1) Raid difficulty. I know you've addressed this a lot recently, but I think what many of us are concerned about is the creation of challenge through arbitrary achievements and making the baseline encounter undertuned. Now i'm all for introductory content for the masses, but I think many of us are looking for a balance between accessible normal mode content for the masses versus a genuine challenge. And by challenge, I don't think anyone really cares about 20 man / timed kill achievements. Please don't rely solely on the achievement system for challenge.

2) "Hardmode" rewards. Currently the rewards for hardmode sarth doesn't seem to be in line, I think more / better items for such encounters in the future would be great. Consider that there are probably 27 reskins of the same mount, thats neither interesting or unique. Make the rewards better, make the mounts more interesting and unique. Also, increasing the number of higher item level rewards for hardmode encounters. I think what you did with zul'aman was great, better items and a unique mount.

3) Dual specs. Nothing is announced on these yet, but most of the playerbase is expecting a talent/glyph switch with a minimal cooldown. Please, please include glyphs for dual specs, obviously its not fun having to waste money for every reglyph to switch between pve and pvp spec.

Just some suggestions I thought i'd pass along, cheers.

bump for great justice

Thanks for the response GC

---

Q u o t e:
On the topic of dual-specs, will it be free to switch between the two specs that we choose, or will it cost money like a normal respec?

EDIT: There seems to be a problem with logging in on the forums. Had to log in about 10 times to send this, and editing this is also taking many tries.

---

I imagine there will be some sort of mechanic to discourage people from doing respec/reglyphs too frequently, maybe a monetary cost for doing it too frequenly. Just speculation on my part...and yeah the forums seem to be bugged atm

Edit: these suggestions were mainly aimed at ulduar and future raids, I'm all for naxxramas being accessible, I think thats great. I think a lot of people dreaded ssc 1.0 and magtheridon 1.0 if anyone remembers those in their original form, its a nice change of pace. Although I can't lie, It was fun seeing people die on the original heigan dance, I wish the splash speed of the current encounter matched the levfel 60 one, lol.

why would you put restrictions on dual-spec'ing out of town?

I thought the whole idea was to prevent guilds wastign time sending thir players to towns to respec 5 times for 5 different boss fights?

I know I personally couldn't stand spending 100's of gold going from prot to ret to prot to ret every alternate boss fight. It was both a waste of money and time.

Please don't put restrictions on the dual-spec...that would completely defeat it's purpose in my mind.

---

Q u o t e:
why would you put restrictions on dual-spec'ing out of town?

I thought the whole idea was to prevent guilds wastign time sending thir players to towns to respec 5 times for 5 different boss fights?

I know I personally couldn't stand spending 100's of gold going from prot to ret to prot to ret every alternate boss fight. It was both a waste of money and time.

Please don't put restrictions on the dual-spec...that would completely defeat it's purpose in my mind.

---

I think a 1 hour or so cooldown would be the best solution, I also am not a fan of frequent hearthing/porting for respecs.

---

Q u o t e:
why would you put restrictions on dual-spec'ing out of town?

I thought the whole idea was to prevent guilds wastign time sending thir players to towns to respec 5 times for 5 different boss fights?

I know I personally couldn't stand spending 100's of gold going from prot to ret to prot to ret every alternate boss fight. It was both a waste of money and time.

Please don't put restrictions on the dual-spec...that would completely defeat it's purpose in my mind.

---

Because otherwise 25 hybrid raids will prevail if every druid can just click a button and suddenly becomes a caster, a healer, a melee dps, a tank. Nice!.

Do you realize how many hybrids the raids are already taking?

---

Q u o t e:

We aren't likely to spend several months of development time on content that less than 5% of players will ever see.

---

I know I'm probably 12 months late to this conversation. I came back for the expansion after taking several months off from WoW.

I totally understand where developers don't want to go through enormous effort when relatively few people will ever see their hard work. That really defined WoW earlier in it's existence, with end game instances only populated by a few guilds who were able to populate a 40 man raid consistently.

I think you guys did a great job by adding heroics. Everyone can see your work, while not everyone might be able to beat it on heroic.

I do think that while making content that the majority of people can see, but maybe only 5% of the players can beat is something you should strive for. Hardcore players like a carrot on a stick, or they tend to look elsewhere for it.

---

Q u o t e:


Because otherwise 25 hybrid raids will prevail if every druid can just click a button and suddenly becomes a caster, a healer, a melee dps, a tank. Nice!.

Do you realize how many hybrids the raids are already taking?

---

that is so irrelevant it's not even funny. The guilds who have always been doing it, currently are doing it, and will always continue doing it. They do it to gain advantage. Making it a non-issue takes away the advantage from those hardcore superstar raiders.

Overall, I also disagree with your vision of all hybrid raiding. Player greed will keep that in check. People tend to pull towards the least amount of resistance to get their gear. Those people pushing content wouldn't want to share loot tables with 20 other hybrids. They (myself included) prefer balancing a raid out to maximize out the chances of getting something. It's no loss in dps or raid efficiency by doing this either. You only ever need so many tanks and so many healers. After that it just becomes redundant.

What sucks is to be the hybrid who was forced to spec prot for kalecgos, ret for brutalus, prot for felmyst, ret for eradar twins, and prot for Muru or sit out if you fail to do so. Experience that for a few raid cycles and I bet you'd sing a different tune.

---

Q u o t e:


That might be a bad idea. People would virtually never have to buy another glyph.

---

I don't think the idea is to maximize the profits of inscriptors (who already make a ton of money from darkmoon cards), it is to maximize the fun of the playerbase. Glyphs are very closely tied to talents in terms of customizing your character properly for raiding or pvp'ing, so it makes complete sense to include dual glyphs with dual specs.

I can say for sure that dual specs would be nearly 100% worthless if glyphs were not also included. Use your head for a second: If you respec (as a hybrid) from a healing to a tanking role, are you going to use the same glyphs? Of course not, thats absurd. So now you're back at square one at having to port back to town to reglyph, which makes the dual spec feature worthless.

---

Q u o t e:


Yes, the glyph trade should be completely killed except for new level 80s. How silly of me to think glyphs should actually be changed out more than once every few months...

Also I should have used my head and seen that it is perfectly acceptable for 'hybrids' to change immediately from gods of dps to gods of healing, because this in no way undermines pure classes.

How about YOU use your head for once, and actually think about what you are saying. If these plans go ahead pure classes will need a SUBSTANTIAL dps increase to make up for the fact they do so much less. The dual spec should be something that lets you fill another role, but not completely perfectly. The main part was always meant to be for flexibility and grinding, etc, not complete role dominance. Why would you bring a pure class otherwise? Rogues do iinferior DPS, bring little to no utility, and cannot change to anything else. Even if they did equal dps, why would you bring one?

---

how is that any different from any other profession? I don't seem to be crafting weapons as a blacksmith for people every time they respec.

and more to the point, yes they do have to be able to fill that spot perfectly. Otherwise they'll be asked to sit out for that fight that oesn't need the extra tank in place of a pure class that can do it better. Their goal is to eliminate players sitting at a zone instance for 4 hours hoping to raid a certain boss, or respec'ing 5 times a night to remain in the raid.

If they can turn into a crappy version of a pure class on a boss that requires them to be effective in the raid as a min/max to beat (look at sunwell for example) then 10 times out of 10, they will be asked to sit in favor of a pure class. Which would make the entire dual spec a waste of time and resources. (Much like the in-game voice system)

Another person whining about Inscription not being insanely profitable? Too damn bad, it's a crafting profession. They're not there for you to get ridiculous amounts of money. They're there for you to craft stuff for yourself and your friends.

Glyphs don't deserve to be extremely good sellers because the mats to make them are so retardedly trivial. You can mill 10 of any Northrend herb, get some pigments, and make a Felguard glyph. Pitifully trivial mats. And yet..they're still selling for 100-250g. That's a good enough profit without having to replace it every single time I hotswap.

GC: What kind of restrictions? There can't be a major time limit because the entire point is to minimize downtime when respecs need to occur. What's the point of allowing a tank to switch to DPS for trash if he won't be able to switch back to tanking at the next boss?

Another way to handle glyphs would be to remove the requirement of being near a lexicon of power. They are cheap to make (if they are selling for hundreds of gold on your server, go inscriptions and get in on it... prices will go down as more people try to get in on the profit) and it wouldn't be that hard to carry a bunch around with you, since they stack.

As for achievements and rewards, I personally like the way it is now, where the only reward for hard mode achievements is a mount, title, or even just another lit up box in the achievements window. IMO, the most that should be added as further rewards are more items dropping from the same loot table (more people getting geared, instead of a few people getting better gear). Anyone who can get the achievements already has a skill and/or coordination advantage, I see no need for an extra gear advantage, as well. I mean, aren't the most skilled players looking for the biggest challenge, anyways?

I have to say I really like the "hard mode" options for bosses. It allows you to get something that week even if you don't complete the more difficult objective. I want to see more of this.

Also, more "head" rewards please. I like the little scenes in the cities that let people know who killed a boss, then the resulting buff that follows.

---

Q u o t e:
It will be trivial to do in town.
You will also be able to do it out of towns, but not as trivially.

---

Since this is new info as far as I know, can you be a bit less vague here?

What is the point of restrictions away from town? I thought the point (at least partially) was to make it so people don't have to go back to town every other boss fight ala sunwell? A cooldown doesn't stop anyone, they will just port to town and get summoned back. Same with a cost. It's just a pointless annoyance.

---

Q u o t e:

I have discussed the dungeon difficulty issue before, so I will just bulletize it here:

Naxx is an entry-level raid.
Many players have seen the encounters before.
Players were allowed to learn the encounters on beta.

---

Did you mention how the damage of nothing except the bosses physical attacks were increased pretty much? I can sit in rain of fire from faerlina and laugh at the pitiful amount of damage done, because mobs hit harder in heroics. Hows that for idiocy? Heroics > Naxx? I should hope not.