Twas the Night before ICC: Raid Prep, Thoughts and Advice from a few EJers.

I feel lucky to have a pretty fun, yet demoralizing atmosphere here at EJ, especially in the Benefactors Bar but I wanted to make a post about expectations and opinions of tomorrows pending release. As I await for the responses and possible vent interviews I'll give you the questions and will come back and fill in the answers hopefully in an hour or so (or maybe tomorrow).

The first two responses were from Bazz (a Warrior from Fusion of Turalyon) and Xav (a Warrior from Premonition of Sen'jin)
----------------------
1. Do you feel with the pending release of ICC tomorrow it's too early, late or just right?

Bazz: With the understanding that only easy modes will be available at first, this week feels fine for the release of the new patch. If this were a more traditional release (like Ulduar), then a mid January release date would of been more suitable. As is though, it's fine.

Xav: Given the content pacing built in this cycle, I think it's fine. For most players, this is a difficult part of the year with holiday plans and just general chaos. The less serious the raiding is, the easier it will be to fit in. It would be more than a little annoying to have say, hard mode titanosaur or something open up the week of december 20th and so on. I think it's just right.

2. Some would argue the top tier of guild has shaken up with the addition of attempts on bosses in ToC. Some guilds that are usually in the Top 10 in the world aren't while others have taken their place. Is there any way to explain this besides internet connections?

Bazz: I am definitely of the mindset that TOC created some anomalies in the way guilds are currently ranked. While you obviously still have a lot of the big names at the top, there are a smattering of guilds who managed to snag a higher ranking than they might normally be able to. I can tell you that we lost a pretty big chunk of our attempts the first couple weeks working on Anub hard due to one of our holy paladins having unstable internet. But it's all we had to work with, so we just did what we could.

Xav: Insanity, which is what's used for the arbitrary ranking the community mostly decided on at the moment, isn't really based on internet connection. Immortality is for sure, which is excluded from it. You can have an utterly atrocious display of performance and internet stability on every boss and actually still 1-shot them, so I don't really think that's it. As for the complete absence of some of the regulars from the top-10, I really have no clue at all. Perhaps they were using strategies to kill the bosses that were more than a little sub-par.

3. What are some things you hope to accomplish tonight and more so tomorrow?

Bazz: We look forward to tearing into the new bosses. We'll definitely be looking to having some fun, and starting to put our strategy guys to work by tearing apart the fights to find out ways to optimize them.

Xav: Just another day, truly. Quality time spent doing quality things!

4. For players and guilds on the outside looking in, reading MMO-Champion and World of Raids for boss kill updates what tips do you have for guild masters, officers and raiders of player looking to become more competitive?

Bazz: This is a tough question to answer. It really depends on the type of guild and their leadership. Many guilds lack leadership who show conviction. Too many guild leaders are too scared to really enforce rules and such within their guild environment. Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not advocating that all guild leadership systems should become hard asses, however they shouldn't be afraid to set down a specific list of rules, and more importantly not to be afraid to enforce them. Once you have a good framework built for your guild things go a lot smoother.

Xav: You just need to surround yourself in like-minded players. People who are only playing for fun or loot aren't going to ultimately drive you all to be more competitive and make it possible. This is always easier said than done, as success attracts players like this, so if you don't have them already how do you get more - but that's really what the challenge is. And if you do already have players that are competitive, then you're going to have to work through tiers of their ability/dedication with a refinement process (recruiting more, perhaps personally steering people in the right direction).

5. How do you all tackle new content as it goes live. What are you nervous (if anything) about tomorrow? Most people I've talked to think that the original 4 bosses out tomorrow will fall fairly fast. Is this a good thing?

Bazz: Keep in mind that this is an easy mode release. I would not be surprised at all if all 4 of them die within a couple hours of the dungeon being available. What I am focused on more is finding out all the specifics of the final release of primordial saronite and how to start allocating that for upgrades for the guild. My initial impression is that mixing the Shadowmourne quest line and standard gear purchasing is going to create a lot of headaches for guilds out there.

Xav: Well it's not the hard modes, so I can't see why they should pose any threat at all to any semi-serious guild. They're still basically saying they want the non-heroic modes of the instances to be just about puggable. For content that actually matters, though, that's a pretty broad question. We are very analytical and like to have a very good idea of everything that could happen before we ever pull for the first time. And once we do pull, we log everything, write everything down, and try to talk in layman's terms to the whole raid to make sure people know what the fuck just killed us (or them).

6. How do you feel about the system of bosses and their releases this go around? We've seen a few ways that bosses are released.

Bazz: I approve of this 100% (at least that is my initial impression). We've often talked about this in Fusion - What if Ulduar was released in "wings" like this? I think it would of been a bit different, and hopefully more enjoyable.

Xav: Originally I thought it was okay, but I'm not really a fan of going from say, coasting around at 30mph to full overdrive turbo 220mph in one day. We get like what, 4+4+4+3 bosses unlocked or something? And when the final 3 are unlocked, you also get every single hard mode too? (Potentially, assuming you kill regular mode arthas to get that privilege). It's going to go from a mostly relaxed schedule to full-on focused progression mode overnight, literally. More granularity would have been nice, but ultimately we'll just have to see how it plays out.

7. From what you've experienced, seen and read about what boss are you most excited for and what boss do you speculate will be the initial brick wall for most guilds (aside from the dripping of boss releases at first)?

Bazz: This is a tough one to answer, as I don't have much exposure to what was on PTR. We only got to test a few of the bosses, and it never does a fight justice to watch a video of it. I'll get the obvious out of the way and assume Sindragosa and Arthas (especially Arthas) are going to be difficult encounters. However that would seem to directly conflict with the limited attempts for those bosses (think Algalon - 1 hour timer, hard fight but simple). One boss in particular that we got to test was Festergut. It's a pretty straight forward fight, but there is some very subtle coordination that needs to be very precise. I think it may prove to be one of the more challenging fights.

Xav: I had a lot of fun with many of the bosses so far. Valrithetheateia Dreamweaver, the vampire chick, and definitely Sindragosa. The hard modes of these are probably going to be incredibly awesome first kills, like the kind where your raid is almost completely dead, near wiped (well, except Dreamweaver). I'm hoping so anyway, those make the best kills!

8. With the addition of a new legendary melee weapon have you already decided who will get it or is it up for grabs still?

Bazz: Obviously nothing is set in stone, but I will say that our list of likely candidates is quite short.

Xav: Yeah, I'm getting the first one. To tank with. As Titan Grip.

9. Do you have an inspirational speech lined up for tomorrow night as raiding begins or do you feel like everyone knows their roles and is ready to get to work? Is there's something your raiders are always telling each other to keep spirits high?

Bazz: Nothing for patch day. It's a bit of strange feeling with the way things are being rolled out. When easy modes released there really isn't much to get excited about. No huge rush - since the important stuff is really the hard modes. It will be a nice change though to have some new content to jump into. I expect spirits to be naturally high come raid time.

Xav: "That's what she said"

10. Pure speculation and opinion when do you see Heroics modes starting to open up with the first few kills of The Lich King?

Bazz: As we saw with TOC, there are guilds who are prepared to do anything for progression. It would not surprise me one bit to see hard modes opened up at the earliest opportunity. I suspect that there will be guilds out there who will run an alt crew through first to burn through their attempts learning Sindragosa and Arthas, to give them more exposure to the fight for when they bring their mains through later in the week. Fusion doesn't really have a full 25-30 alts that we can do that with, but we'll still do what we can to open up hard modes as quickly as possible.

Xav: Like timeline? Probably First week of February.

Enjoy, I hope the format turns out alirght! Thanks for Bazz and Xav and I await a few other answers from people!