Legendary = Snorendary

05/06/2011 10:33 AMPosted by Mõnster

How is a legendary at all legendary when the only way to obtain it is to be in a guild willing to give you 50 of an item over the course of 2+ months?

It's a little early to already be complaining about something you haven't seen or experienced, isn't it?

4.2 isn't that far off. You can complain then.

05/06/2011 12:36 PMPosted by Vaelk

oh they will daxx, dont you worry about that :P

I know this. I could pass out 24kt gold bars engraved with the meaning of life, and someone would find something to complain about.

"Why aren't they platinum?"

"I'm allergic to gold."

"The meaning of life!? Thanks for the spoiler, Daxx."

"Bars are for bads. The Mayans used discs, so should you."

Fortunately, there are plenty of others who see opportunities for epic fun and take them at face value.

05/06/2011 12:46 PMPosted by Thaine

I dare someone to say "umadbro?"

Not at all, and in truth, all kinds of feedback can be useful. I was just being playful.

05/06/2011 01:08 PMPosted by Trofl

wish i got paid to derail threads without responding to a legit question, which was, if i read it correctly, "why don't legendaries assist in progression, as opposed to just sitting in org epeening while my guild has the raid on farm?"

That's certainly not how I read it. He asked a specific question:

How is a legendary at all legendary when the only way to obtain it is to be in a guild willing to give you 50 of an item over the course of 2+ months?

I read the post more as a criticism of the style of how the legendary is awarded, and it seemed to be heavily focused on the item acquisition elements of the line to the exclusion of all else. It seems premature to levy those criticisms until the depth and breadth of the experience is yet known, that's all.

There's more to it the line that hasn't been explored yet, and at least personally, I think it's a pretty epic line. It's the challenge, the lore, and the experience of acquiring a legendary weapon that makes it legendary. I think Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest qualifies.

Also, the Firelands isn't the last raid planned for Cataclysm, so acquiring the legendary could very well give a progression focused raid an edge.

It's not premature Daxx. It's obvious that the only people who have a chance to obtain the weapon are those that are lucky enough to find raid teams who can farm/are willing to farm raids for a significant period of time. It's just one more piece of content that your average player base will be unable to participate in.

I'm not sure that you can call being a dedicated raider a matter of luck.

When someone plays a video game, they’re usually faced with a lot of choices. World of Warcraft has a ton of choices, and being part of a guild and choosing to raid is one of the more important choices one makes. World of Warcraft has also had a pretty clear structure of progression for a long time. There’s leveling content; all the quests, dungeons, and events which one can experience as they increase in power toward maximum level. Then, at the level cap, there are some new tiers of content. Top end daily quests, five man dungeons and heroics, battlegrounds, PvP zones and the like. This is all extremely accessible, and (we hope) all players who reach maximum level in World of Warcraft will experience all of it. Then, for the players who choose to pursue the necessary preparations and relationships, there are arenas, rated battlegrounds and raids. Those are the most demanding World of Warcraft experiences available, and we hope that most players will make the choice to take their skills there and see at least some of that content, since there are some very rich experiences to be had.

Raids in particular are intentionally challenging environments, and they are meant to stand up as obstacles to overcome, to reward players who are willing to develop the relationships and coordination with other World of Warcraft players to meet and beat the toughest challenges the game has to offer. They represent achievements to aspire to and we put a lot of time into that content and try to make it rewarding because we want you to want to see it.

Legendary weapons are legendary in part because of lore, and in part because of the grand adventure it is to achieve them. They are intended to represent a goal for an entire guild and raid group, and acquiring such a weapon reflects on the raid and guild as a whole. This helps us keep these items rare, which makes them more exciting and prestigious, which, in turn, allows us to make them more powerful.

I guess, I'd rather like to see the legendary quest as something that a guild sends one person or a small group out to do whilst they raid. Or obtaining a legendary maybe for someone not in an elite raid that might make them then attractive to an elite raid. Then once they've achieved the goal, they come back and participate in the raid. If you raid, you can't get the legendary. If you go after the legendary, you can't raid until you've gotten it.

At least for the foreseeable future, we’re shying away from the model where individuals or five man groups can acquire legendary items, because that could have several possible effects which don't mesh well with our idea of what these items should represent. The items might become common enough that orange becomes the new purple, or so random that the acquisition doesn’t feel particularly good, or we’d have to include a lot of artificial controls on how many of those items end up on a given realm despite a thin veneer of accessibility. Any way you slice it, we think that this would diminish the appeal of these items, and that’s not the way we want to go for now.

We do want the path to getting them to be more than a scavenger hunt though, and we’re continually trying to make the experience of acquiring a legendary weapon more… legendary. We learn as we go. For example, we’re unlikely to ever again do the Molten Core / Black Temple style legendary drops where sometimes you get lucky and more often, you don’t. We think that was really excessively random, and perhaps more importantly, it lost the entire sense of ceremony involved in forging your weapon. To return to the point of discussion that spawned this thread, Dragonwrath is almost the polar opposite of that. Sure, there is a “gated” portion of the quest line, which involves killing Firelands raid bosses, because we want this weapon to be something that a group has to work for and so that nobody is completing their legendary on the first week. But there is also a ton of other content as well: many new quests, legendary-specific raid boss fights, and a great personal challenge which evokes the spirit of those old classic World of Warcraft epic quests. The staff is really awesome in itself, and is rewarding for the whole group which completes it. I think that’s pretty cool, and I hope that those who get the opportunity to pursue the staff feel the same way.

But this is an altogether too common trend when tough questions, or inconsistencies are pointed out. Avoiding the issue, refusing to acknowledge the points, red herringing people into oblivion... SUPER FUNNY.

When I see posts like this, all I can think is "Well, there's another person who didn't actually read all my posts."

The OP doesn't like the idea that you have to farm shards for one person in a guild to get a legendary because killing the same boss 100 times so Jimthemage can get his legendary, it starts to lose that "epic" feeling.

That's certainly your interpretation of what someone else intended with a thread. I've already explained here how I interpreted the post and why I responded as I did:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2489079517?page=3#52

if most people think they can never get one, then they aren't an effective carrot

It's actually easier to get started on the path to acquire this legendary; the journey itself is more difficult though. Regardless, players who have cleared the prior tier of raid content are the only ones eligible to begin the quest line -- any player who's part of a group which is capable of accomplishing that probably has a good shot at getting a staff for themselves.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2489079517?page=9#171
This post is fantastic.

Thanks, I'm a little afraid that it's going to be lost in the various conversational currents and eddies coursing in this thread.

Compensating other guild members with pets is a poor excuse for giving someone a legendary AND an exclusive mount.

We're doing something wholly unprecedented in the history of World of Warcraft, by making the acquisition of this Legendary result in a pet for the whole group responsible. Never before has an entire guild been able to acquire any kind of item for helping a member acquire an item or achievement.

We thought that was pretty cool.

Is it just the normal raids or heroic? We know it's more likely to be the normal one but it would help if we had a confirmation for it i think.

We're still working out the exact mechanics it will take to kick off the quest.

I don't know if you can tell us, but this makes me wonder. You said you (don’t) want legendaries to be about random drops anymore. Does that imply that like, the Raid items (I'm assuming there's at least one set of items that's an equivalent of Shadowfrost Shards, etc) are 100% drops, or maybe it's like a soft achievement kind of thing, "Kill Lord Examplegar while he's kited into Raid Mechanic Y and the Firederp Shard will drop"?

Even if we don't do 100% drop rates, the rates will be high enough and on enough bosses so that the law of averages will tend to work itself out. Guilds aren't likely to go weeks and weeks without a fragment drop. We do like a little randomness, though, since it can make boss kills a bit more exciting.

...and something only an exclusive number of guilds will likely ever see. So what wholly unprecedented and cool things are you doing for the rest of us?

We do that sort of thing for the player-base at large all the time. In fact, the development process is centered around creating experiences for all kinds of players. The Regrowth/Molten Front quest hub springs to mind, but it's not the only example. Every time we develop a new questing technology, it’s for the "rest of us". I think there's room for all kinds of content in World of Warcraft.

Legendaries have never been snorendaries when it comes to PvP.

BG and Arenas have their scales tipped when a legendary makes it's way on to the field. This past season you (blizzard) withheld arena weapons such as not to undermine raid progression by making it easier with the pvp weapons.
Will there be (maybe not 4.2, but sometime) a time when legendaries cannot be used in RBG or Arena?

The reason we restricted the distribution of Arena weapons early in the season was because they would have been the best weapons available at the time, and we didn't want Arenas to be the one-and-only-one-stop-shop for top level weapons.

Overall, legendary weapons are rare enough (at the very least, MUCH rarer than even the best arena weapons) that they don’t shift the overall PvP picture much. One could argue that maybe Shadowmourne did, but only after the season had gone on for a long time, and Arena seasons towards the end of an expansion tend start to feel a little goofy. If Dragonwrath becomes so prevalent and easy to farm that every mage is rocking one by 4.3, then we’ve probably miscalculated somewhere. If that admittedly unlikely scenario comes to pass, then we might consider limiting its use in competitive PvP somehow if it seems necessary.