I'm anaphylactic to milk proteins so therefore I eat pizza without cheese. I have my whole life, and I love it. I resent that remark.

I don't know if this has been brought up in this thread allready as i havn't managed to read through the whole thing, but here's another aspect of raiding that in my opinion has effected TBC and that "magic feeling".

I feel the fact that you can obtain items of epic quality through 5 man and 10 groups takes away a part of the game i personaly liked.

Most likley compared to many people on these forums I am a late starter in WoW, and when i eventually did begin to play MC and BWl were allready open and guilds where in there, iirc a month after i started Nef was taken down for the first time on our server, to give you and idea of time.

So as i was leveling up and I would bump into people with MC / ZG (to some extent) / BWL gear and i would know these people where in well established guilds on the server, of course some people had some BoE craftable epics aswell. but the point is i liked the fact that these people where from well known guilds and that the items they had equipped were a long way away for myself. It gave something to aspire to. Also these people where few, and when you did see someone BWL equipped for the first time it was like "wow thats where i want to be".

I joined my guild at lvl 15, worked my way up to officer and eventually got asked to take over as GM (stood down after TBC) by this time i was level 60. we started ZG and AQ20 and eventually MC and a few weeks before TBC we managed to get Nef to phase 2, a huge achievement for the guild, and for myself after starting so late in the game.

Now in TBC the majority of people are semi equipped in epics, now to me this feels a bit of a cheat. my feeling is that epic items of epic quality should require an epic battle to obtain, not farming 5 man heroics with 4 of your mates, or killing a few bosses in karazhan with your close nit family guild. It should require scores of people to unite to destroy something that is more powerful than your individual character. Even ZG didn't have that many epic drops and many of them had quite a low drop rate.

In short i don't feel a lot of the equipment currently in the lower end of end game deserves it's purple colour. Which sounds incredibly stupid i know, but seeing as everyone now is wearing purple it takes away that special feeling when you down a boss and get a epic item, and just go to a capital to see LolIpwnu from <random guild> is fully epiced out.

That was quite difficult to type to convey my opinion accurately and probarbly isn't the only problem with endgame TBC, but could be an aspect that contributes.

(long time reader first time poster, yay for me)

The above sums up a lot of what I feel, making the raid sizes smaller and making epics easier for Joe Average to get has diminished the value of epics. I remember my first epic from MC (silly epic wind with +10FR) and how much I was in love with it just because it was my first epic, now in TBC when I get an epic it feels no more exciting than winning AV... Epics are supposed to bestow a feeling of accomplishment and "epicness" but they really aren't doing that anymore.

Do the last two posters believe that beating the old horse of "casuals don't deserve epics because it ruins my own epicness" adds something worthwhile to the discussion?

Designers want to give players means to advance their characters and improving gear is one of them. It was much worse when non-raiders were stuck in weak blue gear because there was no itemization path of progression for them.

Yes, now it's easier to be clad in epics, but surely that's not your only goal. If you want to be distinguished from other players, make sure you make good gear choices besides just their color. Complete the other game goals: get a good arena rating, do end-game pve, finish your darkmoon card, etc.

Before TBC, it was usual to get random whispers "oh where did you get that helm? (T2 after revamp for instance)". Same happens now with, say, Kael's sword. So the awe for the finest raid items is still there. Wishing that developers will design the game with the goal to cut people from its goals and rewards is an outright bad idea and exactly the path the game has been trying to diverge from.

I think the problem people post about is not item quality but the use of the rare/epic color as a sign of rarity. I can understand this sentiment (but don't really care about it), because some epics are far from rare. Tailoring items are a prime example of this and are nowhere near "rare", since everyone and their alt has it. It wouldn't make a difference if everything up to and including Karazhan was blue just as long as it had the same stats.

Um... so people aren't even getting worked up by the actual power of items in risk/reward/rarity terms, but the colour of the pixels in its name text? Come on, this forum is above that level of idiocy.

i didn't really mean it to sound like this whole fuss is about the text colour of items, more of a contributing factor to the general feeling that this thread is concerned with. and yes, to some extend it is just idiocy, and my whole point mite be wrong, but like i said, I'm just trying to pinpoint some of the factors that contribute to the feeling that the above poster talks about when they were receiving loot in BWL.

The gap between item powers (concerning tiers), as the above poster also talked about, is a more sensible solution.

I see where you guys are coming from... when I was in Naxxramas and my guild was working towards downing Patchwerk for the first time it seemed a lot more epic than raiding does at its current state now.

funny example: During our first Patchwerk kill our GM came on vent at about 7% and talked like he was about to orgasm lol (mind you his GM is serious 100% of the time on vent). Thats how amazing those kills seemed. Now when we kill a boss its just like 'yay some more progression now lets loot him and go practice the next encounter'.

Someone made the point that it might be because of the relation in the huge scheme of progression to whats actually available to progress through. My opinion on that is now a days it doesn't seem as epic of a kill because there is so much progression ahead of you once you down a challenging encounter (Kael, Vashj). Unlike in vanilla WoW once you got a comparable boss, like Nefarian during BWL days or C'thun before Naxxramas, you could say you beat the game at that point in time.

I really hope that blizzard learned from TBC and goes back to where we had only one instance to clear and once a few of guilds cleared it or got close to clearing it, they released the next instance. I'm not quite sure but was there this much waiting time once a ton of guilds 'beat the game' in vanilla WoW until the next content was pushed?

A lot of people may say that 'Well blizzard has completed making the instance why not release it?' my rebuttal to that statement is why doesn't blizzard use that time where the content is not released yet to be internally tuning it more so we don't have unkillable content in the game at all (aside from exploit kills and bug kills).

Lamen's solution: Tiered content patches that are seperate from bug fixes and feature patches. If the content was already made and tested extensively and just sitting in storage somewhere blizzard could actually give release dates well in advance of these said content patches.

Oh and little OT here but i don't understand blizzards testing techniques (if they exist at all). You would think that once they designed an boss and tested it for like 2 hours that they could determine if the boss was bugged to hell or unkillable with gear that people can attain? aka C'thun v1.

PS sorry for typos and grammar mistakes... and the wall of text lol

This is exactly why the kills are more "woot we killed it, next" for me than before. At 5/6-2/4, I'm not even at the halfway point of the content yet, and it already feels like we've killed so much, and yet there is so much left to kill and work on.

exactly. My guild just downed Vashj a few weeks ago and barely did Solarian. We are now on Kael and sometimes it doesn't really seem like we are that far into progression because of Hyjal and BT still being left to clear.

I have to agree with this. My guild is, according to WoWJutsu, in the top 1-2% of guilds progression-wise. Pretty good, you would think, right?

And yet, Nihilum downed Illidan Stormrage, according to their website, on June 5th. July, August, September... The expansion's been out for about 7 months total, and a guild that's in the top 2% is 3 months behind the very top guilds in terms of progression?

Even if we kill Illidan, he'll have been dead for a very very long time... how new and exciting will it feel?

Even if Nihilum really enjoyed tearing through everything and then sitting around for a long time(and I'm not sure they did), I don't know that their enjoyment is worth the price for the rest of us. I'm pretty sure Nihilum downed Kael at about the same time as we got our 3rd boss in SSC. And yet, supposedly, we're pretty good. It's a big self confidence question... How can you be really good and be more than a full instance behind the frontrunners? And then, for the guilds in SSC now... 4 full instances behind the top guilds? It has to feel like struggling in Molten Core while other people are fighting Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad. But I don't think that's an accurate picture.


And even if it is... So what? Nihilum's good. Death and Taxes is good. Elitist Jerks is good. They'll still be good, they'll still be the best if you slow them down a little. And it seems more like a race for everyone else, more like we're actually competing with them, if you do. It meant that we could tell ourselves, when downing Patchwerk, "We're only a few bosses behind the very best guilds in the world! If we pull it together, maybe we can give them a run for their money!" Now... was that the objective truth? Maybe not. But it gave people the motivation to improve and succeed.

It's important for some people to be the best, the elite. Even if only 2% of people are in Black Temple, Black Temple keeps way more than 2% of people playing this game. But JUST as important is selling the illusion of proximity to greatness. You've got to sell the illusion to that next 20-30% of people that if the cards fell right, if they pushed it just a little more, maybe, just maybe, they too could be great!



I'm very much in favor of staggered instance releases at the next expansion. Have them all done, fine, but have opening events (not necessarily player driven like AQ) every few months. It gives the illusion of storyline, of a changing world.

Also, if the first instance was more MC-level in terms of difficulty, it means that people can relax a bit and enjoy levelling up. If you have 3 or even 2 months after the expansion is out to level to 80 and get ready to enter the first truly hard raid zone, there'll be less pressure to tear through Quest content.



I suppose I rambled a bit here... but maybe something I said struck a chord.

I have to agree with Zifna (I used to raid on Bloodscalp btw), being several full instances behind in progression is quite disheartening compared to several bosses behind. I'm sure Blizzard have good reasons for ramping up the speed of content release but it's not doing anything for me. Leaving some time in between new content for people to get to the top and feel proud of their achievements would be a good idea, opening events were also a really good idea.

Spreading out the instances will also fix the "no new content for 7 months, this is boring" problem as well. Releasing a instance a month or so after the previous one has been finished would just be so much better than having all the raid content being learned the first 6 months of the expansion with no breaks, then the last 7 months there being nothing new to do and just farming the old stuff, which is the case right now. Releasing all the raids at the same time was a big mistake of TBC, like others have said, when you kill a boss it's just "yay, now we are closer to Illidan", I much prefered the pre-tbc way of releasing the instances.

Though different people have different raiding experience, and skill. Blizzard needs a raid at Molten Core level with just tank/spank; without anything too complicated for the next expansion. Then they need one or two more with a little increased difficulty but not too much; before they can make really difficult content.

If they do that and release raid instances one at a time then the top guilds might have to farm a Molten Core style raid for 3 months; and then something only slightly more intressting for the next 3 months?

There is a problem with expansions in this game not really beeing expansions, but more or less new games entirely, since the old content is thrown away. Older players want to go directly to the advanced levels; but there need to be beginners content as well.

Then try and make the game gear dependent with big differences in gear power between raid instances (besides beeing dependent on skill) and you can easily force advanced players to farm booring/easy content to death before beeing allowed to reach the parts that could be considered fun.

I'd guess that the best idea really is to have 4 or so raid instances from start; that requires progressively more skill; but with fairly low gear progression/checks so that already experienced players can bypass the easier levels fairly fast without having to spend months farming them; and reach content appropriate for the players skill level.

That such a model means top guilds can be several instances ahed of other still good guilds sure.

I really don't think the casuals knew what they were getting into. Putting the hardcore/casual issue aside, the new encounters are far from simplistic. IE, less people does not necessarily mean less effort.
I have felt the same way. Part of it (for me anyway) seems to be that the encounters tend to be complex to the point where small errors mean a wipe. While that is all fine and dandy (no one expects something for nothing) the lack of a margin for error means that you basically have to 'script' the entire encounter. The reason we would cheer for the old 'epic' battles would often be because we'd have to overcome the imperfections in how we did the encounter, something would go wrong and we would somehow pull it together and struggle through. New encounters you make one wrong move and you are hitting 'release' so you can run back and try again. There is no variety to the new encounters. They have been designed a certain way, and you have to do it that way.

It's like playing a football game that's been played already. You already know the outcome and you just have to go through the motions. Not very exciting IMHO.

I'm really not convinced that this is just about a number. I think it is more about the instance design than it is about the number of people the instance is designed for. Let's be honest here, the developers are running short on ideas. You can only do so many instances where you all walk up to the boss and 'tank and spank' it down before people get bored. As a result, they have had to come up with new and creative - and very complex - encounters to keep people interested. That new complexity, coupled with smaller numbers, has really made some of the instances a chore to run.

pretty much all the bosses in BT are unique, course i was extremely casual preTBC and only did MC, but everysingle boss ive encountered so far in BT are very fun, and the only bad thing i have to say about the instance is mother trash takes way too long.

Mother trash is only like 20 minutes. The only trash that is a bit too long is Gorefiend's trash.

Are you sure you don't have those backwards?

They have realized this. Tigole's interview indicate very well that this is in fact the role they've selected for "Naxxaramas Reloaded" in the expansion: a 25-man raid that can be done straight out of the levelling period, after people have just amassed enough blues to have decent stats, with various complexity layers (after all, you've got 4 wings for that).

As the introduction raid, those people who are more hardcore, and who have done Naxxaramas before will tear thru it quickly, and move on, so they don't have time to get really bored by a familiar instance. And the less fast paced guilds don't implode by threading thru a Karazhan-style 10 man before going "back" to 25 man.

The problem is quite frankly more fundamental to the way TBC was structured raid wise especially at the low end.
Tier 6: Black Temple and Mount Hyjal
Tier 5: SSC and TK
T4: Karazhan, Gruul and Magtheridon

T4 content was pitiful and most guilds would blow through it fast (had it been actually properly tuned when initially released) then be stuck waiting around for the T5 content had it been patched in later. As it was ofc T6 content was patched in later and Hyjal (tho technically already in the game) was obviously untuned nevermind Vashj/Kael so would really count as being opened in the same patch as BT. The way the instances were organised makes it awkward as a new guild starting out and indeed makes it difficult to split them up more over a period of several months especially when you take into account their size.

Ideally Karazhan should have been an alternative to the 25man T4 content not a requirement in order to progress, kinda like the role ZA will fill next to TK/SSC. Likewise 2 "onyxia style" encounters should never have been the first 25man raids either tbh, the feel of a proper dungeon sprawl is far superior to the blink and you miss it nature of the single boss instances and that was a big turn off for many. So something like Gruul and SSC for T4, Magtheridon and TK as T5, etc with Kara/ZA off to the side. Those changes would also have allowed a more flexible release structure as the more focussed guilds wouldn't blow through T4 quite as fast which would've allowed for at least 1 extra patch. ZA should probably have been released sooner as well (certainly instead of this massively delayed 2.2 voice chat patch).

Something else that bugged me though was more a matter of perspective. Tempest Keep is this massive place on the outside, look at it compared to Mechanar etc, so why is it that it is tiny inside in comparison and features a whopping 4 bosses? Look at it compared to Naxx for example, that had 4 times as many boss fights etc and you can see why Naxx felt "epic", 40 or 25man aside.

I can see this reasoning, but all I can say is that I hope they have learned from TBC. You want to include the instances at launch? FINE. Do it. But go ahead and make some announcement, get the Page Ranking guys to jazz it up a bit, something along the lines of "All the instances are there, but the players will determine when they become available! We plan to do an opening event for each instance after the first one three weeks after a guild on U.S. Servers clears the previous instance. In TBC, the top guilds got way too much of a lead on the other guilds, so this will let the other awesome guilds who aren't quite as quick as the best guild in the U.S. still remain in competition with them. If you were a great guild in TBC, but got off to a slow start, you never got a chance to catch up with the guys at the top. What's more, the guys at the top ruined the feeling of newness for everyone. Even guilds in the top 2% knew all the boss strats for various encounters months before they reached them. We didn't like that. We know about the allure of the competition between top PvE guilds and we want to restore it. We don't want anyone to rest on their laurels--we want the top guilds to sweat."

If there had been a 3 week buffer after TK, SSC, and Hyjal that would mean that Nihilum would have killed Illidan only a few weeks ago.

I'll admit that there are problems but I don't think that those problems are insurmountable... in fact, I believe that they -need- to be confronted.






In addition, I just wanted to comment on the idea that it would be a ton of time before people could focus on hard instances again... I'm not sure about that. Naxx had what... 15 bosses? 16? You could easily do the first 6 or so at early MC level difficulty and ramp it up through the course of the instance so that Kel'Thuzad is at a place... oh say harder than Leotheras but easier than Vashj. That would allow them to jump right from the first instance to a SSC/TK level of tuning.

I think this is a large reason for the lack of epic-feel in the current raid game. I remember our first Nef kill, 20 people left after the zerg, half the raid dead around us, and managing to eek out a win with the raid at almost no mana, all cooldowns blown, and people cheering in vent. We don't get that anymore. Its either a flawless execution kill, or a complete wipe. There are no more last second heroics.

Also, does anyone else get the feeling that the encounters aren't designed so much as a set of obstacles to be overcome, so much as a single strategy you have to execute? I know that the huge amount of resources on the internet adds to this, but I still feel like in most encounters there is very little flexibility in the way a fight is approached.