Originally Posted by Edgewalker
Blizzard knows everything you posted, and has been steadily nerfing content this way since release for that very reason. People that killed the boss first will always bellyache, but that's life, and it really isn't a bad thing because it gives more people a reason to push for better raid content.
|
I wish this were true, but I don't think Blizzard has been that good with progressive nerfs in TBC. I wasn't able to experience the early iterations of SSC/TK, but iirc the only main hard things about early SSC was the trash and Leotharas and Vashj, everything else has been untouched? And in TK, Solarian was only beaten after being nerfed, same with Kael'Thas.
But in any case, the fact that these instances weren't even tested on the PTR demonstrates that they weren't tuned well. Huge mistake, it's hard to even debate the merits of their tuning seriously.
otoh, one can look at MH and BT, which haven't received many nerfs (iirc Illidan received buffs..) and were not really tuned to be difficult for "world first" guilds. They could have been, should have been imo, but they weren't.
Sunwell may suffer the same fate, but it's too early to tell.
In any case, though, I think things like timed runs are good ideas, but you have to keep in mind that the reason why Blizzard doesn't give awesome rewards for many PvE accomplishments is because raid guilds will eventually just sell those accomplishments off to the highest bidder. "We're doing Vashj/Kael tonight, we'll take 3 people to get their Vials to become Hands of A'dal for 1500g each", that kinda thing, which degrades the value of the accomplishment. Granted, this probably isn't too much of a worry with things like the ZA bear and titles for world firsts, but... yea.
Personally, I'm disappointed that there isn't an NPC that keeps track of fastest clear times, like fastest Kara clear, TK clear, BT clear... stuff like that could be competitive even without offering rewards.