Today Turbine posted a new Developer Diary talking about the itemization coming with the Rise of Isengard expansion. One of the big encouraging things for me was the intent to incentivize all sorts of player types including solo, crafters, raiders, and casual groupers. Of course, we still have to actually see it, but I was encouraged that they’ve identified there is a problem and are working to try to fix it. The pure fact that many still raid OD (all my characters do) with numerous pieces of the Moria sets highlights that we’ve been stuck in an item rut for a long time.
The first two points of the diary were to identify the big problems they’ve been facing:
I posted more of the details on the new diaries Turbine posted on TGN-Stratics but I did want to comment on a couple of things as for me there’s some good and bad to the new content.
Overall I like many points in the diaries especially the difficulty level and differences between tiers 1 and 2. I’m also encouraged by some of the very cool looking items they’ve shown in the diary as well as the ones linked on the forums. Turbine does seem like they’re adding in some real incentive for folks to continue to head into these spaces. Hopefully what we’ve seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg and we’ll be seeing lots more of the Wig-feld type cloaks, jewelry, and shields drop from these new spaces!
They are trying to remove a lot of the annoyances with current raid content as they’re removing class cool-downs each time you enter a boss fight as well as trying to remove some of the randomness in encounters. I really like both of these, as nothing is worse in a raid then the post wipe “I’ve got 30 minutes on cool-down X” immediately followed by “well I can’t wait that long” mass exodus. And no one likes to lose a fight due to being unlucky, I’m all for hard content and challenges but I want some level of consistency. Hopefully this will soon be applied to the other spaces, but for now it is just being rolled out to the 12-man raid Ost Dunhoth.
Today, Allan “Orion” Maki released a Developer Diary concerning the (very popular) removal of Radiance that will be coming with Update 2, Echoes of the Dead and it is a very good read. First off, he starts with stating the original intent of Radiance:
and on top of all that the latest update confirmed by Sapience is that PvMP will be updated as well. I suggest keeping your eye on this thread and the dev tracker as there seems to be a LOT of news coming out about these updates. And remember, fast on the heels of the Echoes of the Dead is the Anniversary update which will bring another raid cluster and hopefully the other class revamps!
Ah Raiding, that most exalted form of MMO gamming. But such a desirable end game must be restricted to only those who are worthy and have put their time in. Everyone knows, if you’re not raiding, you don’t need the good gear, right? Go back to care-bear quest land and RP some tears. Devs, make more content for us.
VS
Why does every MMO cater to these snobby gear driven raiders. The Devs make it so only live-in-the-basement no-lifes can get the gear needed to go to the end game raids and get the even better gear. They will just rush to end-game for their precious gear and then logout for months till the next expansion anyway. Devs, make more content for us.
Maybe I was blind or naïve, but I never saw these (slightly embellished) arguments during SOA. Raid content seemed to be for everyone.
