tl;dr Had some downtime so I decided to list some of my general comments/criticisms about the server after being here for over a year.
-Making Changes to the Server without an update of the change being implemented
As a player changes are always welcome but without announcements changes are incredibly obnoxious when you expect mechanics to behave as they always have.
For example changing Broodlord's aggro radius is a welcome change back to a blizzlike state BUT if i recall correctly there was no announcement about this change it was changed one day randomly. It wasn't a big deal to adjust our strategy accordingly but why not tell us beforehand that this was changed.
Changing the black lotus spawns was an interesting change that would have been better implemented ages ago before the "Black Lotus Mafia" had taken up their claims over all the lotus spawns for months. However my gripe isn't about the change it is that there was no announcement for this change. It was simply added and players were left to find out for themselves.
My last example was the update to summoned minions. Previously minions summoned would only attack the person they initially were aggro'd upon no matter what threat was generated by other players. The minion fix changed this and made them follow threat tables. I actually liked this change but again there was no announcement. It isn't difficult to adjust the strategy accordingly but knowing that a change was implemented beforehand is just proper communication with your community.
There are examples of mechanics that were announced prior to the change such as warlock summoning nerf, warlock soulstone nerf, silithus sand summoning and honor nerf, scheduled maintenance, and raid patch releases but just the inconsistent updating is annoying.
-GM response time on KI recently
Two prime examples for this is my guild didn't have C'thun loot drop and it took 1 week for the ticket to get responded to and then another week for us to receive loot. I would consider not getting loot from a high tier raids final boss as a priority to respond to. I could understand waiting a week but two weeks? Just a tad excessive.
The second example is I know RMB was raiding through AQ40 and their gate to twin emps was closed. After initially trying to get a GM through KIs ticket system and failed they moved on to KII and were able to get a GM to open their gate. This shouldn't be necessary especially again on the high tier raiding instances of the server.
The obvious response to this is the GMs are doing so much work that it takes time to reach our concerns which is true but I am telling you as a player it feels shitty when what I consider a higher end ticket either doesnt get responded to in a timely manner or needs to go through to the KII GM system.
-Status of KI(Or rather Kronos PTR)
I don't believe KI will ever truly die however I don't enjoy seeing KI going toward a server of a bunch of raidloggers waiting for Naxx. Part of my enjoyment in playing in vanilla is playing with newer players through pre raid dungeons, wpvp, and battlegrounds. This may be a personally thing but seeing a lively server of players is just part of the vanilla experience and I am sure other players feel the same way. There is no easy solution to this its simply an observation. Would I like to see a merge? Sure why not sounds fun but I can see it being a reason to quit for players on both realms as well. My opinion on it is the original purpose of KII was to be able to absorb all the Nostalrius players over flooding KI. This was implemented ages ago and that problem is no longer present between the servers. I have no input on what is the fairest way of going about merging the servers just simply from the standpoint that we have two servers of moderate population instead of one large server. I don't plan on ever raidlogging but sitting around in IF or Org isn't much of an improvement. Also the slowly dying and merging of guilds on both Alliance and Horde is disheartening. I will personally add here the death of Coral was a bummer. Having competition with guilds also adds to the experience and improves the raiding environment overall of the server. Of course this is on specific guild and doesn't indicate a problem but they aren't the only guild to have fallen since AQ40 release.(Thundercats and Serenity have fallen although I will add Thundercats is attempting to reform).
Examples for this is the lack of queue pops and players running around the world compared to before but I will concede that this is an older server so when I was leveling it made sense for there to be more players in the world and BG pops.
-KI feels neglected
The lack of GMs on KI make it feel neglected. You may interpret this as just bitching but I know the level of care that the GMs have for this server from the past and for a while now I don't feel that care at all. I know you still care but newer players don't and I can understand and see their frustrations. As I said I will be here until the end of this server its already been a long tough but fun road however I can see newer players leaving KI because of this. Why join a server when trolls in world say it's dying because of their frustrations with the server and constant gold spam instead of casual banter and juicy guild drama.
-Warlocks
Warlock summoning was changed to only be able to summon players 15 levels above you which is ok BUT the 7x event made it easy to obtain level 45 warlocks(I would argue easier than even just leveling them to 20 at 1x). This gives older guilds here before 7x a distinct advantage in world bosses than newer guilds because they were able to level many 45 warlock alts in 7x at a rate that could never be achieved on 1x. Just saying.
This is a minor request and yes I know this should probably be placed in a different forum but you've been nerfing warlock abilities for awhile but how about addressing one tiny one. Summon doomguard doesn't actually sacrifice a random member when the summoning is complete as it did in vanilla. This doesn't impact the game at all but its just part of the experience.
-Final Comments
I'm sure there is a couple more things that I don't remember atm. Overall I will personally keep playing and sucking it up when it comes to the server such as dealing with RNG ossyrian crystal spawns or my pet still not able to get on boats but i'm just disheartened overall with the communication between GMs and the player base. I know you're there silently watching and i'll be here playing on the server as I always have.
Amoonir <Risen>
-Making Changes to the Server without an update of the change being implemented
As a player changes are always welcome but without announcements changes are incredibly obnoxious when you expect mechanics to behave as they always have.
For example changing Broodlord's aggro radius is a welcome change back to a blizzlike state BUT if i recall correctly there was no announcement about this change it was changed one day randomly. It wasn't a big deal to adjust our strategy accordingly but why not tell us beforehand that this was changed.
Changing the black lotus spawns was an interesting change that would have been better implemented ages ago before the "Black Lotus Mafia" had taken up their claims over all the lotus spawns for months. However my gripe isn't about the change it is that there was no announcement for this change. It was simply added and players were left to find out for themselves.
My last example was the update to summoned minions. Previously minions summoned would only attack the person they initially were aggro'd upon no matter what threat was generated by other players. The minion fix changed this and made them follow threat tables. I actually liked this change but again there was no announcement. It isn't difficult to adjust the strategy accordingly but knowing that a change was implemented beforehand is just proper communication with your community.
There are examples of mechanics that were announced prior to the change such as warlock summoning nerf, warlock soulstone nerf, silithus sand summoning and honor nerf, scheduled maintenance, and raid patch releases but just the inconsistent updating is annoying.
-GM response time on KI recently
Two prime examples for this is my guild didn't have C'thun loot drop and it took 1 week for the ticket to get responded to and then another week for us to receive loot. I would consider not getting loot from a high tier raids final boss as a priority to respond to. I could understand waiting a week but two weeks? Just a tad excessive.
The second example is I know RMB was raiding through AQ40 and their gate to twin emps was closed. After initially trying to get a GM through KIs ticket system and failed they moved on to KII and were able to get a GM to open their gate. This shouldn't be necessary especially again on the high tier raiding instances of the server.
The obvious response to this is the GMs are doing so much work that it takes time to reach our concerns which is true but I am telling you as a player it feels shitty when what I consider a higher end ticket either doesnt get responded to in a timely manner or needs to go through to the KII GM system.
-Status of KI(Or rather Kronos PTR)
I don't believe KI will ever truly die however I don't enjoy seeing KI going toward a server of a bunch of raidloggers waiting for Naxx. Part of my enjoyment in playing in vanilla is playing with newer players through pre raid dungeons, wpvp, and battlegrounds. This may be a personally thing but seeing a lively server of players is just part of the vanilla experience and I am sure other players feel the same way. There is no easy solution to this its simply an observation. Would I like to see a merge? Sure why not sounds fun but I can see it being a reason to quit for players on both realms as well. My opinion on it is the original purpose of KII was to be able to absorb all the Nostalrius players over flooding KI. This was implemented ages ago and that problem is no longer present between the servers. I have no input on what is the fairest way of going about merging the servers just simply from the standpoint that we have two servers of moderate population instead of one large server. I don't plan on ever raidlogging but sitting around in IF or Org isn't much of an improvement. Also the slowly dying and merging of guilds on both Alliance and Horde is disheartening. I will personally add here the death of Coral was a bummer. Having competition with guilds also adds to the experience and improves the raiding environment overall of the server. Of course this is on specific guild and doesn't indicate a problem but they aren't the only guild to have fallen since AQ40 release.(Thundercats and Serenity have fallen although I will add Thundercats is attempting to reform).
Examples for this is the lack of queue pops and players running around the world compared to before but I will concede that this is an older server so when I was leveling it made sense for there to be more players in the world and BG pops.
-KI feels neglected
The lack of GMs on KI make it feel neglected. You may interpret this as just bitching but I know the level of care that the GMs have for this server from the past and for a while now I don't feel that care at all. I know you still care but newer players don't and I can understand and see their frustrations. As I said I will be here until the end of this server its already been a long tough but fun road however I can see newer players leaving KI because of this. Why join a server when trolls in world say it's dying because of their frustrations with the server and constant gold spam instead of casual banter and juicy guild drama.
-Warlocks
Warlock summoning was changed to only be able to summon players 15 levels above you which is ok BUT the 7x event made it easy to obtain level 45 warlocks(I would argue easier than even just leveling them to 20 at 1x). This gives older guilds here before 7x a distinct advantage in world bosses than newer guilds because they were able to level many 45 warlock alts in 7x at a rate that could never be achieved on 1x. Just saying.
This is a minor request and yes I know this should probably be placed in a different forum but you've been nerfing warlock abilities for awhile but how about addressing one tiny one. Summon doomguard doesn't actually sacrifice a random member when the summoning is complete as it did in vanilla. This doesn't impact the game at all but its just part of the experience.
-Final Comments
I'm sure there is a couple more things that I don't remember atm. Overall I will personally keep playing and sucking it up when it comes to the server such as dealing with RNG ossyrian crystal spawns or my pet still not able to get on boats but i'm just disheartened overall with the communication between GMs and the player base. I know you're there silently watching and i'll be here playing on the server as I always have.
Amoonir <Risen>
