Posting about world firsts is somewhat of a faux pas here, but there are two items of interest for everyone in this particular event. Nihilum killed Lady Vashj, and

(1) Apparently, she only dropped four Vials of Eternity
(2) She instantly respawned, and they're killing her again

Every additional kill they get is another week where they don't have to spend time clearing SSC while working on TK for Hyjal attunement. There have been plenty of game-breaking raid-related bugs, but I think this one takes the cake.

(if this topic is still heap material, apologies in advance)

Is this like a Netherspite-esque bug, kill her in a certain phase and she repops? Or just really evidence that they didn't test this stuff much at all.

I'm always impressed with the creative ways Blizzard comes up with to artificially slow down progress.

Assuming Kael'thas is the same, that means you can't even zone a full raid group into Mount Hyjal until your 7th kill.

Though, I don't really see what is left to discuss.

End boss buggy? No surprises there...

It just seems to me that they haven't learned from their past mistakes at all even the ones they fixed. Think Drakkisath's blood and how only 1 originally dropped and then later they made it randomly 2-4.

Question is, will she drop the same loot, different loot or no loot?

Looks like she dropped 2(!) nether vortex too. That's one very fast way to make a 95 dps 1h if the vortex is a guaranteed drop.

10 Vashj kills?

That's not what I'd call fast, bugged respawns aside (though I can't imagine they'd be permitted to farm her repeatedly like that).

To be honest, do you really believe that? Even if a GM catches on quickly, it depends entirely on the individual GM whether he decides to immediately port the group out or something. And then, even if the respawn bug is promptly fixed, is someone going to dig through the inventories of Nihilum members to ensure that only 4 people got their Vial this week? They're going to wind up with with extras, when all is said and done.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not in any position to actually care about this. However, if I were Nihilum, I'd stay in there as long as possible, knowing that every extra kill before somebody catches on will probably translate to a very real week saved in the future.

Since I'm sure there were GM's watching, I'm surprised they didn't despawn her

I'd think something like this would be flagged pretty quickly since it's a first time boss kill. You could parse the server log and reverse any drops taken after the second death of lady vashj.

Since I'm sure there were GM's watching, I'm not entirely convinced they didn't respawn her

/tinfoil hat off

I think the only relevant point to discuss is dropping 4 vials. If that's intended then that's mind boggling considering that would put a brick wall into your progress. There would be no reason not to tune SSC (namely the trash) down a bit then, since you're still limited at the end.

As for respawning kills, well, that's all just speculation but I can't see that being permitted for long.

All I can say is, SHOW ME THE MONEY.

Tired of alpha testing Blizzard´s encounters, and this encounter hasn´t been tested at all. Phase 3 is the biggest joke in TBC so far, and I cant believe that a boss as crucial as Vashj is in this state currently.

With that being said, the fight itself could have been great, provided that they fixed the 5000 bugs that exists currently.

Details (w/o strats)?

Yes, only 2.5 months of kills if only one person in the guild gets them, everyone gets to feel the enjoyment of Atiesh I guess.

Not having everyone get the Vial is another stupid and flawed method from Blizzard to keep people slowed down while they stop playing with their *******'s and finally finish the content.

one more thing to make people cancel. I wonder how many more guildies will quit raiding in the next month.

The Vials of Eternity thing is such an EQ-esque thing to do (i.e. slowing progression to the next zone for no valid reason, also potential for drama, who gets what in terms of pecking order etc). I'm fairly surprised repeated kills was allowed and further respawns weren't immediately perma killed til they can fix the bug, but I don't know. In cases like this I don't blame people for enjoying the bank error in their favor.

What were the stats on the gloves? The dagger seems solid, I looked around the site and didn't see a mouse over of the gloves, so either they were pretty bad or they just wanted to show off the weapon.

Devil's advocate:

1) Presumably Kael drops 2 Vortices as well. If you're killing both, that's 4 per week, or 5 weeks for a guaranteed weapon that is tier 5.5 in quality (higher ilvl/DPS than Kael/Vashj drops, likely approaching Hyjal/BT quality), in addition to the other loot you get. I don't see that as a bad thing.

2) Pre-TBC we had to wait months between raid zones. Here, we have to kill a boss for 2 months. Is one really worse than the other?

Maybe this is just thier way of helping guilds get down to size for the 25 man raids.

During the Naxx era we had 40-45 show up for raids, and immediately log out after. After the start of TBC we had 60-70 people online every day. Now we have 3 groups running KZ.

These little gems just make it easier to get down from that 70 people online to a nice trim 25.

never mind.

Has there ever been an MMO with good communication between the devs and the players?

Well done to Nihilum for a) killing her, and b) killing her despite the bugs.

You clearly never played EQ then. The dumb thing with the company at the moment is they are repeating a lot of the same mistakes in terms of quality control as those which were made in EQ. There definately seems a bigger push into exclusivity in content, and raiding is decidedly a lot more "hardcore" than it used to be, and its buggy and untuned as ever (not in every case obviously).

A lot of the things players rant about, you could visit the LOS website and read Tigole's old rants or the old rants on the FOH website about raid content and the issues people complain about really aren't all that different. Apparently no one really learns from past mistakes.

Off course it is, not for the top guilds indeed, but for all the others : they will never ever catch up. At least in wow vanilla, average guilds were never more than 2-3 month from the top (I'm talking about "good" average guilds, like the one who killed sapph / 4hm while nihi killed KT or so).
I love this progression system, the fact that you must complete instance A to do instance B, but heh, limited quest drops like this is another story.