Better get out your pens and paper again, ladies and gentlemen, and start sketching out where those with the raid symbols for Frost Beacon are supposed to stand on heroic Sindragosa. They’re purposely breaking AVR’s functionality.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25002150557&pageNo=1#0
I’m not terribly upset about this. Sure, it was fun while it lasted (and will last until 3.3.5), but it really did feel like cheating. More detailed thoughts on its use in this previous post.
We never used it because all the officers agree that it’s cheating. XD But then, we also never had done the “door strat” for Twins or the zerg method for Sarth+3. LOL I’m super glad they’re breaking that thing. :P
It’s a non-issue to me. I used it as I was curious, and I enjoyed what it did, but fully agree that it was too powerful.
kind of reminds me of the time they tried to break decursive back in MC. Only this time they aren’t waiting around until the majority of the raiders depending on the addon before they break it…
Doesn’t impact me, but I’m sure for every person that feels it was “cheating” there were others depending on it.
Btw…how long before blizzard starts letting you buy your epics with real cash? (you all know its coming…)
-Rick
It kind of disappoints me to learn that they’re breaking AVR, not because I actually use it, but because I COULD use it. I didn’t even think of tagging places with it until that post, and I think that would be brilliant. As far as using it in raids, though, I totally agree that it shouldn’t be available.
RDruid: Y’know, I don’t think Blizz ever will offer items (epic or otherwise) that provide an actual gameplay benefit. Look at their track record: Lil’ XT makes the game worse for anyone with sound, the starhorse ruins any bit of camouflage you may have. Except possibly in Storm Peaks or Alterac Valley. If they ever started selling gear, I get the feeling that it would still just be vanity gear, not anything that would help in leveling or raiding. They’ve proven you can have a cash shop for an MMO without completely ruining the game for the players without a surplus of money.
Codi – I am so jealous you never did the door strat. I hate that “strat” so much. Any time you basically ignore one of the core mechanics of the fight, I think it’s just going against the intentions of the designers.
I’ve only been in one would-be zerg Sarth run and we failed hideously. It was a 10m and Sarth was the weekly so we tried zerging. I was the healer and was doing just fine except that the tank(s) couldn’t hold aggro off my leet heals. ;)
But 25m Sarth 3d? Done legitimately! Back in Naxx gear! With the awesome RDruid as my RL/healing lead. :)
I’m kind of glad they’re breaking AVR too, but I’ll miss it for certain things.
thansal – definitely too powerful, although I think AVRE is the worse of the two. Showing the radius and timer of Unbound Plague on heroic Putricide is just ridiculous.
R – And yet they still have a version of decursive, which actually involves thought in who it is you’re choosing to decurse. I like that and I think that was the major issue they had with decursive, because you could just bind a key to it and blindly bash your face on that key and everyone would get decursed. I think that one of the main issues Blizzard has with AVR and AVRE is that it’s screwing with what they want visible in-game.
Do they allow us things to “mark” areas with? Sure. Flares, Elune stone thingies, warlock teleporters.
But if they WANTED us to see the radius of, say, a spore on Festergut (it’s like the spores on Loatheb, if you want a visual), they’d bloody well make that visible.
If they wanted us to be able to place raid icons on the ground as markers, we would be able to.
AVR and AVRE are taking so much work out of the encounters that they are, in many cases, trivializing them. Which makes me sad. As a raid leader, I’d be furious about this. As a raider, I’m not even annoyed.
And we’re not going to be able to buy loot that means a damn. :P Otherwise, what point would there be in maintaining a subscription? You subscribe to do X, Y or Z, usually in the pursuit of gear. If you get gear, you don’t need to subscribe to get gear.
X – As far as I understand it, the tagging component requires you to share the AVR drawings with others in order for them to be able to see it. We had a problem with lots of people not being able to see raid icon marks for frost tombs on Sindragosa until the raid leader actually shared the design.
And I agree with what you’re saying about buying gear. :)
The post about buying gear was just a hook to promote discussion, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizzard is starting to see “item inflation”. I know this is something that is being talked about on other boards. Item inflation is a way of stating that item levels are/have increased at a much quicker pace in WotLK then they have in previous dungeons, leading one to believe that the whole “epics for dailies” is Blizzard’s concession that they moved the bar too fast with gear progression.
The only issue is that gear is one (not the only) of the major motivators to doing raids and with it has to come higher stats. And each raid release up the bar significantly.
So combine item inflation with the fact that people have multiple alts they would like to gear out and I think you have a “slim” although not unreasonable chance we will see some sort of gear purchasing system in the near future. Even if its one where you can only “unlock” gear purchases if your main has achieve a certain kill in-game.
It won’t happen for WotLK, because of Cata being so close…and maybe the whole “guild heirloom” gear will play a bigger role to combat this.
Who knows…
Ah, well. That would put a damper on my “cairn <3s nelfs" tags in the Sunreaver Pavilion. :(
Sorry, my comment was 100$ aimed at AVRE, as I am fairly sure that they don’t give a rat’s arse about AVR, it’s AVRE that they care about.
I hope that they do implement something similar to AVR for marking locations (give Engies a better version of the flashlight?, possibly let us paint markers on the ground that last for 10+ mins instead of 3? and different colours?).
AVRE I’m not sad to see go, though I have to say that I REALLY enjoyed the range finder function, as having a nice little arrow pointing to the idiot who wouldn’t get out of your 12 ft was nice.