Taepsilum
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What if all raids were end game raids?
Sometimes the forums come up with some interesting discussions. Poster Locomonkey over on the EU forums posted this doozy of an idea, which Taepsilum then responded to in detail. They both have me thinking about the idea as well -- what if every raid, from the original 60 raids to the Cataclysm level 85 raids, was updated to level 90? What if, when the next expansion came out, all the Mists of Pandaria raids as well as all those previous raids were in some fashion made current with level 95, or 100, or whatever current endgame happens to be? What are the pros and cons of this idea? I'm not going to dredge over every point already made, you can go read Locomonkey's original post, and Taepsilum's well reasoned list of what the pitfalls to avoid in such a system would be. Instead, I'm going to speculate on how you could address those pitfalls. How do you make a system with so many potential raids tuned and balanced, deal with all the updated loot from those instances, and keep from drowning raid groups in choices? My suggestions are as follows:
Patch 5.2: Valor points to convert to Justice after cap
One of the things that kind of saddens me is when I'm capped on Valor for the week and I get no rewards for scenarios or dungeons or LFR. Now, it doesn't ruin these activities for me, but now that I really can't upgrade my gear on my main via them and my alts have run them into the ground without seeing any rewards, I'd at least like to feel like I was getting something. Yes, I know, I'm greedy. Taepsilum over on the EU forums just posted that Patch 5.2 is going to fix that problem. Taepsilum - Need a better way to get justice points There are some changes planned for 5.2, for example, we would like to make Valor points convert to Justice as long as you're Valor capped. source It's one of those small quality of life changes that doesn't really alter the game, but will make farming up Justice Points when I want to pick up an old vendor item for transmog or trade in Justice for Honor more convenient. Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Are low-level dungeons too easy?
Taepsilum went on today a little bit about an assertion that low level dungeons are too easy. This position is one that many experienced players can likely sympathize with, particularly those who have alts climbing through the levels with full heirlooms and considerable player knowledge behind them. For players in that position, yes, low-level dungeons are too easy. But, as Taepsilum points out, players with years of WoW under their belts ought to turn back the clock, to let the Ghost of Azeroth Past take them on a journey through time to their first ever dungeon. Hopefully they weren't as foolish as your writer, and didn't select tank without really realizing what it meant. The low-level dungeons have, at least to some extent, to cater to players who have never been in a dungeon before. And, of course, for the lower levels, dungeon leveling has to contribute an equivalent amount of XP per hour to questing, or nobody would ever go into dungeons at all. But, as another poster in the same thread commented, perhaps it would be possible to open up heroic difficulties of dungeons at lower level to players who wanted a challenge?
Ditching the Death Penalty
About ten days ago, Blizzard Community Manager Taepsilum posted in the EU forums on a thread about removing the death penalty. While this may sound like a political hot potato that WoW Insider would do best to avoid, Taepsilum was actually responding to a post calling for the removal of resurrection sickness from the game. The original poster asserted that it was outdated, no longer necessary, and flatly inconvenient. That it detracted from the game's experience. Taepsilum's post was as follows. Taepsilum The death of a character should be something important, the death penalty is there to make sure players don't disregard it, in my opinion it's actually already too easy and too fast to resurrect. It's because of the penalty and the lost time when doing a corpse run, that players will be more cautious about their character. If you decide to resurrect at the spirit healer, it's because either your character died in a very weird place (and you should be more careful), or you just don't want to corpse run. I think we should all be glad that there's no experience loss as death penalty, that would probably be a bit too harsh, but I do think we need something to keep death from being meaningless. We're always open to good and new ideas of what that might be; as long as it's not "removal of the death penalty", feel free to chip in ;) source
Raid Finder: Too easy?
There's been a bit of discussion taking place over on the official forums about the ease of the raid finder's first three bosses, released on October 9th in the US. It's no great surprise, really, that this ever-controversial feature is stirring up ire in the forums, with complaints that it's too easy. Blizzard Blue Taepsilum has weighed in, with some interesting ideas on the Raid Finder's difficulty settings. First and foremost, the main issue Blizzard seems to have at the front of their minds is that the Raid Finder, unlike normal and heroic difficulties, is specifically designed for random groups. These are not your well-oiled machine guild groups, your Methods and Vodkas, these are a bunch of players who've probably never met each other before, and probably never will again. Sure you can join the Raid Finder as a group if you want to, but that's not really what it's designed for.
