Malygos: Good or Bad Design?Follow

Honestly, I noticed the same thing in BC. Just, not with vehicles, but with both flying mounts and the new races.

In The Burning Crusade, flying mounts were kind of like the airship system at the end of Final Fantasy X. You could use it to go back to places you had missed before easily without lengthy backtracking. And you could open up new areas with it too, story-driven or just bonus levels and items. Blizzard loved this feature, but it was never actually required, except for a few times.

And I honestly think Blizzard regretted the decision of putting them in in the first place. I often wondered why Blizzard used the whole "NO FLY UNTIL 77" thing in Northrend. They claim it's because they want people to appreciate Northrend and not just fly around all the time. I agree with that, but I also think that while designing WotLK, they kind of thought, "Well, they can't just fly around to all the quests, that'd get very boring, very fast. Why'd we put that thing in in the first place? It's not like we can just make them usable in Outland only. We have to give them back some time. I guess we'll just put a level limit on it or something."

And as for the new races in BC, I feel like it was Blizzard's way of saying, "Hey, you wanted new races? We got new races! Look at how shiny they are!" In almost every town or quest in Outland it seemed like, the new races played a major part. Which I guess makes sense. I mean, the Blood Elves were trying to start all over again and rebuild from scratch, and the Draenei had already been in Outland for a while before. Oh, and they just happened to crashland on Azeroth right before the opening of the Dark Portal.

But it seems that with the exception of the Orcs, Draenor being their homeworld and all, the other races really had no major reason to be there. Gnomes? Tauren? Another planet? Sure, why not? It seemed like Blizzard liked showing off their new things a bit too much, and pushed all the old stuff to the side, similar to how Old-World dungeons are mostly forgotten except by levelers.

And to me, vehicles are just another way of Blizzard showing off their new toy; their new favorite feature. And I think they may have overdone it a little. Or a lot. One or two boss fights with vehicles is fine, and the Strand of the Ancients is a good idea. Wintergrasp too. But the amount vehicles play in the expansion after being non-existent in the past two incarnations is both too sudden and overdone.

I still think wrath was just rushed out to meet up for the warhammer release.

Would have thought the whole "Dark Portal's been reopened and demons are coming out!" would have been enough, if not, the simple fact that "our allies are going to war, what, we're not going to go and help?"

Edited, Feb 10th 2009 5:48am by Micros

Reading the comments in this thread, makes me think it's designed pretty well actually. Suddenly people can't rely on their fantastic gear anymore, nor their exquisite raiding experience. You actually have to learn something new.
I hear many people complaining that Naxx boss fights are bland, boring, and nothing new. Well, Malygos is definitely something new.
I think that Blizzard can't actually do something well anymore when it comes to raid-design. I'm betting that, when Ulduar comes out, and it contains the pinnacle of raid-design, and it's full over novelties never seen before, most people that are now complaining about how bad raiding in WotLK has gotten, will still be complaining then. They will find fault everywhere with Ulduar too.
Really, nobody in this thread thinks WotLK is really that bad at all, because if you really thought that, why are you still playing? :) You can safely cancel your subscription, go play WAR, and come back again when light shines at the horizon of WoW.

Oh yeah, kinda forgot about that one.

Actually it's 1 1 1 2. At least for 25man version. People using that went past 30kdmg from stacking.

But still, maly is just 1-1-2 spam and hit 5 (in 10man) to not die to a beam and you win.

for arcane mages I hit ABx(whatever mana I can support) Abarr. I use arcane missiles when MBam procs. See, 3 buttons.

Elemental Shaman Flame Shock > Lava Burst > Chain Lightning > Lightning Bolt multiple times repeat as LvB and FS come off CD

Combat Rogue SS > SS > S&D > SS > SS > SS > SS > Rupture > SS > SS > S&D

Hell back in the day BM hunters spammed one macro for their top DPS.

On the whole I'd say good design and if you think about it the better you can play your main role (for dps anyway) the faster you'll get through phase 1+2 so the more people can suck at phase 3.

Not really a blizzard issue, but I do wish that the vehicle thing would work better with addons. My old actionbar mod had the cast bar as a seperate bar (possibly a configuration thing on my part) and clicking is just not that great and whilst my unit frames work fine for the daily (I can click the little dragon to heal just fine) for the raid version I have to click on my pet frame in order to heal myself (though my dragons health and energy shows up where my unit frame normally is).

I like the fight, my guild is still working on it (and we have quite a few people who are a bit slow at picking up tactics) but I think eventually we'll get there. I like having a fight which is a bit different to the usual stay out of the aoe, kill adds set up.

Our tank seems to have some threat issues though in phase 1 when we get stacked spark buffs, anthing we could be missing to help them gain threat (we try with hunters using MD whenever possibly and unfortunatly rogues don't get much spark love. Might be better with a warrior tank (for vigilence) but that depends on who signs up.

I don't do dailies regularly (and have never been to occulus), so maybe that's why I'm not against the use of the vehicle mechanic as it's something I just do now and again, rather than everytime I play.

I'm not opposed to the idea that fantastic gear doesn't get you through the fight, however there's really, truly, nothing to learn or to improve on. Gear is just one way this happens. When I play my "normal" character, I have lots of other things to try out, however. I often find that certain combinations of abilities actually work out better or are more useful to the group. At the very least, I certainly have more flexibility than "1-1-1-2, strafe intermittently."

And I'll take bland over frustrating any day. The quest to ride the giant in Zul'drak might have been new and unique, but it was annoying as all hell -- not because it was inherently hard, but because the view and the interface made it impossible to really experience the quest the way it was designed and balanced for. Malygos is really the exact same thing, but with 24 other people blocking your view.

Put another way: how would you feel if you, as someone who has never used one, were expected to suddenly drive a forklift, and had to drive it through a warehouse with some giant pallet on your front end that you can't see around? -- It's not your job or like anything you've ever done before, it's completely outside the realm of your experiences even if you have driven a car, and without any help you're probably just going to crash until you've done it enough...but once you have, is it really fun and exciting just because it's new and different? Were you ever really looking forward to the opportunity to drive a forklift?



The same reason I continued to play Everquest for 2 1/2 years after I started, when it was destroying my life and not fun at the same time. It's what we do. Some of us are outright addicted. Others have a community of friends. Some people play for nostalgic reasons. Others still feel like they have committed too much time to the game to just walk away from it. You really cannot use the "you could always just quit" as an argument for why things must be ok. Especially when there *ARE* people quitting -- people who wouldn't otherwise be quitting if issues like these weren't so bad.

If Blizzard makes a new zone, people will suffer through it because it's there. (Clearly, you don't remember Silithus.) That doesn't mean that it was well done.