[Kody]

One of the staples of World of Warcraft raiding since classic -- Last Resort of EU-Kazzak -- last night announced that the guild is no longer going to continue raiding now that they've defeated The Lich King. There's a growing thread on the Last Resort forums with lots of nostalgic posts by current and old members alike, as well as those who have followed the guild over the years.

Banai posted the announcement, and for the most part it looks like the guild is disappointed in the direction that World of Warcraft has taken with Wrath of the Lich King. They also fear that Cataclysm will further change it in ways they do not like.

Quote

Quote from: Banai (Source)
It's been almost five years since we signed the roster and started Last Resort (really should have gone with seldom a thermos bounces). Five years is a long time and we have had so many people coming and going. Many of the people who have left were a big part of the guild and the spirit and community died a little every time. Now the leadership of the guild has finally grown tired of it and lost most of our motivation, I assume that many of our members feel the same way. It has been like this for a long time and we have just kept going for the sake of it, for the community and all the cool people in LR, but no more.

This guild has been a pleasure to follow, even during classic when I was raiding in a cutting edge guild, and I'll miss seeing their updates. These guys did it all, including the world first Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury, among many other accomplishments. Thanks for close to 5 years of memories, Last Resort. Take a trip down memory lane by hitting up page 6 of their news.

[Leviathonlx]

They were one of the funner guilds to watch and it's too bad they are quitting. I think a lot of it is them looking at vanilla WoW through rose colored glasses though.

Course a lot of it falls on Blizzard and the (bad) way they handled content in this expansion. Ulduar was great but after that they gave us a half assed instance called ToC which got boring after the second week before it was even fully open and then decided to prolong ICC in a bland way after having spent so little time on the previous instance. The limited attempt/gating thing to prolong content is also the worst thing they have ever done and all it causes is people to burn out quicker than they otherwise would. Instead of the that crap they should of gave us a good full instance in 3.2 such as Azjol-Nerub or even, dare I say it, a troll raid in Gundrak. Now the ICC stuff would of been fine if they actually put effort into it like they did with Sunwell and gave us a Quel'danas type daily area in a section of Azjol-Nerub for example where we are fighting off the Scourge taking over areas. That would of made much more sense than somehow going in the front door and would of gave a reason for limited attempts that made sense or at least for the gating.

Reminds me of how when they answered my question at the dev chat on why there were no new dailies in 3.3 and the excuse was since they didn't have the time. What the hell were they doing for the months and months they had between Ulduar (which was already pretty much done at release along with much of T8) and the release of 3.3 since there's no way TOC took more than 2-3 months to make with the lack of effort they put into the 2 room instance with rehashed models/re-textures, boring boss mechanics and terrible looking tier sets. Even ICC is pretty lacking when it comes to models and set items. Why do the items from the Lich King look like the items from the rest of the instance and Ulduar had double the unique models than ICC and didn't have the laziness that is Festergut and Rotface. The story and fights in ICC leave much to be desired also for something that is the pinnacle of this expansion and game. If they wanted Bolvar to be the next Lich King they should of did more character building before-hand so most Horde players don't go "Who?" when they see Bolvar. The Lich King fight itself leaves a LOT to be desired when it comes to a fight that should of involved Jaina, Sylvanas, Muradin, and Saurfang and could of been more interesting then 'O someone d/ced and defile just wiped the raid' or the fun 'let's defile a melee right after the valks come' but I guess Yogg-saron has to go down as the most interesting fight in this expansion since Ulduar seems to be the only instance that had any effort put into it. I still wonder what happened to the whole 'Garrosh redeeming himself in ICC' thing that Blizzard brought up months ago.

Raiding in this expansion has been pretty bad and I question if it will be better in Cataclysm considering the path they have taken ever since the Vivendi/Activision merge, Kaplan moving to another project, and Ghostcrawlers mission of homogenizing the game even further (that's why you don't hire a RTS dev to balance MMO classes). I think the only way to make Blizzard put more effort into the game again is if another good MMO ever comes out since Blizzard has grown too accustomed to having no good competition and it's showing.

My personal feelings about the 2 expansions are that TBC leveling was bad but end-game content was perfect after the proper tuning was done to Gruul, Magtheridon and SSC/TK prior to BT and in WotLK leveling was perfect but raiding was terrible.

[QuiSiLoR]

I have to agree it is always sad when a long time guild decides to call it quits. Sometimes playing the same pattern over gets boring and repetative.

This x-pax has been probably the worst, blizzard is catering more for the casual fan base. I dont disagree with that to some extent, but when u have even casuals 2day a week raiders clearing HC modes in no time it is rather sad.
ICC could have been so much more... to fight all the bosses, pass all the tests the Lich King should have felt more epic. Sure a nice little cinematic but its not enough. Hell the LK is one of the baddest guys around he has milions of minions and u basically walk up and kick his ass

I dont think Last Resort are the only guild feeling this lately... some guilds you expect to be at the top of there game u dont hear much from. I just really really hope with Cata and all the changes they plan they dont destroy wow. Personally I am looking forward more to SC2 than Cata.

[rhorle]

QuiSiLoR, on 12 February 2010 - 03:02 PM, said:

This x-pax has been probably the worst, blizzard is catering more for the casual fan base. I dont disagree with that to some extent, but when u have even casuals 2day a week raiders clearing HC modes in no time it is rather sad.
ICC could have been so much more... to fight all the bosses, pass all the tests the Lich King should have felt more epic. Sure a nice little cinematic but its not enough. Hell the LK is one of the baddest guys around he has milions of minions and u basically walk up and kick his ass

The lich king fight is epic. It may look bland from a video but experiencing it is another matter. Also anything showy and flashy just wouldn't fit the image of the lich king and the style of the scourge. They aren't kael'thas. And most of the video's don't show the pre and post fight lore that happens.

And also casual raiders aren't catered to, they are just getting better. There are a lot of people that haven't done all hard modes, those are the true casual players. Often time people think of themselves, or others, as casual because they aren't the "hardcore of vanilla" style.

By the way you walk up to him and kick his butt because you just defeated all of his minions to get to them. It would be pretty stupid to storm the gates of Icecrown Citadel, fight all of his top lieutenants and then suddenly face another army when you get to him? The whole point of us fight our way to him is that it is the END. No more armies to hide behind. Its you versus the lich king and his personal powers. You already faced the rest of the scourge.

[Arqai]

err, i don't know where do people reach the conclusion, that we quit because of the changes made from Vanilla to WotLK.
The fact is, that the game is different, wether it was better or worse before, the current state of WoW is something we do not enjoy, hence we decided to quit. It has been on our minds for almost a year now, but it would be irresponsible to quit before we reached Lich King, when we all waited for him so long.
-shaaira

This post has been edited by Arqai: 12 February 2010 - 02:36 PM

[Kody]

Arqai, on 12 February 2010 - 12:35 PM, said:

err, i don't know where do people reach the conclusion, that we quit because of the changes made from Vanilla to WotLK.
The fact is, that the game is different, wether it was better or worse before, the current state of WoW is something we do not enjoy, hence we decided to quit. It has been on our minds for almost a year now, but it would be irresponsible to quit before we reached Lich King, when we all waited for him so long.
-shaaira

Probably the way Banai worded that post? It's quite clearly stated you're quitting because of what WoW has become in Wrath of the Lich King. It may not be the only reason why, but it's stressed multiple times in the post.

[Leviathonlx]

rhorle, on 12 February 2010 - 08:12 PM, said:

The lich king fight is epic. It may look bland from a video but experiencing it is another matter. Also anything showy and flashy just wouldn't fit the image of the lich king and the style of the scourge. They aren't kael'thas. And most of the video's don't show the pre and post fight lore that happens.

And also casual raiders aren't catered to, they are just getting better. There are a lot of people that haven't done all hard modes, those are the true casual players. Often time people think of themselves, or others, as casual because they aren't the "hardcore of vanilla" style.

By the way you walk up to him and kick his butt because you just defeated all of his minions to get to them. It would be pretty stupid to storm the gates of Icecrown Citadel, fight all of his top lieutenants and then suddenly face another army when you get to him? The whole point of us fight our way to him is that it is the END. No more armies to hide behind. Its you versus the lich king and his personal powers. You already faced the rest of the scourge.

I personally haven't found the fight that epic as compared to when I first fought Yogg-Saron. But maybe that's since I had higher expectations for the pinnacle of this expansion instead of just Tirion being frozen till 10% with the rest of the fight being us. We should see our racial leaders helping us during the fight and I find the event at 10% pretty boring compared to what could of been.

[Arqai]

Kody, on 12 February 2010 - 03:53 PM, said:

Probably the way Banai worded that post? It's quite clearly stated you're quitting because of what WoW has become in Wrath of the Lich King. It may not be the only reason why, but it's stressed multiple times in the post.

meh, I guess, I just see loads of these "lol emoragequit" kind of reactions that don't make any sense, I'd like to see someone emoquiting after playing the game for the long 5 years. I guess it looks a lot different from outside of the guild.

Perhaps I worded my post wrong as well, I meant it as a reaction to Leviathonlx and his pink colored glasses reference. Some of us enjoy different things and we sure had more fun back then, than we had now and as stated, it has been on our minds for a very long time.

This post has been edited by Arqai: 12 February 2010 - 03:19 PM

[Xentropy]

ToC was indeed terrible, but I really don't understand all the complaints about ICC. The boss fights have been interesting and memorable, with a wide variety of mechanics never used before, and previously used mechanics used in different ways for freshness. Normal modes aren't SUPPOSED to be difficult at all anymore, so if it's difficulty people are complaining about, they have no room to complain until they've defeated heroic modes. In my mind, every raid instance was permanently set to heroic in the past two expansions... (If you consider the 4 months of Kael'thas wipes I had before finally getting a kill "normal mode", you're simply a top tier raiding guild and NOTHING will be hard enough for you without making it utterly inaccessible to anyone else, ever.) Using normal as a baseline now instead of heroic is missing the point.

As an Alliance player I'm surprised anyone doesn't know who Bolvar was (particularly since the Wrath Gate cinematic featured him prominently and didn't have a different Horde version), but I guess it's been a long time since most people have watched that cinematic, so the Horde probably forgot all about him in the year since. Some mentions of him in the ToC RP would've been useful to jog their memories, since most players saw that RP 3-4 times a week for months.

With respect to class design, I don't think it's as bad as some make it out to be. There's a definite issue with hybrid casters taking it up the ass compared to hybrid melee, but even they at about 15-20% behind the other classes in dps are closer than they were at 30-50% behind in TBC, so it's improving little by little.

I do at least agree with Levi on a few things. I'm not sure where the Garrosh redemption went. Wrynn definitely redeemed himself in my eyes somewhat; he came across as an arrogant prick and I was NOT proud to be a human under him for most of the expansion. But Garrosh has become an even bigger prick (Law of Conservation of Dickheadedness?), and nothing's changed that yet; I suspect it'll only get worse when Thrall leaves and he has even more corruptive power. ToC was horrible and even if I'm not so convinced Azjol'Nerub was supposed to be more than an outdoor leveling zone, more than 5 bosses were needed to keep everyone busy for so many months, especially when as soon as there was finally some fresh meat, we were limited to FOUR bosses there, and still going back to do the old 5 most weeks just to fill one raid night. And while I love ICC from a mechanics and difficulty perspective (if anything it's a touch too difficult for normal raiders, but the autobuff will make up for that in time), the art department has definitely seemed to get lazy lately. I've read that the art department tends to be larger than any other group in a video game design team, so perhaps Activision slashed the art team in half for cost savings.

[Leviathonlx]

Arqai, on 12 February 2010 - 09:18 PM, said:

meh, I guess, I just see loads of these "lol emoragequit" kind of reactions that don't make any sense, I'd like to see someone emoquiting after playing the game for the long 5 years. I guess it looks a lot different from outside of the guild.

Perhaps I worded my post wrong as well, I meant it as a reaction to Leviathonlx and his pink colored glasses reference. Some of us enjoy different things and we sure had more fun back then, than we had now and as stated, it has been on our minds for a very long time.

Well I did say how I know a lot of it still is Blizzards fault.

[Arqai]

Xentropy, on 12 February 2010 - 04:23 PM, said:

Normal modes aren't SUPPOSED to be difficult at all anymore, so if it's difficulty people are complaining about, they have no room to complain until they've defeated heroic modes. In my mind, every raid instance was permanently set to heroic in the past two expansions... (If you consider the 4 months of Kael'thas wipes I had before finally getting a kill "normal mode", you're simply a top tier raiding guild and NOTHING will be hard enough for you without making it utterly inaccessible to anyone else, ever.)

I don't think anyone in the guild feels that way, it's more the general gameplay in wotlk. Just recently we had a talk about this, imagine doing muru with rogue tricks, how much simpler it would be. And it's like that with everything really :p (note that I have been progressing M'uru as a tank, so my viewpoint might be a bit different)
Anyway I'm out, just wanted to clarify a few points, we posted it on our webpage, because we think that people following us deserve to know (and also to stop people from applying!), the news post here was really unnecesarry, but thanks anyway kody!

[furydeath]

I had great time watcher there videos back in TBC. And will miss them too.

[Brakkyn]

WoW must change and evolve or it will stagnate. Thiose who wish for a pure vanilla WoW server, if they got it, would have quit playing afterwards because everything stayed the same. Not every decision Blizzard has made regarding WoW has been popular, but Blizzard is first and foremost a business that tries to get you to pay for things they provide. If you don't like the changes, don't pay for it.

[Chrono]

Pity to see a guild like LR quit. It has been a long time since vanilla... While one might argue about difficulty etc, fact remains 11/12 hardmodes has already been cleared. That is an all time low :|

[Deployed]

The more you raid, the less "special" it will get. Because I never raided in Vanilla and only did 10mans in TBC, WotLK is still very special and interesting to me and a lot of other casual raiders. However, the more we raid, the easier and quicker we understand an encounter (plus there seem to be a lot more guides now where before we would just wing it).

To me, this is the part that is killing the social side of raiding. Before, we used to try to work out what is what by ourselves, only looking for help after a second of third week of failing. Because we were working encounters out (ok, I'm talking Karazhan and ZA here, so it's the trivial encounters which don't apply much anymore), we were working together and talking a lot. Nowadays it's just the RL saying "do this, do that". It's not fun to be on the receiving end and it sure as hell isn't fun to be acting like a boss...especially when things start going wrong because it looks like people didn't listen to what you say.

Ironically, Naxx level 80 was actually the most relaxed fun raiding I've had in WotLK, simply because the bosses weren't overblown, but this is casualspeak.

Part of hardcore raiding is about being first. When you put casual guilds on equal footing, it will feel like we're steppiong on your toes a bit too much. Two completely different ways to address this. Calm down and drop the "first!" mentality and have fun working things out, or Blizz need to make sure that Heroic modes are available at the start.

The latter seems nice, but at the end of the day, the more a casual guild raids, the more chance they have to complete heroic modes. My casual guild managed to drop the Beasts on heroic pre 3.3 anyway. It was hard and a lot of work and very stressful, but as you stick to a roster and become a cognitive whole, raids become "easy" when compared to a rotating roster.

[ellyn]

/salute

R.I.P LR <3

[Biteme]

Always sad to see old guilds quit. Have fun in whatever you decide to do next!

[rhorle]

Chrono, on 13 February 2010 - 05:57 AM, said:

Pity to see a guild like LR quit. It has been a long time since vanilla... While one might argue about difficulty etc, fact remains 11/12 hardmodes has already been cleared. That is an all time low :|

By the TOP guilds in the world. I hate when people thinking the game is easy, or say WoW is bad now, because the best people that play WoW clear something quickly. When 50% of the player base has cleared 11/12 this quickly then you have a right to complain. But when the top 10 guilds in the world range from 11/12 to 8/12 cleared then there really isn't a problem.

To use a current metaphor, Ensidia, exodus, paragon, vodka etc are the Olympic athletes of the WoW world.

[Chrono]

rhorle, on 13 February 2010 - 03:22 PM, said:

By the TOP guilds in the world. I hate when people thinking the game is easy, or say WoW is bad now, because the best people that play WoW clear something quickly. When 50% of the player base has cleared 11/12 this quickly then you have a right to complain. But when the top 10 guilds in the world range from 11/12 to 8/12 cleared then there really isn't a problem.

To use a current metaphor, Ensidia, exodus, paragon, vodka etc are the Olympic athletes of the WoW world.

Doesn't change the fact that (almost) clearing a new instance within 2 weeks (of the full unlock) makes it a poor excuse for an instance. I am well aware of the fact that these players are well above others in terms of "skill". Fact remains that it used to take perhaps weeks to clear an encounter, now it takes at most days for most encounters it seems. The players have become better and the understanding of game mechanics have vastly improved since Vanilla but if Blizzard is gonna have their 30% over-time-buff they should atleast make some encounters almost unbeatable within the first week of opening up the heroics.

[Deployed]

Chrono, on 13 February 2010 - 10:03 AM, said:

Doesn't change the fact that (almost) clearing a new instance within 2 weeks (of the full unlock) makes it a poor excuse for an instance. I am well aware of the fact that these players are well above others in terms of "skill". Fact remains that it used to take perhaps weeks to clear an encounter, now it takes at most days for most encounters it seems. The players have become better and the understanding of game mechanics have vastly improved since Vanilla but if Blizzard is gonna have their 30% over-time-buff they should atleast make some encounters almost unbeatable within the first week of opening up the heroics.

This is kind of the problem that I'm seeing though.

Vanilla was slow progress because of gear blocks, logistics of controlling 39 other people and the fact that it was new to a lot (not all) of players that were involved in the raids back then. If you look back, very very few guilds that entered MC had 100% experienced raiding members, they had to learn and they had to be taught. From there, BWL was poorly tuned and then we hit the aforementioned gearblocks of AQ40 and Naxx60. It was a frustrating game design for people getting into the game.

Next, we need to look at TBC. The only reason SSC and TK weren't fully cleared within two weeks of release was mostly due to attunments. I think you'll find that most of the "professional" guilds cleared these instances within 2-3 weeks from point of entry. It was an artificial block, just as bad as limited attempts and gating, only it cost us more of our personal time to get around.

Wrath, however....oh boy. Another kettle of fish. Wraths biggest problem has been the reaction based designing to it. It's very fractured in it's design. Every new raid follows a unique design on how it handles "difficulty". This has unsettled ALL raiders to some degree.

The mishandled "Heroic Modes" for 3.0. 3.1's fun but confusing Hardmodes. ToC almost had it right except that it should have been a sidegrade to Ulduar instead of a new Tier. ICC has the set up right IMO, just not with limited attempts AND gating. One or the other, not both...now we have neither, and again everything feels fractured.

With Cata, they should be able to stick with the "Heroicswitch" design and hopefully have a better way to slow guilds down. I personally have no issue with things being too hard at release, then made easier with progressive aids to the raid, as long as they are optional, like the eventual ICC buff will be(hopefully).

This post has been edited by Deployed: 13 February 2010 - 12:45 PM