Ghostcrawler: "Players are going to freak when they see Cataclysm gear"
by Michael Sacco 
Nov 20th 2009 at 9:00AM
Well, sure, but what about in Cataclysm? With all those stat changes you guys talked about at BlizzCon, there has to be some surprises on the way when we see our first glimpse of Cataclysm gear."They're just numbers. We don't think it starts getting scary until the human mind literally has trouble processing the digits. If your new staff has 152,420 spell power, well, yeah that's a mouthful. But if your new staff has 4000 spell power, the only thing that can really be freaking you out is that 4000 is just a really big number compared to the 100 spell power you might be used to. Automobiles used to cost hundreds of dollars instead of tens of thousands of dollars too.... :)"
Not too surprising, really; with the removal of spell power, we're gonna see a whole bunch of Int on items, for example, so the first time we see that Sunken City of Vashj'ir green staff, we're probably gonna have a bit of an "AaaaAAAH!" moment."Gear inflation is just part of MMOs, or at least the kind of MMO that we make. Players are going to freak when they see the Cataclysm gear (because believe me, we did), but it's also exciting too. :)"
There's also a bit of insight into exactly what happened with Wrath's gear scaling. Blame Ulduar.
Editor's Note: Car? What about a Yacht?
Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
SheldonLock Nov 20th 2009 9:03AM
Well I'm know I'm gonna freak. Since I'm gonna have to replace my Epics with Greens, who WOULDN'T freak?
Aineias Nov 20th 2009 9:09AM
This has been said of every expansion, I'll be replacing my epics with greens. Not about when BC came out, I rerolled a Belf Pally, but from BC to Wrath I there was only a few Epics replaced with rares, and none replaced with Greens. I doubt there will be much of that either come expansion time, with the level cap only being 5 levels.
I could very well be wrong, and it'll probably strongly depend on where your gear is from as well. Currently mine is mostly TotGC/Ulduar gear. With that one damn Naxx cloak because no other tanking cloaks want to drop! :-/
Skonged Nov 20th 2009 9:28AM
Do you still use the first epics you got at level 60 too? Just like you replaced blue level gear you are going to replace epic level gear too. It's called ramping up to content. Gear gets you past content and new content gets you new gear.
zappo Nov 20th 2009 9:31AM
It's going to happen this time. We're only advancing 5 levels so stat decay isn't going to cut it. Tank avoidance is already so high they need icewell radiance. Crit over 50% is not uncommon. And we haven't even gotten tier 10 yet. I'm going to say the greens handed out are going to be at least equivalent to an ilevel 200 blue and ramp up from there VERY fast.
Nebalee Nov 20th 2009 9:32AM
what's wrong with replacing epics with greens if they are upgrades?
Narshe Nov 20th 2009 9:35AM
Going from BC to WOTLK i didnt replace a single epic i had until lvl 75 in zul drak. There wasnt ANY greens better than the teir sets or raiding badge gear from BC, so chill.
Skonged Nov 20th 2009 9:42AM
"I'm going to say the greens handed out are going to be at least equivalent to an ilevel 200 blue and ramp up from there VERY fast."
GC said "freak out" not mildly pleased until I replace ilevel 200 with 5 man heroic gear. Expect the greens to be ilevel 315 and go up from there.
zappo Nov 20th 2009 10:17AM
I think the gap would be too high there. Remember that the game has to be tooled for people in regular greens to actually be capable of taking on new content, without making it all out trivial for everyone else. So I'd expect a level 78 green be equivalent to Nax10, 79 Uduar10, 80 ToC10 (which will be basically handed out with badges). That's assuming that they're going to drag out the levels a lot more this time, which I think they said somewhere.
zappo Nov 20th 2009 10:36AM
Also keep in mind that this is Ghostcrawler saying people are going to "freak out". Look at what this guy has to put up with on a daily basis. Take it from his perspective.
GC: "We're having technical problems and clams will only stack to 10 for the next week" - I'd expect people to then go emo, start cutting themselves saying that Blizzard has ruined the game and that they're quitting.
GC: "Blizzard loves you all, we're giving everyone a free kitten" - I'd expect people to then go emo, start cutting themselves saying that the game is now only for casuals and that Blizzard has ruined their lives.
TL;DR - Ghostcrawler probably expects people to freak out no matter what they do.
steven.fuller Nov 20th 2009 10:54AM
I was still wearing t2/3 in our first Gruul kill shot. . . depending on what your epics are and how fast you progress some things will get replaced faster than others.
Grubba Nov 20th 2009 11:05AM
"Expect the greens to be ilevel 315 and go up from there."
The two previous expansions have seen green ilevels jump about 20 points from top-level zone quests in old content to entry-level zone quests in new content, which would give us new greens somewhere in the 200 range for Cataclysm if the pattern continues. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but keep in mind that the idea with green quest rewards is to allow toons that are leveling to be able to keep leveling. They're not there to entice raiders from the previous expansions to use them.
There will probably be a bigger ilevel jump this time around than 20 points, but I guarantee we will not see a jump of 141 points from the current 174 greens to 315 greens in Cataclysm.
Utakata Nov 20th 2009 1:57PM
I am more curious to see what happens to high end epic gear I'm wearing in Cat. I'm pretty sure it will last me into lv 85....but what my stats will look like after the fact remains to be seen.
Skonged Nov 20th 2009 4:56PM
"There will probably be a bigger ilevel jump this time around than 20 points, but I guarantee we will not see a jump of 141 points from the current 174 greens to 315 greens in Cataclysm."
Past number have zero connection to future plans. Remember that Blizzard really does what they want at the end of the day. So when GC says "Freak out" that speaks volumes of what is to come. If we had a scale of emotions to ilevel gear collation it would look like this...
20 - Normal
40 - Great
60 - Awesome
80 - Super crazy
140 - Freak out
Grubba Nov 20th 2009 5:59PM
Come back to this topic when we see the quest rewards for starting Cataclysm quests so you can see my "I told you so" post.
Cullenor Nov 23rd 2009 6:19AM
I didn't really think about replacing all my items when Cataclysm comes out untill the comment about replacing all my "Hard Earned" Epics with Green items, I guess now they really are just shiny pixels.
I wonder if this will change my attitude towards loot permantly? I certainly hope so because if I'm perfectly honest sometimes I do get a little wrapped up in the "Epic Hunt"?
As for the stats being very large on items when Cataclysm comes out I don't think that will be a problem or ever really aslong as the calculators and spreadsheets out there can still tell me which ones to roll for I guess my stupid self will be alright.
Sword Nov 20th 2009 9:12AM
I'm confused...blame ulduar what does that mean?
Narshe Nov 20th 2009 9:36AM
They introduced Hard modes and messed up the item lvls.
Avan Nov 20th 2009 9:49AM
Yes, Ulduar introduced the concept of hard modes, not Sartharion before it.
If we should blame anything or anyone, it's Blizzard for needlessly over-inflating stats on gear. Upgrading from one tier to another should increase the extra stats such as defense, spellpower, crit, etc; Upgrading within a tier (T8 to T8.5, for example) should increase the core stats like stamina, intellect, and spirit. Right there, that fixes all the problems of tank avoidance being too high, mages (or whatever FotM burst class up for discussion is) having too much crit, or healers having too much MP5 - even priest MP5 would have been kept in line with the spirit nerf from 3.1!
But no, their philosophy is to erronously increase EVERY value every quarter-tier for hard modes and even-harder modes. Moderation is always better than being excessive.
Charlie Nov 20th 2009 9:52AM
Bit more indepth:
They never intended to have hardmodes when they planned out gear scaling. So all those 15 higher ilvls you got from hardmode gear normally would have been on the next tier of content. So icecrown would have been like ilvl 245, instead of the 280 or whatever its going to be.
Thus why they need things like Icecrown Radiance. You would have had ToC level gear when finishing Icecrown, but since your stats are 'inflated' its needed.
Mort Nov 20th 2009 10:03AM
Quoth, the Crab:
"When players say we had scaling problems in Lich King, what they mean (or at least what they *should* mean) is that we picked the end numbers we wanted for percentages such as crit and dodge and then picked ratings that would get us there. When we inflated the item levels to account for hard modes (with a little help from things like glyphs too) then the percentages ended up higher than we intended. That doesn't mean that exponential scaling on gear is bad. It just means that we misjudged our endpoints. "