Dungeons are a touchy subject for the denizens of World of Warcraft. There is such a diverse opinion when it comes to the difficulty and availability of players to explore these veritable loot piles. Recently the “Call to Arms” update provided additional rewards to tanks and healers who join the fight when needed and to help rally the troops against the major threats against Azeroth. In patch 4.2 we’re going to see a huge nerf to dungeons that might trivialize dungeon content and make it easier than ever or, like most updates, have a very minor effect.

A Post-Mortem on the Call to Arms

So far the response to the Call to Arms system has been meek at best. Tanks are shunning the rewards saying that they don’t provide enough incentive for them to go through the additional effort of carrying 2-4 players through a dungeon. Especially when many of those players are - at best - like puppies trying to paw at their keyboard attempting to get a response out of the magical mirror displaying pretty colors and effects. Let’s face it, the general population in WoW has been and will always be full of players who don’t pull their weight when inside the dungeons. As I’ve written about before you can easily just bring your own group into a dungeon and skip the Dungeon Finder all together, negating the need to rely on random players to complete dungeons.

The Call to Arms does provide some nice rewards: pets, gems, mounts and other crazy things. Is it enough? The simple answer is: no. It’s not. The amount of time and effort a tank goes through to play through a dungeon is several times that of your normal player. So, with that in mind, Blizzard is proposing a new plan to make dungeons easier and entice more tanks to play.

Crowd Control for Everyone

In patch 4.2 we’re going to see the following neat little addition added:

Many crowd control abilities no longer cause creatures to attack players when they are cast. The creature will not attack the player when the crowd control wears off, and nearby creatures will not become hostile to the player either. However, if a visible player gets too close to the target creature, the creature will remember and attack the player when the crowd control effect wears off. The intent is to make it easier for dungeon groups to manage crowd control assignments and pulling packs of hostile NPCs. The abilities affected by this change are: Hibernate, Entangling Roots, Wyvern Sting (will still cause hostility when it begins to deal damage), Freezing Trap, Polymorph, Repentance, Shackle Undead, Blind, Hex, Bind Elemental, Banish, Seduction.

If you can’t understand that giant block of text (it’s okay, it’s pretty hard to read), basically if you CC anything in the game then it’s not going to BAF (bring a friend for those of you new to MMO lingo). In other words, you can CC a monster in the middle of a group and not have to worry about it its friends coming for you. This makes CC infinitely easier to setup since you won’t have to do all of the CC on the pull. You can sheep, hex, etc. while the mobs are still in the middle of their tea party.

Some are screaming that Blizzard is ruining the game while others are coming to their defense, claiming the new dungeons (Zul’Aman, Zul’Gurub) are too difficult and need this change. My opinion, as usual, is right on the fence. On one hand, if you have ever done a Dungeon Finder run with four pugs then you know the pain of trying to set-up CC. On the other, it’s kind of stupid that Blizzard needs to pander to the casuals who can’t take ZA/ZG’s difficulty.

At some point we need to draw a line in the dirt and say: okay, this is as far as you go with your current configuration. I believe games should be accessible and to that extent, I like the change for making grouping up with others easier. Yet, we should at some point stop trivializing the game just because we need to make the entire game available to EVERYONE.

Let’s use a Pokémon analogy (my favorite). Anyone over the age of five can play the game from start to finish with no issue or problem. It’s easy, it’s fun, and you can do it all with just one Pokémon that gets all of the experience. Now, if you want to be a hardcore Poké-master then you need to train to be the very best. You need to catch’em’all and fight for the right to claim the title of Poké-master. It’s not a simple feat, but once you can say “I’ve caught ‘em all” to your friends you can feel the sweet taste of success (or disappointment as they make fun of you).

Likewise, there needs to be a point where we say “this content is for everyone” which is enough content to appease the masses. Then, everything else needs to have an adequate amount of setup. ZG/ZA needs you to either come into it with a lucky group or you should go fetch your own group. The Dungeon Finder is even making this easier by grouping people up with members on the same realm. Meet someone you like? Friend them and see if they won’t join you on your adventures.

So, in summary, I feel that this addition to the game is needed, yes, but we’re going a bit too far to appease the masses. We need to curb it in a bit and let them struggle and instead generate rewards for grouping together as a team. Make going in as a full guild group offer some kind of additional reward. Sure the hardcore players will benefit… but they will always benefit no matter what we do.

We have to draw the line somewhere and I say we’re pretty darn near close where we need to draw it.

What do you think? Leave your interesting comments in the comments section below.