How about fixing XP for gathering professions? That gives more of an intention to level your professions along with your level.
(no this is not a fix this or fix that, just thinking with you that this might turn the tables a tiny bit).
This is for cataclysm ofc. maybe MoP aswell, dont know.
Less population means bigger balance issues. Population is small enough on FW that if 10 players decide to regem their character for new spec, whole stash of gems with certain color on AH will be gone, ppl will start putting gems for double or triple price than it was before, there are not enough players to make gems and drop prices, so there will be problem for next couple days. I've been watching that scenario for years on molten. You cant fix this with reducing profession rates or gold drain. Only thing you will achieve is that you will postpone their maxing profession for couple days.
Reducing reputation rate is even bigger turnoff for players, because players on FW are mostly casuals and they dont have time or simply dont care to spend months doing one reputation. High rates are one of the main reasons why they play here, to get things faster.
If you cant make up for reducing rates with better and more quality gaming experience ( which means working quest chains with cinematics, scripted low level content, new bg-s ...) then please dont make changes...
I also understand the feedback but players often are scared and against any measures or changes that results in them having something harder or something being taken away from them. Even on hardcore realms we have people trying to exploit, hack, and make a shortcut through the content in order to get things easier. It is simply human nature to think that way and the need and necessity for high-rate realms is natural and understood, it's just that these changes don't reflect it much.
We changed rates multiple times in the past and it was always met with negative feedback until everyone saw it's not such a big deal. Changing rates from x20 to x10 wasn't such a big change as people saw it back then, because in reality the movement from zone to zone just to find quests that give you decent experience when you basically outlevel all quests you see is equal to doing just a few more quests in that zone and naturally moving from one to another.
To give you an example back then, you would make a character and then do 1 quest and be level 5-6 and you would have to walk for 20 minutes before you see another quest that had meaningful experience instead of just doing more quests, enjoying the story and getting to that point in the same amount of time. It was to eliminate gaps where players would have more time walking around, doing nothing instead of enjoying quests and story.
It's the same thing with professions and reputations. You will have to do all the quests in Son of Hodir, instead of doing 3 quests and then getting yourself stuck in the final phase only later to create a ticket and complain to Game Masters that you missed out on the experience. Examples like this where natural progression which honestly is maybe one more hour than fast-pace rates causes later issues when you think the experience is more important. Reputation will in reality do very little to WoTLK experience other than make you do quests you otherwise miss.
Where the change will affect it most is old content reputations, which are only done by a small percentage of realm's players for achievements and titles and those things should hold the weight they do. Insane should be insane but that is only one of the few reputations where things will be harder, rest will be not-so-hard.
As for latter expansions' concerns, we deem them valid and changes will be done so there will be no gaps in that regard whatsoever.
Don't you guys see that this is just to make players go back to Lordaeron from other realms? Why would anyone play in the others since they just make everything more like Lordaeron? This will just make the Neltharion and Frostwolf servers to lower their population, and where do you think all these players will go?
See, staff already selling you that Lordaeron is "the best" for a good experience. They just want to make it again the most popular server and don't care about fuking up the other ones. They just needed to wait a bit more until ICC was released on Lordaeron so a lot of players from Icecrown server would go there...but I guess they can't stand that Lorda isn't the most populated server atm.
PD: Sorry for my bad englando me no americano.
No, Lordaeron is certainly not the best experience for everyone. Our realm design made it so that only a niche group of people can enjoy it. We wanted it to be that way and it was a success and still remains as a success. Icecrown is the place for people that want to get in end-game and play it sooner than usually.
Don't you guys see that this is just to make players go back to Lordaeron from other realms? Why would anyone play in the others since they just make everything more like Lordaeron? This will just make the Neltharion and Frostwolf servers to lower their population, and where do you think all these players will go?
See, staff already selling you that Lordaeron is "the best" for a good experience. They just want to make it again the most popular server and don't care about fuking up the other ones. They just needed to wait a bit more until ICC was released on Lordaeron so a lot of players from Icecrown server would go there...but I guess they can't stand that Lorda isn't the most populated server atm.
okay while you do have a bit of a point... you're mostly just putting words in their mouths... they made Lordaeron and it's not as uberhype as they thought because the progression is too slow for most people and the buffs are too crazy but I don't think they're crazy enough to tell cata and mop players to go lordaeron... believe me if a cata version of an almost perfectly scripted realm with 1x rates and a DS that isn't faceroll easy existed here... I'd be there
The point is not to make them way harder, just not to make them something super easy that people do in no time.
and as I said I agreed, that is why I am suggesting to set x2 and by the way I was talking about Reputation too.
Most of the time gaining Repution means doing quest and on Neltharion and Froswolf it would be frustrating at x1 rate, those realms are not like Icecrown where 99% content works fine.
you replied to me like I said to keep all rates like they are now, I am just saying that x2 for Rep and Prof (or at least Reputation) would be a good compromise.
I can live with the changes if you fix the things that are broken, the Cata and MoP servers are not fixed like Wrath and many
things like quests and the ability to gather many things is broken. We are already flying around for hours looking for nodes and herbs which are not where they are supposed to be.
As far as the gold squish i really dont care mainly because i have almost no gold for you to take, but it will hurt low lvl players who are just starting and need to buy things, which will increase the begging.
Your changes will truly just hurt the new players that are low on gold and trying to lvl first toons and alts, it really will not affect older players who have millions in gold and 10 toons leveled with all professions and rep leveled.
Many people come to a private server because they do not have the time to spend months leveling professions and reputations, if they wanted true blizzlike they would play retail.
In my opinion if this is something you really want to do it should not be done especially on Cata and MoP until things are fixed to the level of your Wrath realms.
And i dont mean implement it and then tell us the fixes are coming like you did with the marketplace, where we have been sitting around for a year unable to get transmog items because everything is closed. I mean fix the problems and then implement you new ideas for rates.
okay while you do have a bit of a point... you're mostly just putting words in their mouths... they made Lordaeron and it's not as uberhype as they thought because the progression is too slow for most people and the buffs are too crazy but I don't think they're crazy enough to tell cata and mop players to go lordaeron... believe me if a cata version of an almost perfectly scripted realm with 1x rates and a DS that isn't faceroll easy existed here... I'd be there
And you know, we would love to make something like that. We would love to make awesome expansions all-around but we have an obligation to the majority and the people that frequent Warmane. We have to put our resources where they're requested the most. We didn't want to have a choppy expansion, the 'ways of the old' if you will and had a suggestion beginning this year that we could think of. We respected the choice of the community and we do our best (we really are) to give it every bit of development we can.
Emulation is hard, it really is. It takes years to create something that's playable. We face issues with the emulator daily and have to make alterations. A good example is scripting one of the Siege of Orgrimmar encounters where we want to implement something but the core does not support and then we have to create it from scratch, just to make a fireball follow a player, something that seems so easy in players' heads to create.
The change of rates will not and should not be a big deal, especially if those reputations work.
Where the change will affect it most is old content reputations, which are only done by a small percentage of realm's players for achievements and titles and those things should hold the weight they do. Insane should be insane but that is only one of the few reputations where things will be harder, rest will be not-so-hard.
As for latter expansions' concerns, we deem them valid and changes will be done so there will be no gaps in that regard whatsoever.
so here's another issue with cata and likely mop... Ravenholdt. the heavy junkboxes' droprate/pickrate is stupidly low to like 1/3 of blizzlike... can this be fixed as well?
you talk about all professions x1... okay, fix cata skinning and outland ore spawns as a #1 priority because it's completely f***ed up the way you need to go into zones that aren't even meant to have certain leathers to farm them or run around like stupid for 5 hours to get 100 fel iron ore
until old content update getting Rugged Leather was farming a handful of mobs in blasted lands for 80% chance of 1-2 thick leather and 20% chance for 1 rugged leather per skinning... of course now we can do blackrock spire for it so it's easier but it's still a real pain in the *** to get there since you can't say "hmmm I need to go to a lvl 45 zone to get leather for this item with required level of 43" because that zone can either have leathers ranging above or below what logic says it should
So in a nutshell, there's about 80-90% negative feedback and you're still going to carry this out?
Frostwolf is only now slowly recovering from the merge with Sargeras and the release of Lordaeron and Icecrown, and this will be another, possibly fatal blow.
Neltharion doesn't even have half the amount of players Frostwolf does, barely dipping over 1k at peak times (from what I've observed).
The only reason I personally play here is due the status quo. If that changes, I don't really see anything keeping me here.
You're placing your bets on newcomers, but most newcomers also gather and consider impressions and experiences of veteran players when making their choice, and you're not really doing well in pleasing (most of) them if you're blatantly ignoring their concerns :/
Well if there is one thing I'm for sure of is that they are being very blizzlike at the moment you know, choosing to ignore the opinions of the playerbase is a very blizzlike behaviour.
Emulation is hard, it really is. It takes years to create something that's playable. We face issues with the emulator daily and have to make alterations. A good example is scripting one of the Siege of Orgrimmar encounters where we want to implement something but the core does not support and then we have to create it from scratch, just to make a fireball follow a player, something that seems so easy in players' heads to create.
so what you're saying is... you might as well scrap current cata and mop core development and make your own cores where everything will work the way you want it to, but you can't afford to drop manpower from fixing wotlk yet because it's not at your required level of completion yet?
well what about when Lordaeron core is done where the 'big' things are concerned? even if that's 2 years away.. cata and mop cores are according to what I saw and heard very similar so to work on one would be to work on both, meaning with half of your of your developers working on a brand new core (let's face it, Lordaeron core was made from scratch and you did a fine job at it and you now have experience in this) while the rest deal with urgent fixes to existing ones and to continue polishing wotlk... would be a very viable way to create something you know you can turn into another flagship, perhaps not a hardcore 1x realm, but a 95%+ scripted and working core with easy development where you know fixing one bug won't cause 10 others in unexpected places (like fixing smokebomb exploit and targetting of impales in DS breaking how Goriona on Warmaster Blackthorn flies away and how the Void of Unmaking on zon'ozz now blows up when it touches the water instead of the wall)
I just want to let you know that the changes to reputation and professions are okay with me.
But reducing the gold rates from quests etc. will make leveling a lot more painful for newcomers. They wont have maxed toons that can send some gold to the lower levels to allow them to even finance the costs for skills, riding etc.. I started leveling a new toon recently without any gold from my mains, and now i m already hitting the edges of my gold supplys, hoping for green gem drops from mobs just to give me some gold. (i.e. Star Ruby). Without those drops, i would not be able to refinance new skills from the vendor. (don't even imagine buying dual spec). People will not queue for the dungeons you scripted as the repair costs they might face by dying would make them go bankrupt.
So I dont think this is the way to go to make it easier for newcomers. (Maybe you can give some insight on how having less gold on completely fresh accounts makes it easier for those newcomers?)
These changes are a slap in the face to the current playerbase, and the staff simply doesn't care. They said it themselves that these changes are about "long term" meaning it's to slow the grind and progression of new players and keep them here longer before they get bored. These players wont miss what they never had (higher rates). The current players are just a casualty of their master plan, and they are willing to sacrifice a good chunk of their playerbase that will no doubt leave.
If I had the time and patience to level professions and grind reputation I'd be playing on Lordaeron, or even retail. No other server has ever lost my characters or threatened to delete half of my gold. I understand how prices will adjust accordingly, but professions will not. I'll still need more gold than before if I want to level said profession without spending hours on end, slowly grinding and fighting others for nodes.
With the vote shop being as useless as it is now, reputation taking SEVEN TIMES LONGER to gain, and changes to how professions will work, this isn't as simple as people are claiming it is.
Additionally, since content not being ready for blizzlike rates is one of the biggest concerns, maybe it's finally time you partially open-sourced your project and accepted the help of others. You don't need a genius to write a query deleting the duplicate spawns from Cata dungeons which were "scripted and tested" and are being ported to MoP. What are you afraid of, someone copying the code and doing what with it? Becoming a direct competitor to Warmane? Good luck.