Pig & Whistle Tales - A World of Warcraft Podcast

Exploring Twilight Protocol Dungeons and the Future of World of Warcraft

• Gabriel • Season 4 • Episode 90

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Cataclysm Classic dungeons spark debate among players regarding difficulty levels and skill requirements. As players navigate new mechanics in the Twilight Protocol dungeons, the tension between accessibility and challenge prompts discussions about the future of classic content in World of Warcraft.

• Weekly news highlights significant events in WoW 
• Introduction of the Twilight Protocol dungeons and mechanics 
• Rising concerns over the difficulty of dungeon encounters 
• Discussion on health scales and group dynamics in gameplay 
• Mixed perceptions regarding player skill and accessibility 
• Dialogue on player mentality between classic and retail gaming 
• Reflections on the future of WoW with expansions like Legion 

Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!

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Speaker 1:

Thank you, hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind, I go through a variety of subjects with regards to World of Warcraft, so grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this episode. We'll be going over a few bits and bobs, mainly going into cataclysm classic and looking at people's concerns about it, as well as picking up on a topic that has been, uh, sort of a hot topic actually, um, within our guild itself, and not necessarily one that is causing discourse, but one that is causing a bit of a split opinion. So we will obviously start off with the weekly news, this being that Kordak, the dormant protector, is your world boss for the week. You have cataclysm time walking as your bonus event for the week. You can get multiple things with the Time Walking badges, whether it be rep to cosmetics, mounts, etc. Shadow Pan Showdown is your brawl for the week. This is essentially you're put into the Shadow Pan Arena and it is a 6v6. You have to kill the enemy's boss before they kill yours, whilst also PvPing at the exact same time. And Devour and Tyrannical are your Mythic affixes this week. Devour, you simply just have to. I believe it is the Soaking one, if I'm not mistaken. No, it is the Dispel one. A dot or a debuff will be on every player within the party and you simply dispel it with a decurse poison. Cleanse and totem anything that you can to dispel it, to help out your healer. As well as tyrannical, the bosses and the mobs that they spawn will have increased health and damage. So bring a talent build that can accommodate for that.

Speaker 1:

So I want to start off with this twilight protocol. Uh, twilight protocols are so unfun. So with the release of the dragon soul patch in cataclysm classic, we got twilight protocol dungeons, and these dungeons are the very similar to gamma dungeons that we got back in wrathath of the Lich King. These offer a variety of buffs to the players and they have different mechanics in place for the bosses, essentially within the instance. So I just joined a Twilight Protocol for the first time. Today we got Tol'vir.

Speaker 1:

The boss was so wacky at times I'm not even fully, I'm not even full bis, but I have most of the normal fireland gear. My item level is over 370 and these require what? Three, five, three, fifty or something three, five, three to be exact to get in, even though I'm probably close to 20 item levels over minimum, they still whooped my party's butt. My issue is that it seems to be seems like the blob mechanic doesn't change per boss. It just happens every 40 seconds or so and on some fights it makes it frustrating. If they spawn at the wrong time it's a wipe wipe. Okay, there is more to this, but I will address this now. Yes, they do spawn at random times. Well, not random. They do spawn within the first sort of 10 seconds of the like boss fight, but after that they have a like a timer on the boss and they will spawn after that as well. So once that uh debuff goes off of the boss, then a new set of uh blobs will spawn. Okay, so this is the mechanic. Essentially. It's very, very simple.

Speaker 1:

Now, uh, some of the blobs, or these blobs, offer different mechanics. So a crimson one means that there will be a beam uh that does more damage to people the further away they are. There is one that spawns ads. There's one that consumes all of the party's mana. There's multiple different ones. You can get unlucky with some that spawn, and the worst sort of combination is cobalt, um and a dark ooze. These are your worst ones because you want to kill the Cobalt so that your casters have mana. Basically, the Dark Ooze is the one that spawns, fixate adds. You just simply kill these very quickly before they start punching people and taking off the buff that the party has.

Speaker 1:

So, yes, it can be very tough, but why is it very tough for some people? Some people do not switch to these oozes. Some people think that you can just brain AFK, hit the boss and it will die. That's it. Some people think that, and you can't, you simply can't. You have to switch to these oozes and kill them. It's as simple as any other raid mechanic. You switch to the adds, you you kill them, you go back to the boss. It's not that tough. Carry on. Carrying on with his statement. I mean, this is the nicest way possible. But were they even tested? Some of these mechanics and fights are insanely overtuned. Please, please, please, look at the numbers again and nerf some of these mechanics. Slash numbers.

Speaker 1:

I don't mind a challenge, but this doesn't even feel like a challenge. It just feels really cheap and unfun to do them. I have never disagreed with a point more. I think that these dungeons are very enjoyable to do. I love that you get the um player buffs. I love the bronze buff where it increases your haste by 100 200 for melee players. You get the green buff for healers that sometimes take it, where when you do damage you get increased healing. When you do healing you do increased damage. Tank ones is just a frontal breath which does a shit ton of damage. And then you obviously have a blue dragonflight which no one really uses. It's just kind of a more pleb version of the bronze like Dragonflight buff, which isn't great. They might need to look at tuning that one maybe. But this is a challenge, but it also isn't okay.

Speaker 1:

I find that these dungeons are relatively easy. I would say that the previous dungeons are tougher than these dungeons and the reason I say that is because the previous dungeons that released with Firelands have mobs, health and damage increased. So it has 100% health increase and it has 50% damage increase increase and it has 50% damage increase, okay, quite substantial. For the current ones you have a 150% health increase and a 50% damage increase, again very substantial. But the difference is in the Firelands one, the ones previously you had nothing, you had no mechanics to deal with, it was just a straight health increase, okay, and you didn't have buffs, the bosses didn't really have any more mechanics, it was just a health increase. For this current like dungeon, you get a 100 damage increase. It's a straight up 100 damage increase. Because of your haste you're casting as like twice as many spells, so you're just doing 100% more damage. That's straight up it.

Speaker 1:

Um, and, to be honest, the people that are complaining, I think it is kind of just a skill issue. I have never had a problem in any of these dungeons and we, like any of my guildies, haven't had any problems really either. We don't do many like heroic bosses in firelands. We have some bits of gear, but we're about 375 item level around that. This is a decent item level, don't get me wrong. This is a very decent item level still. But we kind of blitz through them. We just understand the mechanics.

Speaker 1:

As soon as a blob spawns, you just switch to it. They aren't actually active and moving to the boss for 10 odd seconds. So you have way more than enough time to switch to these ads and kill them. Okay, it's about 530k. We'll round it up. We'll do 550k for one of these blobs on the ground. Okay, at max stacks, I am casting about one second for my starfires. My starfires do an average of about 60 to 70k. Okay, you see where I'm going with this. So in 10 seconds, if we take the low end of this, I am doing about 600k DPS. Not DPS, but damage over the course of 10 seconds. Yeah, so I can kill one of these blobs by myself before it even becomes active and goes on the boss.

Speaker 1:

Okay, the problems aren't the orbs, the problems are the players in the dungeon itself. They're not doing the mechanics. Okay, it is a straight up skill issue and I can prove it here as well. So Twilight Protocol dungeons are not tuned for 3-5-3. Now this one might actually have a sort of argument for it. But we are a full group of almost full bis, dk tank, rogue, mage, lock, holy paladin. Okay, we are barely able to kill the users before they touch the boss. Constantly having to kite them with full DPS on the users and 13 wipes in one Grim Batol is ridiculous. This is not tuned for a group of 353 GID players.

Speaker 1:

We walked into that run with the exact same like, if not worse, gear than this group. 13 wipes is disgustingly bad. Ok, we didn't wipe a single time. We blitz through the dungeon in about 20 minutes, if that Like. It's that simple. This is a skill issue. People do not understand that this is literally just a skill issue. A skill issue. People do not understand that this is literally just a skill issue.

Speaker 1:

Now, the point that he is saying about it might not be scaled. He has a valid point, because some people enter these dungeons with 353 gear in averted comm or averted commas and it isn't actually their gear. All right, it's in their bags, it's all greens, it's stuff like that. So I can see that point, because some people might not be able to bring the damage, but the mechanics themselves that you get from the dragon flights, the buffs that you get, is enough to alleviate this. It really really is. If you play around the mechanics that you have, you should be able to do these dungeons in 353 gear decently easily. They should still give you a bit of a challenge, yes, but you should still be able to do this decently easily.

Speaker 1:

Now this is because, let's say, my mage is 350 item level currently, which it is. I believe it can walk into that dungeon and do double its current DPS. Its current DPS, let's say, is on the low end of like 10k. 20k DPS is still more than enough to complete these dungeons. If everyone's doing 20kk, you can still kill these oozes. Yeah, because 20k times that by three, you got 60k like dps happening on an ooze. Guess what that ooze has 550k health. Guess what? It takes 10 seconds to activate. You kill the ooze before it activates. It's the mechanic done. Very simple. It's not tough, it's not rocket science. Do the mechanic okay.

Speaker 1:

And to go back to this guy's point, it might not be a skill issue, it might genuinely be the group composition rogues. They are not great with immediately switching to targets. Mage, again, need ramp up time to switch to targets. Same with lock. No matter what. If it's athlock, destroy lock. They need time to switch to targets. So it's a compositional thing as well and you might just get unlucky. But genuinely, if you are not able to kill one of the uses as soon as it spawns you, it's a skill issue. It's your teammates not doing the mechanic properly.

Speaker 1:

And what are you going to say this when you have to do the mechanic in a raid because, don't forget, this mechanic is a literal raid mechanic you switch to an ooze that comes in from the side of the boss like hello. Are you going to say that that's going to be like too long and you can't do it and it's overtuned. No, you're not, because it's going to be super easy. But people want it to be super easy for no reason. I don't get why they do, because then they'll just complain oh, these twilight infernal or twilight protocol dungeons are so easy. Blizz, what the fuck Like. It's ridiculous. You just can't win, you really can't. But genuinely, I think that they're not too bad. Sometimes you can get unlucky with the oozes, do not get me wrong. You can get really shafted and some of the bosses are a bit of a tedious ball ache when it comes to certain combinations of oozes that spawn yes, like yes, just a hundred percent yes. But every single boss is doable with these ooze mechanics. They just are.

Speaker 1:

If you cannot do it, for whatever reason, it is straight up a skill issue and I'm sorry, but some people need to be told that it is their skills that are just lacking when it comes to this thing. I don't think that you could get. I don't think that it is overtuned at all. I think that people are just very slow to react to mechanics and they aren't on top of it because these mechanics are going to be on the level of. We got to switch to them quickly, and some people just take their time with switching to like mobs. Some classes need that time to switch to mobs, though don't get me wrong. I know that, I understand that, and that's probably what happened with this group. They just take a while to sort of ramp up their damage. But yeah, look, I think it's tuned fine. I think that it is just straight up a problem that they need to figure out themselves, and it is just a skill issue. It genuinely is what I want to check, or what I want to move on to now, is this small one that I always have a like it's kind of a pet peeve of mine Play a base with new patch. Okay, so I'm leveling a resto druid. I'm pretty sure this meant to say mid, but the N is very far away from D Min 40s currently. Okay, every group has a hard fail since this new patch. There was some healing nerf or something.

Speaker 1:

Or are these the flavor of the month? Players from retail coming in for Dragon Soul? Okay, why are they retail players? Why? I've gone through this so many times. Why are they retail players? If anything, retail players are probably the ones who are carrying you through the dungeons. If anything, it might be classic players that come from classic to Dragon Soul that can't keep up with it. Who knows? It might just be that, but you'll never see someone go. Is it these classic players playing the flavor of the month? No, you won't, because then it will be like, oh my god, like why are you so toxic? You've got to be a retail player to say that. And it's like classic players say that all the time and it's just ludicrous, it's just so infuriating like it makes no sense. It really really doesn't. But like this comment as well, there's a bunch of retail people hopping over, thinking they can pull like retail. When rage vote kick players who explain they can't like.

Speaker 1:

Firstly, you can pull a bit more in these dungeons twilight, infernal, like dungeons. You have the mechanics, not the mechanics. You have the tools there to do bigger pulls. Okay, because of the buffs that you get from the dragon flights, you can do bigger pulls. The tanks can just aoe everything down by themselves, pretty much, so can like all the dps. They can punch in so much damage now, but people don't understand that.

Speaker 1:

And I get that. There is over pulling, I get that, um, but people are so scared and the the thing is, does it matter? If people want to try something and to push the limitations of these mechanics to have fun with it, why discourage that? If you want to do five packs of something because you want to see massive numbers, as a guardian druid, that you're dodging everything and you're just breathing this breath essentially on all of the ads, that's doing like 200 mil DPS for you, why not try that and have some fun? Instead, you get people who are like oh my God, you've put more than one pack boat kick. How is that fun? Like, what kind of mentality do you need to be to be in that like, like sort of anger all the time? It's just ridiculous. But I don't get it. I, I just really don't get it. Why is it always? Oh yep, that's retail players. Because why is that bad? From what I, the classic players are the ones that are more toxic than retail. That's my opinion, that's my viewpoint on it, and I have multiple like evidence points to suggest that Since playing classic back in 2019 and all the way through to 2025 now, I've done like podcasts on it multiple times.

Speaker 1:

I've seen podcasts on it multiple times. I've seen them on forum posts. I've seen them in game. I have screenshots of stuff that I've seen from guildies back in 2019, 2020, that are disgusting. Okay, these are disgusting comments and these are classic players, okay, so what is it with this whole? Oh, it must be a retail player, like. It's the classic player base that's more toxic.

Speaker 1:

Come on, we've got to stop pushing that narrative that, yep, it's them retail players. No, it really isn't. Classic players want to believe that classic players are all goody-two-shoes and stuff, but you guys are just as bad, if not worse. You really are. I promise you that, and you need to sort of. You need to open your eyes to it Genuinely, because I see so many more people who are toxic on Classic than I do retail. It's an average of like 10 to 1, or a ratio of 10 to 1. I would say it's just, it's that sort of average or ratio. Sorry, but but yeah, sorry, that's just a bit of a pet peeve of mine. This guy just has no clue, just has absolutely no. I don't get what this comment is, though. Can we stop the meme that retail dungeons are somehow easier than classic ones? Lol, I don't get it. The meme, what so? I just don't get it, because there's no way people think that retail dungeons are easier than classic. Classic dungeons are the epitome of simple. They they really are. It's. It's insane to see. But let's move on to the last point. Now.

Speaker 1:

This one isn't a forum post. This is an in-guild sort of um discussion and I wanted to know your guys' opinion on it. So some people obviously love playing classic, some people like playing retail, some people dabble in all three of the World of Warcrafts classic, catter, retail, all of that. Now there are people within the guild who are like, yeah, these expansions are good, these expansions are bad. These are the reasons. You know the general discussion, and that's fine. People have their own opinions on. Expansions are good, these expansions are bad. These are the reasons. You know the general discussion and that's fine. People have their own opinions on expansions.

Speaker 1:

But some people don't think that they'll go to Legion Classic and I'm sitting there thinking, why not Legion Classic? What would it be like? You get to do your own artifact weapons. You know you get to do the legendaries weapons. You know you get to do the legendaries, maybe a mage tower again, amazing, right, that's so cool. And then it's like, yeah, but legion wasn't that long ago. Legion was nine years ago. Now, let that sink in. Nine years ago, legion was released. Okay, well, it's more eight, eight years and like four months or something, something like that. Um, but yeah, by the time that we get round to Legion classic, it will be 10 plus years since its release and I think that that is a long enough, like sort of gap for us to re-release it as a classic version of WoW genuinely.

Speaker 1:

But people won't see it as classic because it has the classic name and I thought, well, why is it not classic? Because it technically is. Now it is a classic version of World of Warcraft that had released a decently long time ago and, like it just got me thinking. There are fundamental gameplay, like designs in legion that are no longer within the game currently in retail. So it would be a different experience now. It wouldn't be classic.

Speaker 1:

Where you're going around, you press, press Frostbolt, frost Nova and then Frostbolt again, or Blood First on six seconds, whirlwind on six seconds, just Sinister Strike, sinister Strike, eviscerate. You will be doing a decent rotation with very good raids with multiple different avenues of collecting gear and stuff, and this is when the honor system first came out in Legion, the very first honor system. So it's a completely different PvP system as well, and I just thought why wouldn't people want to try this? Now? Some people might not like Legion. They might have played it before, might not like it. Fair enough, that's fine. Some people have never played Legionion and in my experience, I just say, yeah, you should try it and everyone should have the uh option to try it. In my honest opinion, you should have the option to experience legion for how it was at its release. Um, because it was very good. It was a very good expansion.

Speaker 1:

Some people don't like the vibe of it, and that's fine, but I don't get why people don't think it will go to legion like classic. I think that they're going to ride this train all the way up to almost present day. To be honest with you, they're just going to keep following uh retail and then eventually it will like clash into one and genuinely, that's when everything will get moved from your classic account into retail and I'm all for that. I I think that would be amazing, genuinely, um, and then they might restart the cycle. Who knows, they might restart it. Um, we really just don't know, but I think obviously we have mr pandaria that's going to be coming out next, and then we have Warlords of Draenor, and then you obviously have Legion, and then it will be Battle for Azeroth and it will be Dragonflight, the War Within.

Speaker 1:

So all of these expansions, by the time we get to them, are going to be decently old. But when do you stop? Legion will be 10 years old by the time that it releases. Are going to be decently old, but when do you stop? Legion will be 10 years old by the time that it releases classic. Let's say, well, let's, let's do the maths here actually. So missa pandaria comes out this year. Legion will be nine years old by then. All of the drain, or let's just say it's a year from now, from after missa pandaria, then it will be 2026. So we're suddenly at 10 years until Legion. And then you get 2027 is when Legion releases. So that is 11 years. It was released. Okay, that's fine. 2028 will be a battle for Azeroth, which again then it's nine years still since its release. So you can go on like this until you hit shadowlands. But I think legion is the perfect stopping point for world of warcraft. I think that is when everything will reset.

Speaker 1:

Your progress towards or in classic will be sent to your retail characters. Um, you have the option To keep them characters Just as a classic character, but it will stay in Legion. It will be archived almost Forever in the game. I don't know. I think they might do something when you can go and Revisit this expansion Almost. You can archive your character character. But it will be like oh, you want to play in tbc? Okay, you're level 58, now go and explore tbc leveling. Oh, really cool. Or your level. Or you want to explore wrath of the lich king? Cool, you're level 68, go and explore wrath of the lich king, you know it's. It really does make you think. What will they do when they get to the stopping point of Classic? And no one knows, and no one will ever know. Really not for a few years at least.

Speaker 1:

I think Legion is the perfect stopping point, though for it, because I think it's such a good pie of an expansion that they can leave off on that and go and restart classic again. But at that point you're going to have classic, classic, classic. And is that really fun? Because they've already started the classic anniversary server where they're going to be moving into tbc. So is that just going to follow the exact same pattern. You go tbc, you go wrath, you go kata, you go mr pandaria, etc. Etc. So what happens to these classic sort of realms? They eventually have to stop and they'll all filter into retail. That's my honest opinion. So he'll get to legion and then all of the stuff that you've collected goes on to retail and you can restart Once Classic Classic hits Cataclysm or End of Wrath of the Lich King, then you'll get Classic Classic Classic.

Speaker 1:

You know, that's my personal opinion on it and I think that it's a very good way to make money, from Blizzard's point of view anyway. But it just makes the kind of most sense in a way. I guess it again, it's tough to tell, it really really is. But that is what I will end it on this episode. It's, it's a tough one, it's a head scratcher, for sure. But let me know what you guys think.

Speaker 1:

When will classic end, do you reckon? And if so, what? Like expansion, and why do you think it will end in this expansion? Genuinely, I'm very curious. But thank you all very much for listening, as always. Do check out all of the socials down below constant stuff happening over there, as well as the Etsy shop multiple things going up there on a daily basis. I actually just recently put up a Helmer Domination sort of statue on there. Statue, yeah, prop, prop, I would say prop, not one you can wear, but sort of something that you can put on the shelf and whatnot. But thank you all very much for watching once again and go. A Valor friend, goodbye all. Thank you.