has solid grounding. A new player sees someone in lich king normal gear and BAM! "that guy is part of a pretty decent guild, he has put in his time, he knows his class, he knows the raid, he is badass." He thinks "I want to be that guy, I want to invest time on this server, because it's legit!" New player thinks "I want that, and I know what I have to do to achieve it." That full wrathful dude just spit on your team and teabagged you? "That guy is ****ing good, and I WANT THAT... I know how much I need to play and learn to get there, but I’m coming for you *******!" When said players have the option to purchase all that gear in a shop... and they do that exact same stuff... the other players simply think: "He bought his gear. He is a scrub with no skill. I hate him, I hate this server for supporting a system like that, and I'm ****in OUTTA here, because this is bull****."
So If players use RL money or spend tons of time voting to get ENTRY lvl epics, then WHO CARES? They will still be in a good position to earn their REAL endgame gear, gain the skills associated with it, and it won’t take much time to get where they want to be in the end. They will also NOT impede ANYONE ELSE'S game play in any way really. Blizzard changed wrath enough to cater to casuals a great deal. It was obvious at the time and it’s clear-as-day now. You don’t need to spend that much time getting GOOD GEAR, it's just some effort and team playing is involved. Right now with the current system, that is all MOOT. You can be the worst player in the world, who can’t work with others to achieve goals, who grief’s other players, who hacks, and who couldn’t obtain in-game items they are wearing if their life depended on it. And yet... they are full BiS because they have the skill necessary to input credit card numbers. That’s a system THAT NEEDS TO BE PUT TO REST ASAP.
In WoW, and really all MMO's, the primary currency is [perceived legitimacy]. The harder something is to get, or the longer something takes to achieve, the more it’s worth in the perception of the players, and thus the more important it is to have/get/farm/show-off. Perception is key here and the best example of how this is basically a fallacy (but none-the-less exists), is the old vanilla rank 14 grind. Those players put insane amounts of time into that, and it was HARD to get with all the politics involved, premades, alliances, and logistical man hours to actually achieve it. Was a player that had rank 14 some amazing 100-0 kill machine that made people delete their accounts rather than face in a BG?... lol get real. They had the skills that would come with playing 18 hours per day for 6-9 months straight, but it wasn’t anything that someone with that kind of time couldn’t do if they were WILLING to put that same time into it. BUT THAT DIDNT MATTER IN THE END... Because THE PERCEPTION of the entire server was: "HOLY **** A HWL... WHAT A BADASS!... I WANT THAT!!!!"
And again with the current shadowmourne case: It takes a long rocky road (Dewey) to get the shadowmourne legit (even if its a low % drop instead of a questline). Achieving that is important to the player because he will be recognized by other players for having it. He puts that effort into getting it because of this [perceived value] the item has. When 300 players on a single server have shadowmournes, it becomes a worthless item. It becomes a scenario of being MOCKED... for NOT having it. That is just spitting into the face of this game, and this project at the end of the day.
Right now you are talking about ADDING MORE HIGH LEVEL EPIC ITEMS... to the shop. This is the most backwards, terrible, illogical action you could possibly take if your aim is to improve the server quality, gear discrepancy, and population's diminished morale. This would compound the issue to heights we have not seen, and will destroy ANY gear legitimacy that is left on these servers (which isn’t much).
Again, the answer is not to ADD... but to REMOVE epic endgame items, and especially legendaries from the shop for coins or points. Moving on...
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IV. WHAT TO DO:
Now we enter the philosophy vs money argument. I have read numerous times that this server project IS NOT ABOUT PROFIT. However, It costs REAL money to keep all the project hardware running, development turning, and staff maintenance going, ETC. So what can we do to keep the project ship-shape, provide appropriate staff compensation for their services, while not turning into hermes 2.0 - the quest for more money (spaceballs)?
The answer that many other private server projects have arrived at, is to provide vanity items, companions, mounts, bags, tabards, and things like that for donating money (OR VOTING) for the project, but NO actual gear. But would this work? The key thing to remember about these items is that they DO NOT affect the actual GAMEPLAY EXPERIENCE for other people, while gear ABSOLUTELY DOES. Person [A] seeing person [B] on a fancy mount with a hard to get companion may illicit jealousy, covetous feelings, or other emotions, BUT IT WILL NOT lead to person [A] being able to KILL person [B] any easier. It will not allow person [A] to post higher dps numbers in the raid. He may get a little more attention, but in the end it amounts to nothing.
Even this is clearly a trade-off though. The reason being is that many people believe mounts, companions, tabards, and other vanity items are the only REAL things that distinguish a person who has gotten BiS gear already. That is a valid argument in a way, however it doesn’t hold much water in the system I have described above. When BiS gear has to be earned in-game, then getting it is really hard. IT takes a long time. In that environment, your mounts, companions, tabards, and even TITLES don’t mean jack **** compared to the GEAR you are trying to get. Gear is first, it has always been first, and will always be first (again, for most ppl that is). If someone in ilvl 200 epics sees some dude riding around with the ICC mount, they are not gonna care much, because all they care about is landing a spot in the upcoming POS/FOS group. It doesn’t affect their game play WHATSOEVER.
I have also heard of some places using fund-drive style events, and crowdfunding to help cover costs, without resorting to gear in the item shop. Not sure about the logistics or legality of that but it may have its place here.
I personally believe that there should be more in a shop than just those vanity items though. The old shop was actually pretty well done. The costs were all over the place & not uniform, and there were items that SHOULD have been in there that weren’t. Other items CLEARLY shouldn’t have been available, but were. It needed some tuning, no doubt. I think less items in the shop compared to what was there before is probably a good thing overall. However, the new system that is being discussed IS NOT looking like its going in a logical direction for overall 7x server health. Let’s take a look at the "BIG 4"...
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V. THE NEW WARMANE ITEM SHOP CONSIDERATIONS:
You can break-up the content of the game, to decide what items to put in the shop, pretty easily. There are basically 4 MAJOR types of game play in WoW that are affected by gear available in a shop:
1. Sub-max PVE which is essentially leveling, and/or expansion capping (60 or 70 raids typically)
The boosted XP rate is what sheds some much needed light on this subject. In a 1x server, some of the proposed changes make some sense, and in lordaeron they will probably work pretty well. In a 7x world however, none of these proposed changes survive the logic test, at least not 100%. No one that is actually trying to make gold, is using sub-max lvl greens, blues, or even epics to do so. The time needed to get them, and sell them to rich 80 altaholics is NOT profitable. I have tried this personally. Vote for an epic lvl 40-60 item, try to sell it for [whatever]. It just doesn’t work. The way to make gold is in the endgame materials market. Selling stacks of mats, gathered stuff, even fish or food is ridiculously better. Selling crafted items from your profession trumps ANY lowbie warez pedaling, as does almost every other source of income. So no threat from this angle exists.
The boosted rates mean people out-level entire zones in a matter of hours, not even to mention some random green, blue, or even epic they come across and can’t use usually. Have a look at the AH for any day for the last year, and you will have seen the same thing: almost no lowbie gear of any kind available. People level SO FAST, they just vendor greens and blues because who the hell is gonna pay what an item is "worth" when in an hour they have outleveled it? One of the reasons I took up EVERY profession on different toons in the past, was to be totally self-sufficient. I couldn’t EVER find ANY gear on the AH and thus I just made my own as I leveled up. Occasionally I got a green drop, and even a couple blues, but 99% of the time it didn’t do me any good, or was unusable, and then they would sit on the AH for 1/10th of what they were worth, for days until I took them down and disenchanted. No one was even LOOKING at the AH for gear because they already KNEW it was pointless... nothing ever there.
The lowbie green, blue, and epic items ARE NOT A PROBLEM on warmane of any kind. This is due to the high rates of leveling. On the flip side of this, is the AWESOMENESS of being able to log in, use some of your points and grabbing some green, blue, or (occasionally) and epic item that you COULD use, (and keep using) for the next 5-10 levels. That didn’t break the game in any way, shape, or form. If that’s the argument here, then heirloom items broke the game A LONG TIME AGO and blizzard did it. The reason heirlooms are important on warmane is not their POWER LEVELS (over 9k), it is the fact that NO GEAR IS AVAILABLE for 90% of the time you spend leveling and they are a lifesaver in that role! Leveling at higher rates means running into FAR LESS PEOPLE. In my time leveling I hardly ever ran into anyone, and I never got/had to group up with any other people PERIOD. The leveling zones ARE DEAD BARREN. You level too fast to stay in them and run into others. It’s that simple. No dungeon groups form, no LFG's go out, there wasn’t even any casual barrens chat on ANY toon I leveled in the barrens... I knew from that moment on how POINTLESS the leveling experience was on a boosted rate server (I knew this from previous servers as well but it was very pronounced here). The only thing that mattered was to BLAST THROUGH all the lowbie crap and hit 80. What a shame. That’s why people love 1x servers. The world is alive and the actual blizzard game returns. That's why Lordaeron has such hype, why nost had such hype, and why cc has such hype. People want the REAL legit blizzard experience WITHOUT A SHOP OR ITEMS WHATSOEVER. They crave that environment, because (as detailed above) it is PERCEIVED as "fair", "legit", etc.
On the other hand (in defense of 7x), after you have leveled 100+ toons in retail, that’s a welcome change in many ways - get to max lvl asap, start THAT GRIND instead lol. It’s always a trade off. My point is that lowbie greens, blues, and even epics have a very nice niche spot in the leveling process, and NO DOWNSIDES OF ANY KIND, due to 7x rates being here. If you see someone carrying around a lowbie epic bow like [BO searing arrows], and think "man that de-values the item when he just bought it in the shop like that!"... well then I have news for you...
THE ENTIRE LEVELING PROCESS AS A WHOLE... IS DEVALUED ON A BOOSTED RATE SERVER... rofl
Not to mention that the item shop has already failed THAT wannabe-morality tale with the already mentioned max-lvl gear being available. There is NO argument to this fact. Its beyond hypocritical to declare that lowbie greens, blues, epics (boe or bop) are unacceptable because it de-flates the value of those items, while simultaneously saying max lvl epics (that actually matter and should be EARNED) are fine to get in the vote shop for coins, or points, or farts, WHO CARES - EPIX FOR ALL YOLO! Can ya dig it?
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2. Sub-max PVP which is also about leveling, and/or bracket capping (19, 29, 39, etc "twinking")
The only non-temporary value lowbie items (discussed above) have, is to those who are twinking or expansion capping. Levelers don’t really care, endgame ICC raiders don’t care, But twinks and cappers care - a LOT. But then again, those people are most likely getting those items legit in the first place, because what’s the point in capping 60, going to weekly raids... when you have already purchased all your gear in the shop? That’s not how those people operate, although sometimes getting those twink items in the shop IS necessary. They mostly raid the old content because it’s fun, and want to get those items legit in the first place because 60/70 is their 80 (at least on those specific toons). The really lowbie twinks like 19s, 29s, etc are such a small community that their presence is basically unnoticed by 99.999999999999999% of the server. If you are out in the world and run into some 19 twinks playing around, take a screenshot cause you’ll probably never see that again.
I should note that NO ONE uses battlegrounds for leveling here. They don’t pop. Its very hard to even get an organized group together for one or two planned BG pops in a bracket. That has to do with the moltdown and people still gearing their mains though. The point is that BG leveling is only really valid for retail where x-realm is operating, and is NOT a factor on warmane.
It literally serves no purpose in taking away lowbie items (boe, bop, or otherwise). But IT DOES IN FACT hurt and essentially destroys the twink communities that are limping along atm. Twinking was much more popular pre-wipe because most people had 1-5+ BiS toons. They were bored and made twinks to mess around with - this was the case in retail as well. I have been making twinks since early 2005, and I have seen and endured every terrible attempt from blizzard at destroying this segment of game play, but people will ALWAYS get bored of the same-old eventually, and twinking is something they turn to a lot of the time. When I was on dialup, one of the ONLY things I could do was play lowbie wsg battlegrounds or world 1v1 pvp without getting disconnected. I have messed around with twinks as fun side-project-toons ever since.
Now, after the wipe, people have been (and will be) focusing on getting back to their pre-wipe setup on their mains, and this will last for a while. Twinking will again be a bigger segment after that has been accomplished. That may be a year or more away though. The point is that twinks have never been a cause for concern or problems that I have seen. I don’t think I have even SEEN the word twink on any channel in global or local ONE single time. I remember a couple times running into 60s in hellfire pen, and 70s in borean tundra, but talk about a limited skirmish - they stayed for 30 minutes and were gone. World pvp is what most twinks have resorted to because BGs dont pop. Too many former twinks are still gearing their mains right now. If anything, twinks keep more players active and playing on warmane, when otherwise they would log out of the game, or go to another private server project. Taking away items twinks use is just UTTERLY POINTLESS, and will result in many leaving warmane over PRINCIPLE. These are loyal players that have mains, contribute to the server, play endgame, but in the end it's all to support their real passion, which is sub-max level playing. Taking gear away from people like that is a bad move, because they tend to be very passionate, loyal, and vocal about their "home" server(s). Not to mention the addeded community layers they bring to a project to help tie everyone together, and even form healthy rivalries with the opposing faction. Losing the twink community isn't good for anyone.
In fact, My first time around this project when I first started, I earned every single item on all 8 of my twinks (1, 19, 29, 39, 49, 60, 70, 79) 100% LEGIT. Except one item that is - basilisk hide pants DID NOT POP in the AH of either faction for 6 months. I was forced to vote for it before I lost my sanity. Twinking gives players something fun to do outside of the endgame environment, and it will only grow and grow as more players finish gearing their mains after the moltdown. This action of removing lowbie items (boe, bop, or otherwise) will destroy that segment of the population that wants to get into twinking, but doesn’t know 100% where every item drops, or how to grind a certain rep, or how to do [x]. This might not seem important to some, but a LOT of players only roll mains to support their alt projects like lowbie twinks, 60s or 70s. IT’S UNNECESSARY to get rid of that gear at best, and will piss a LOT of people off to the point of quitting at worst. That is the takeaway from this.
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3. Max-lvl PVE which is obviously the endgame dungeons and raids
I believe I have covered this above. Endgame PVE is about PERCEIVED status. The final two (at least) tiers of raid gear should NOT BE AVAILABLE for coins or points (anything over ilvl 240). It should be earned in-game to provide the gear-chase that the server newbs / new players need, and the gear legitimacy that the entire server SO VERY BADLY NEEDS.
The problem arises at how to deal with those that have already purchased endgame BiS gear (or close to it). I don’t believe you could strip people of those items and refund points without a major incident, although that would be the correct way to deal with this problem. Strip the items, give the coin refunds, tack on some extra coins for the lost gems/chants, plus bonus coins for the inconvenience. Gotta break some eggs to make the warmane omlette rockNroll, yo. Anyone who got the items legit keeps em, and thus, the endgame player status issue is fixed - with much wailing and gnashing at first. See someone with a shadowmourne after that... "HOLY **** AWESOME - you lucky SOB". See that full wrathful guy... "HOLY **** - what a badass!"
However, I have seen the INCREDIBLE horrific nature of the kids playing on this server during the moltdown, during the servers-in-Canada debacle, during the goodie bags, during the free 80s, during the other stuff at that time, and recently with this point shop remake. It’s made me lose a lot of faith in humanity that THESE types of attitudes are the most prevalent among gamers now. The toxicity of this community is UNBELIEVABLE. When I first started playing wow, it was made of veteran warcraft 1-3 players that were all mostly everquest guru's as well, and most of us were between 18-25 back in '04 (there were almost NO ages below or above that really - although they certainly DID exist). Most of my group played horde because alliance was for "***** little kids that wanted pretty night elves to rub their first-one out on" rofl. Horde was for BEARDED SHARK-PUNCHING MEN. It was for pvp'ers, and it was for the older gamer vets. That’s just how it was (at least in my neck of the woods). We helped each other, didn’t screw each other over, didn’t ninja (because you would get blacklisted, and why screw over your guildmates which were all RL friends?), and overall the game had a much better atmosphere. This lasted until wrath when all the REALLY little kids (6-13) started convincing gullible parents that WoW was cool and they needed to play. Man, the population attitude took such a hit during those years, but I digress.
IDK if its those same little kids that are slightly more grown up (now late teens / early 20-something’s) just more bitter now, or the nature of the geographical gaming populaces clashing, in-game or what... but man alive... The bitterest, most angry, terrible, scheming, lying, trolling people I have ever encountered... are all calling these servers home for some reason. And the gear avail in the shop is NOT helping things.
I think the point is that it’s impossible to rescind items already purchased without a major exodus in population. That may be good or bad depending on how you look at it. Because of the already unstable nature of the warmane population after the wipe, I think people who have purchased endgame gear (including lolmourne) should probably be grandfathered in. After that, eliminate all epics over ilvl 240, and all legendaries from the shop. People will STILL buy the best gear they can buy (and thus pump the warmane coffers), and they may complain a bit at first, but the other 99% of new players and non-donors will at least perceive that the gear situation is legitimate finally, and have a renewed dedication to playing on a "fair" server. I mean who cares if you can buy or vote for some entry-level epics if EVERYONE MUST EARN the actual BiS stuff? Legitmacy... restored.
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4. max-lvl PVP which is obviously the endgame battlegrounds and arenas
The state this is in, mirrors the endgame PVE situation. In wrath there were several classes which ran ZERO pvp gear to be max effective in pvp. This has actually been the case during EVERY SINGLE MOMENT in wow history for certain classes (sometimes all classes). The final endgame pve gear was SO MUCH better than pvp gear (especially weapons), that running pvp gear... in pvp... was a joke. You can track this trend all the way back to vanilla with ease. The vanilla pvp epics were about as good as the MC gear... bwl was better, aq40 was better, naxx was laughably better. In TBC it was more of the same, and blizzard botched the entire resilience concept tbh. Go and google their comments about arena, resilience and other similar topics... super fail. You will NEVER see a full sunwell endgame BiS toon die to some random brutal-pvp geared dude unless there is a major tactical error. I have seen the BiS 70 guys kill 80s (with DECENT gear) at warsong hold many times. I have even seen a single 70 BiS guy kill a MULTI-BOXING 80 before. This trend continued right into wrath too. You don’t need ANY pvp gear if you have ICC 25 heroic stuff and a shadowmourne... what a joke. The really high end players that both raid and pvp at high ratings usually only wear 4 pieces of pvp gear. In retail it was slightly different, and the lack of shadowmournes helped. On warmane however, seeing that orange axe and suddenly looking at your 1300 resilience with a LOT less confidence is what happens. 1500 resil CANT COMPETE with shadowmourne... it was never designed to. You would have to buff resil by AT LEAST 30% in pvp to even start seeing the kind of dmg reduction it was designed to provide at 1000-1500. Against a skillmourne player with supporting BiS gear, GOOD LUCK. And that wouldn't be a problem if there were only 5 shadowmournes on the server...
And once again the solution is simple. DO NOT ALLOW anyone to purchase or vote for wrathful (or relentless for that matter). Getting relentless takes some time, effort, and some basic team play skills just like raiding for 2nd tier pve gear does. Wrathful (like icc 25 gear) demands even more from people and should be reserved for those who have earned it legitimately. This would also help the arena situation that exists right now on the servers. From 0-1500 ALL you see is someone that has lower end gear (like you), getting rushed/carried to high ratings. Nothing else. You never run into a team at low levels with appropriate gear to square off with and improve your skills or play a fair match with. You just get trampled by a BiS shadwomourning full wrathful (or ICC25) guy in ONE divine storm, and that repeats endlessly for weeks. Talk about discouraging new players.
So you think "I’ll get a full furious set via BG's and the relentless offset before I step into the arena like I did in retail"... good plan, too bad there’s no difference. The gear discrepancy between ONE BiS toon with a 'mourne or even just in full wrathful/icc heroic and 2 toons in furious/relentless gear is HILARIOUSLY CRUEL. They have NO CHANCE in winning that match unless the BiS lags out essentially. This is normally where I would go into my rant about skill vs gear in WoW, but I’m gonna skip it. Suffice to say, I could go on forever about supposed "skill" in video games, how it boils down to memorization, and how blizzard wrecked their own expansions with stat bloat... whatever... this post is long enough without all that. Check out the Akrios (rogue) farewell rant for a great primer on "skill" and arenas specifically.
Being able to acquire furious pvp gear for coins & points makes sense, because you can gear up an alt with saved points and not have to suffer QUITE as much in the battlegrounds getting the other honor gear. BUT it doesn’t wreck anyone else’s game because they have all done the same thing - they had to in order to get relentless and wrathful. I think that’s pretty fair. And when you get your team together, you step in and face... you guessed it... furious geared teams all the way to 1500... What a ****ing concept! Lol. Then you start seeing relentless geared dudes who have been grinding arenas for a few weeks longer than you and they beat you at first, but then your gear catches up, and your "skill" is allowed to push you higher. Pretty soon you have ratings for wrathful, and whammy...
You are sitting in DAL, and some newb comes up and whispers "nice gear, how long did it take you to grind that?" And you smile because that was the WHOLE POINT ALL ALONG.
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VI. CONCLUSION:
This is NOT a perfect system. It has flaws, but far bigger flaws with the system exist on the servers RIGHT NOW, and the proposed changes are actually going in the WRONG direction IMO. I am not an expert. I am just calling things as I seem them here. The changes I recommended may have dire consequences actually. I accept that my ideas may not work. HOWEVER, the listed changes coming to the item shop DO NOT look positive for the vast majority of the player base IMO. So here is a short list of some things that MAY or MAY NOT work, based on my above observations:
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General features:
- Same items should be avail for coins & points, no exception, with a standardized cost conversion
- Item costs need to be looked at very closely and tweaked carefully
- Activity CAN'T be based on /played because bots will become an epidemic in-game
- Activity CAN'T be based on forum posts because forum will turn into chaos, & some dont even use it
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Should not be available in the shop:
- Any and all legendaries, including raw mats (existing items prob get grandfathered in)
- Any and all epics above ilvl ~240 (same as above) in order to bring back [gear legitimacy]
- Mounts that have serious status implications (barons charger, ashes, ICC mount, chicken, etc)
- Special companions that can be used as event or pvp season awards (tcg, seasonal ones, promo, etc)
- Tabards that can be used the same way (tcg, seasonal ones, promo, etc)
- Raw materials (ie stack of cloth), or processed mats (ie bolt of cloth) - due to price inflation
- Most recipes that are obtainable in game without much trouble (also eliminate buying "all pats")
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Should be available:
- Level 80 epics up to ilvl ~240 (although prob NOT the lvl 80 BOE epics - again to keep out of AH)
- ALL epics below max level (for twinking / leveling) but for HIGHLY inflated costs (BOE & BOP)
- Most/all blues below max level (for twinking / leveling) but for somewhat inflated costs
- A few key green items for each armor type from 1-80 (for leveling mainly) make these cheap
- All items that should be avail, but aren't in-game (ie raid boss heads, quest items, drops, etc)
- Most mounts (with severely escalating costs for the hard to get stuff, and NO very special ones)
- Most companions (same as above, really special stuff should be off-limits except as rewards)
- Most tabards (because tabards... I mean cmon lol who cares - point sink)
- Some basic blue gems, but not epic ones, or pre-cut ones
- Some recipes that are hard to get (ie mongoose) but with a HIGHLY inflated cost (10-20x)
- Perm item enchantments (WG, ZG, weapon chains, etc) but with a higher cost than they used to have)
- Pumpkin bags for alts (which are BOP so you can’t sell them), but no others (no bags = SUPER FAIL)
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VII. POST SCRIPT:
I tried my best not to call warmane out, or anyone specifically with this. It was NOT my intention to do so, if whoever reads this feels that way. I think warmane is still the best private server project, and has nowhere to go but up. I also believe that the new staff with Kaer the helm, and the much better community communication from staff is helping this project in huge ways. The bug fixes and major project acquisitions are encouraging as well (I am very pumped at seeing Lordaeron INC, and some old cata raids for transmog opening down the line - something cata REALLY NEEDS).
The item shop is a truly hard one to nail down in this environment, and I 100% agree it has gotten off track, & messy. But fine tuning the shop a little to put it where it needs to be is one thing, and doing what’s being proposed currently (gutting/destroying it) is another!
The changes being proposed seem more like they are aimed at lordaeron's 1x future vision, instead of the current 7x realm's actual REALITY. Lordaeron’s approach to the item shop WILL NOT work for the other realms due to many reasons as detailed above, especially their boosted rates IMO. Please don’t destroy the item shop, just tweak it. Raise some costs where needed. Get the costs and items standardized between coins & points. Eliminate the items that are destroying the gear chase and causing server "fairness" morale problems (240+ ilvl epics & legendaries)
In any case, I wish you guys the best of luck in implementing the new system, and I hope it all works out.
- [HC]Woodhauler
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Member
Very blizzlike ty.
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Member
Holy text wall of batman. Whatever reason you thought to type up a giant wall of text was a good idea especially of that length. Good lord you should summarize it in a TL;DR
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Member
LOL, can u shut up? I believe u must be a noob totally in WOW and prepare gether points for 2 years.
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Member
they said market will work in 24hours ...24 hours and more passed ...still no market place...i cant go to sleep until i see it
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Member
What? You actually have no argument and go straight to attacking a person when it has nothing to do with your opinion? You're mad that you can't gear up and it takes you longer than 2 years to gear up in WotLK? Quite pathetic. If you spent more time playing the game than to attack people on a forum perhaps you would be geared up by now.
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Member
EXCEELET SIR! But u forget all is about money so they will never delete items like SHM.240ilvl+ gear from shop i think they will only make bigger prize :)
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Member
So the items of the following normal raids like TOC 25 ICC10N ICC 25N RS 10N RS 25N will be available on point shop right?
I think this will be fair. Cuz in my experience it took me 3 months just to get 1 mark of sanctification in ICC 25 alone (let's just say i'm having a very bad luck on rolling items & drops).
So the max point we get per week is 10 right?
So I think its very fair that those items should be in the point shop & we can get it at the right time.
And you guys do the math on how much points of the item is & how many weeks can you obtain it.
