I can respect the idea that Tigole posted that properly tuned content will die fast to guilds spending this much time and effort, but I don't think properly tuned means that they'll die this fast to guilds with no prior experience and gear that is not what the instance should be tuned for. Nihilum killed essence of souls on the second, 2 days later they killed Mother Shahraz and illidari council, the next day they killed illdian. Curse did the same thing minus illidan so far, it took almost a month between when Death and Taxes killed Loatheb and got the first kill on Horsemen, another almost week to get Sapphiron, and Kel'thuzad (who had a comparitively short learning curve compared to horsemen and low gear check compared to the resist hell that was sapphiron) at least took Nihilum 3 days.

That is how fast some content dies when it is tuned properly the first time and challenging. Not that an entire patch of content is dead in 2 weeks (assuming Archimonde dies soon which at the current balance, I'm guessing will happen)

I don't expect every fight to take forever, I'd just expect that there would be some level of difficulty that doesn't seem to be there. And while I can't claim that I've seen the end of BT yet, so I could be way off, I fought Najentus and we got him to 15% before a GM asked us to move on, it wasn't bad, Supremus was on path to die the first night we tried him, Akama died in maybe 2 hours of raiding, we took Teron Gorefiend and lasted a good while with 10 people on test. We had Rage Winterchill to almost dead when Jaina died to death and decay on test after maybe 2 or 3 pulls tops, and killed him second pull (I think) on live, the first one I dc'd while tanking and died.

I don't want every fight to be four horsemen. But god damnit, that was my favorite fight yet, I'd certainly like to see more fights like that instead of dropping the whole idea of fights where raiders have to actually figure something out rather than just seeing what an ability does and instantly knowing how to counter it.

Not to mention a lot less frustrating. Let's not forget that WOW's great success has hinged on the fact that the content was open to the masses. That was the idea behind instances, an easier leveling curve, the absence of grinding to level, etc.

The marketing up until now was Illidan telling us we weren't prepared. To say only a small proportion of the active playing community ever gets to kill him in the expansion is a bit rough. Yes, I understand that it's just delayed for them until the next expansion, but by then it's old news. Most people will want to kill Illidan in TBC, not 12 months after the fact.

To a certain degree I agree with you Gurgthock, there should be a super-challenging group of encounters to actually test a guild's playing ability and gear level concurrently. I don't agree that it has to be BT or Hyjal, however. The disadvantage to making the last zones the hardest execution-wise is that people feel boxed out of critical storylines. Illidan isn't the lieutenant of a key character like Kel'thuzad was. He was part of a whole series of the Warcraft 3 storyline. If you create a highly difficult curve to get there, people are going to get upset about missing it.

You can say what you want about PVP, 10 man's, and heroics being an alternate path of advancement, but let's face it - if the high-end raid instances are where the storyline is then that's where the majority of the playing populace wants to be. They've done the cipher of damnation questline but they never see the end result? It's great to have something to do, but that something has to be meaningful, or people will stop doing it.

I think it makes a lot more sense to create the extremely hard encounters as an optional encounter that doesn't necessarily involve the main plot of the game world. Dr Weavil was off on an island in the middle of nowhere, but it was a cool as hell encounter. Most of the WOW community probably doesn't even know who he is or what he's doing there. Rewards don't necessarily have to be progression-oriented loot either. You could easily have the winners get elite mount training for free, or vanity items like the armored Netherdrakes (hell even vanity pets). Things that make the time/skill-sink worth it to the people who are that good.

Pretty sure they spent plenty of time on the PTR figuring out fight dynamics. They didn't just show up and collect loot.

Everyone keeps bringing up Four Horsemen. Presumably because it was basically the only pre-TBC encounter that stumped guilds for a long time for reasons not related to broken mechanics.

Honestly, you're not supposed to be nostalgic over things that only happened a year ago.

If your guild is already in Black Temple, I'd say you're far above the average WoW raider. Your guild has most likely a more skilled player base as well as substantially more time/dedication to farming consumables in some balance than the rest of WoW.

My guild is probably average age 28~30. We are incapable of farming the consumables that were previously required without burning people out. Subsequently our player turnover has been extremely low because we chose to only engage in limited potting for final boss kills (Nef/C'thun/Emps). We farmed all of AQ40 (including all optionals), and downed about 5 bosses in Naxx before we ran out of time to keep trying. We would have never downed the later fights with all the required consumables.

My guild made it a point to not zone into SSC due to the nature of what raiding was (fully potted, every week for little gain in progression power). That kind of raid game would have killed us in two weeks. So we farmed Kara, and Gruul, ran heroics for TK keys, and stuck to the schedule that raiding would start when 2.1 went live.

Since 2.1 We downed Magtheridon on our second night of tries, Hydross on our second night of tries, Void Reaver on our first night of tries. And we didn't manage to kill Morogrim with only one evening so far.

The point of my post is this, my guild is the farthest progressed Horde guild of our server, and we are not a server with abnormally bad progression or overall population. However, Illidan will not die until the fall at best by my estimation. There are 21 bosses ahead of us to kill, and we will probably average 1.5 bosses per week, take into account we have a slightly broader playerbase, add extra farm time to gear up extra membership, and pretty soon we are easily talking 4-6 months of content for my above average guild. For me the raiding landscape is hugely appealing and full of fun for quite some time. Fights which require 100% execution, raid stacking, and consumable usage will ALWAYS be beyond a guild like mine. It is a weakness that we sacrifice for a stable raid base, and the guild atmosphere we desire. We don't have elite players behind every character, but we have dedicated ones. With dedication and effort, I do feel that a guild like mine, given enough practice and time should be capable of "clearing" the raid game.

Pre-2.1 that was a pipe dream. Post-2.1 that is a reality. A reality I much prefer. This thread has a much biased opinion with guilds who are quite far above the norm, even if you are not downing Illidan tonight.

Thanks for posting.

Best regards,

Eoy
<Forte>

People have to remember, that pre-TBC, everything consisted of 40 man raids, now we raid 25 man, meaning there's less people making mistakes, and it's easier to form the perfect raid.

I enjoy 25 man raiding much more than I ever did with 40 man raiding, given that there'll always be those bad apples, I think that in general, reducing raids to 25 people, have improved the overall raiding experience by a large margin. Plus, it's much easier to organize a tactic as well.


I never got to raid Naxxramas more than a few times, since I didn't play at that time, but I enjoyed that instance the most in design, over any instance in The Burning Crusade. Personally I love Black Temple, it's the best instance after Naxxramas, it's well made, in terms of looks and boss encounters; There are some bosses who clearly, well, to say it in plain English, suck, most of all, a encounter like Illidari Council, I don't even know if they're meant to be real bosses, I guess so, since they drop Tier 6 legs, but when we got them to 0%, we were all just waiting for something insane to happen, but they just died (Sorry for spoiling!). Maybe Blizzard wanted to reward people getting this far, since you need to farm Shadow Resistance gear to beat Mother Sherazz (or whats her name) - I guess so, personally I don't know what to think about the encounter, but I wouldn't be against buffing them, the encounter is quite trivial, we would have killed them straight after Mother Sherazz if our 2nd Main Tank internet didn't disconnect for the night.


There's some talk about making encounters gear dependent, so that for example you wouldn't be able to beat a encounter without, lets say, full tier5, or at least close to, on the whole raid. Thats the worst idea ever if you ask me, it COULD work, if gear actually were balanced in drops. Take Nihilum, we've had so many Warrior Priest Druid tokens, that I'm on the verge of tears every time we clear SSC and TK. Then we have our rogues, and our paladins, most of us have maximum 1 tier 5 piece, most have 0, shamans don't want tier5, since it's better for us (or so they say, I haven't checked to be honest, I'm just glad I have a chance to get some loot). The point is, most of us wear random gear, some of our paladins have blues, use pvp gear, kara gear (loads - but most of it is good though after the buffing), or even resort to using mail/leather; even our rogues uses heroic blues, and it's not that we don't want tier 5 etc, we just simply don't get it.

I just don't get why some classes can have full tier sets, and others have nothing, while both have put just as much time into the raiding, I would love for a system that wasn't completely lottery, so that loot could be distributed evenly throughout the raid, so that ALL can get something. If THAT was the case, then sure, make raids gear dependent, but if any encounters were gear dependent now, we would never be as far as we are at the moment, because we never get balanced loot drops.

AQ40 tried it, whether a success or not, with optional bosses that was supposed to be somewhat difficult. You could have those bosses around, being harder than the end boss. However, what most people does, is simply thinking of the new optional bosses as the real end boss then.
And lore-wise it doesnt make sense to have optional, non-lore-bosses thats more difficult than the big bad-ass end boss either.

But ye, it could be interesting. Somewhat taking the heroic mode to raids, without doing it just like 5 mans (which would suck imo).
Like, taking X non-lore boss from some TBC instance, throw in a small instance somewhere, only add this boss (give him a new name, skincolor/whatever). "Here is Mother Shaharaz brother, he is one hell of a motherfucker"... Give it a try. A really overtuned boss (but obviously not a bugged boss, since it had to be possible to kill it).
It wouldnt take much time away from developing new content, and it would give a purely optional boss, which required the best of the best gear and great execution, combined with stars aligning the right way... Give people some far out goals to strive for, while farming the old instances (which is BT already it seems). Most guilds would never kill this boss, or bother trying, but it wouldnt really matter either since it was a copy-boss without any lore you wanted to experience.

Its one possible option at least, for adding such extra bosses the bleeding edge could strive for. And an option which doesnt go against the fact that Blizz (logically) wont spent endless hours making bosses only a few can/want to kill.

I would say the problem with tbc progression is pathing, not pacing.

There's some obvious holes (kara 2.0-->4.0 springs to mind, although the initial lack of a 25man 1.0 zone was also obvious, less so is the lack of a heroic 3.0 zone set) in the structure, that I really think make more of a contribution to dissatisfaction with the pacing than the pacing itself does.

Tigole's right - it's about having fun each night. I think a large part of the broken fun in tbc has to do with people getting a taste of what they want, then having trouble finding more. In particular, I think that illidan dying as fast as he did worried the hardcore that they're not actually going to find 25man 5.0 in BT, but instead something easier than TK. (Personally I feel that's a misplaced worry, but it's my assessment about what they're concerned over).

I'm hopeful that future content will do a better job of managing the multiple streams of progression, and hopefully that crossing over between them efficiently will be addressed. We'll see I suppose.

So the question that's been burning in my mind since this topic has been brought up is what do you guys think? What do you say to the prospect of farming the same content until the next expansion (or major content patch) is released? If you don't feel like the last 1.5 weeks of work has been a complete waste of time and what you've achieved was more out of dedication and hard work than laziness and ease, then I don't think anyone has the right to complain.

Obligatory disclaimer: TBC raiding is not possible due to lack of time. Though everything but Loatheb, Gothik and beyond down in legacy for what it’s worth.

It’s certain they adopted a strategy of making everything more ‘casual friendly’ in the expansion, though there are two points where the success of this is debateable. Either way the final dungeons are going to be a little exempt from this and teetering on the side of hardcore. And if content is supposed to be casual and accessible, why are Maulgar, Gruul and Hydross sitting at the forefront?

As much as I really, really, really dislike Failure, I have to agree with a lot of his points. I understand the desire for Black Temple to be fun and accessable, but a lot of the fights right now just seem... way, way too easy.

It is good to know there are at least some challenging fights in the zone though (and we're really enjoying Souls currently). But regardless of how tuned something may be in your eyes, I don't think it makes any sense at all that some of the end bosses are literally dying within a few hours of being discovered!

oh, and very much /agree with Eoy on Hyjal being abyssmally not fun