I’m a little lost for words at this. Lockpicking no longer requires you to level it – it scales 5 points with each level increase that you gain. So the maximum lockpicking for Cataclysm is 425 and you don’t have to do anything to get it. You don’t have to open a single box. You don’t have to pick a single mobs pocket to get said box. You don’t have to open a single door. I’m very disappointed. And old school rogues will immediately understand why. It’s not a question of pining in a wine-veiled view of past nostalgia, nor is it a, “Back in my day, we had to actually open boxes”, Old Man Franks lecturing the newbies from the outside porch.
Lockpicking was the one true way to immediately know if a rogue had a possibility of actually being any damn good. If a player hadn’t put the time and effort into lockpicking, then he most very probably hadn’t put the time and effort into other places as well. It was a sign of a good rogue. It was our way to know if you were part of the club. It was also a sign for other classes as well. Hey johnrogue, can you open this box for me please? Soz, I hasnt lvld that lol. /kick.
This is not a good thing for me, it is just another sign of a game being dumbed down. There was no reason to take the training aspect of lockpicking away apart from the obvious catering to lazy fucking morons who complain at actually having to, you know, put some dreaded effort into something once in a while. Honestly, if Blizzard have done this then I’m not holding much hope for this expansion. You can make all the groovy new zones and new races and new battlegrounds and 5 mans and raids that you want. But if the core elements are wrong then it’s all going to be a big pile of doo-doo. Making lockpicking an automatic skill after 6 years of us having to put some effort into it is fucked up.
update on The Stupids: I received a few emails from you detailing your epic stupidity, but more are needed in order to make a decent post on this. So send them in when you find yourself shaking your head at how dumb you have just been. We promise not to laugh at you … too much.
December 10, 2010 at 9:37 am
+1
i think i was the only rogue on my realm excited when i realised i could use LFD coren direbrew to reset my skillup (by picking 5 pockets) and maximise my lockpick skill on the VH door by spamming the holiday boss.
December 10, 2010 at 9:39 am
I couldn’t agree more, I saved a stack of level 400 lock boxes to give me a head start and they turn out to be fairly worthless! DAMN!!
December 10, 2010 at 10:00 am
Sadly this has been removed with the patch that brought in the sundering. And yes i cant understate the fact that it is a shame, speacilly after all the time i spent leveling it in 3 rogues…
December 10, 2010 at 1:37 pm
I absolutely agree with you. Believe it or not, I was actually looking forward to doing this grind on my new rogue as a rite of passage. I think I understand why it was removed, but I’m still disappointed.
December 10, 2010 at 2:23 pm
I felt the same way when they removed ability to make poisons. pick pocketing mobs for materials and then brewing my own felt so very roguish to me (yes, I know you could buy the ingredients, but it was more fun to pick pocket them to me)
on one hand I’m relieved, since its one less thing to level, on the other hand…I’m definitely going to miss the process
December 10, 2010 at 3:53 pm
I found the grind was not integral to the game experience and didn’t prove that the person knows their class anymore than max fishing does. It was a mindless grind that a monkey could do. That being said, I think there should be some sort of training necessary to level it.
December 10, 2010 at 4:26 pm
While the actual mechanic was mindless grinding there were still two very important aspects to the process:
It required singular effort and purpose to do it.
You needed to research where you had to go to level each part of it.
December 10, 2010 at 5:06 pm
I do agree that max lockpicking skill can be a symbol of dedication but I wouldn’t put that much into it honestly. Despite the effort and research behind it, I would guess that the process is irrelevant towards other aspects of playing a rogue.
I would probably never have given this a thought despite the fact that I’ve finally started a rogue, so I can’t say I will miss it or had looked forward to it.
December 10, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Completely agree, it’s a sad day for rogue kind. My regret is that they didn’t give us some sort of title, just as Ama says ‘a rite of passage’ – might have been a small consolation.
@Kalandor
You’re right it doesn’t have any practical benefit for other aspects of being a rogue but that’s not really the point. It’s about absorption, role playing if you like, feeling more, well, roguish…
December 11, 2010 at 10:08 am
Adam = roleplaying? I don’t believe it!
seriously though, I think I get your point. It is just as much a question of immersion. When I perform a quest on my new rogue I often find myself asking “how would a rogue go about solving this?”. Then I do some sneaking, some stabbing and then some more sneaking.
December 10, 2010 at 6:28 pm
“You needed to research where you had to go to level each part of it.”
That took about 30 seconds:
http://www.wowhead.com/forums&topic=116181/guide-to-lockpicking
Then you’d have to travel miles to awful places (Wetlands, Badlands, Desolace…ffs!) and faff about, frequently underwater, spend ages waiting for just one one of those stupid boxes and then not even get a skill up from it because it was green. Hell, I remember stealthing my way through SM Cath 4 times in a row, pick-pocketing everything that moved and getting a grand total of about 6 skill points from all those junk boxes – lvl 150-175 was hell!
I did it, I hated it, and I am surprised your rose-coloured spectacles are kicking in so soon after the change – much has been dumbed down in this game, but if the thing was awful to start with I really don’t mind.
It’s when they dumb-down/’streamline’ fun stuff that I object – lockpicking, for example, *should* have been a complex & involved thing to get trained up, preferably with lots of sneaky rogue-specific quests involving the massively underused Ravenholdt faction or something like that, but the way it was previously implemented…wasn’t. It was an awful, tedious grind and I will not miss it.
I will agree that maxed lock-picking did correlate quite well with actual skill though, even though there is no reason for it to.
The ‘Soz, I hasnt lvld that lol’ factor is real, but we have all sorts of stats and achievements that can be checked to make a guess at someone’s skill now, and it generally doesn’t take long to spot an idiot anyway.
About the only good thing I’d have to say about old lock-picking is that the endless pick-pocketing taught me how to write macros…
December 11, 2010 at 12:00 pm
“… That took about 30 seconds:”
Which most people didn’t do.
December 10, 2010 at 9:39 pm
I’m a little disappointed as well as I never found it difficult to level lockpicking on my two rogues but that could just be nostalgia kicking in. On the other hand I’m not at all upset over the need to level my weapon skills anymore as I found this non-roguish, but I think this was based upon internal RP’ing. Regardless of the change I’ve been happily picking pockets left and right and have an over abundance of some rogue specific health pots. I’ve not had the need to use them as of yet, but I’ve not hit level 82 either. Leveling Assassination to me seems OP atm and it’s fun. I’ll try out combat on my other rogue later.
December 13, 2010 at 11:16 am
“we have all sorts of stats and achievements that can be checked to make a guess at someone’s skill now”
well that’s not quite true in some cases. For example my newest rogue only has the title jenkins and “the patient” since he hasnt raided at all in wotlk. He was created after the sundering and as such has no note worthy achievements at all. So anyone checking it is gonna go “Lulz another nub…”
Thats why i loved lockpicking. It proved you actually had put some effort into your character. Sadly the only way to see if a player has put any effort into their characters nowadays is just looking at their gear (which in wotlk was useless since gear was given away like candy…)
December 13, 2010 at 7:01 pm
I’m with you, there. Stealth assassination jobs, pick pocketing and picking locks were things that I enjoyed about the rogue class, when my main was a rogue. It was almost completely ‘flavor’ and had no mechanical difference in things that ‘mattered’ like raids and instances, but it still made me feel rogue-y. I wonder what makes rogues feel rogue-y now.
December 13, 2010 at 8:48 pm
There are precious few doors left in the game anymore, locked or not. Might as well not have lockboxes at all. Just drop the charade and give the huntard another green to loot.
December 14, 2010 at 3:21 am
The whole game is getting dumbed down with every patch. Soon you’ll log in, be part of a raid with auto spells and the boss will die in a few seconds. You’ll get the highest tier kit and they’ll be encouraging you to start another 9 Chars with different races (Eastender, Xfactor Failure, Chilean Miner) that you can lvl up in a day and be ready for “Catastrophe – WOW 5″ by spring. And then Amazon will fail miserably to get it to you before the summer quoting too much pollen fall….. I despair….
December 14, 2010 at 11:15 am
Oh! Thank you for telling me why no rogues ever EVER pick lockboxes anymore.
Guess I’ll get rid of all the boxes babyme-s have been accumulating now…
December 22, 2010 at 12:01 am
I have to agree with the context of this post. I remember doing the warlock dreadsteed and doomguard quests. Nothing screamed warlock like mounting up or someone dropping dead at an altar for some increased dps on curator once BC hit. The instant training of these drove me nuts and forced me away from my warlock. Now the once bad ass master of dps is simply a lawlock. Pretty soon the game is going to have one class ‘uburnub’ that can faceroll raid level bosses because there will be no reason for sorting out the details good group composition, etc, etc. I could go on and on.