My biggest regret with BC raiding was the BT patch not coming sooner. I cant imagine how many raid guilds broke apart from the consumable zerg content. From the bleeding edge of content in vanilla wow to a casual pvper, make me wish all those people i raided nax with from Raz-KT just waited just abit longer.

I'd believe that if it was consistent across the board, but the difficulty of a number of the prerequisite encounters makes me think otherwise. I don't see truly casual guilds downing Vashj or Kael'thas any time soon, which means that they won't be able to get into the more "average consumer" oriented-BT.

It doesn't feel like this is a sea change from Blizzard in what they want the WoW raiding experience to be. This just feels like a bunch of undertuned bosses.

They might have learned something, but it was the wrong lesson to learn. The issue back in those days was class X was inferior in dps capability to classes Y and Z yet all only brought little more than dps to the raid. Through conscious design choices which they've mentioned and in the end result we still see in the game today, dps is tiered amongst classes and not a situation where if equally geared and skilled different classes will do similar dps.

DPS checks where you need to gear up to have a shot are fine. The issue is Blizzard is instead sticking to the notion that Class Y does the most dps, class Z next, and so on. If they get rid of that notion, dps checks would be alright (and the issue of who to bring would be more on who's been lucky on drops rather than who was unfortunate enough to roll the wrong class).

As far as I am concerned I am excited about the raid game in WoW now. As Cel mentioned, our guild is currently on Lady Vashj with only Void Reaver down in The Eye. I wouldn't call our 5 day raiding schedule "hardcore", but maybe "dedicated" and we have typically run a little ways behind the bleeding edge. It took us longer, but we did clear Naxx before TBC. I would imagine there are quite a few guilds in this general vicinity, and even more a bit behind that.

What that means is we (and lots of others) have lots of good content in front of us for the coming months. Consumable farming is manageable, so I have time to run some heroics or do some fun stuff in between raiding. Come raid time we have a host of bosses that seem to be fairly bug free, interesting and beatable if we perfect our strategy. The drops once again have some of that "wow" factor that was so exciting in Naxx when we dropped a new boss.

This is a stark contrast from a month ago where I practically dreaded raid night and the endless farming to make up for a night of banging our head on brick walls that wipe us if *one* person sneezed at the wrong time. And when we did pull out the win the rewards were underwhelming followed by another brick wall.

I do not envy the leadership of Nihilum in the coming months trying to maintain member interest with new content being so far away. But, it is not the first time they have "beaten" all current WoW content so I'm pretty sure they already know what is in store for them and how to manage it.

Times are looking good for the rest of us though that aren't quite at that level. From a purely selfish perspective, I like the approach Blizzard is taking and enjoyed Tigole's post quite a bit.

These are 4 really bad fights to make comparisons to.

Loatheb was not a challenging fight. It was one of the simplest fights in all of Naxx. All it took was hundreds of gold worth of Shadow pots for every single attempt.

4H was fun and challenging...if you had 8 Warriors showing up every night to raid. How many guilds out there broke WoW ToS by sharing guild Warrior accounts in order to be able to do 4H learning raids?

Sapphiron and KT both died about a week after the proceeding boss. In fact, the WoW forums were full of complaints about the end bosses of Naxx being too easy.

The main difference in speed of bosses going down(a week from Sapph to KT compared to a day between council and Illidan) can be easily explained by the removal of world buffs from the raiding game. Pre-TBC, most end game guilds had one single attempt a night on the boss they were working on with the raid at max effectiveness. The difference between a world buffed raid and a non-world buffed raid was staggering and the time that world buffing took up was not insignificant. Currently, high end guilds can throw themselves at an encounter at max raid effectiveness every single attempt for 12 hours straight.

People really are looking at Naxx with rose colored glasses in this thread. Yes, the fights were interesting and unique, but the instance also burned out a ton of people from raiding. 2 of the first 3 Horde guilds in the world to kill Patchwerk never finished Naxx before TBC.

@Tigole:

While many people do have concerns about the level of "challenge" they're facing and how hard they have to work on a boss(ie: time investment) in order to make the epics feel more epic when they finally get the kill, I do have to say that in the end that you're right. As long as you're having fun, that's what counts.

On the other hand I think it's important to understand why people are reacting the way they are. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel that the majority of people in raiding guilds with any degree of success do not play for the gear. They log on for the experience of working together with their guildmates to overcome challenges and accomplish things, and that sense of accomplishment is very important. If you're one-shotting everything you come across, you're first off going to run out of content very quickly, but also you won't have that feeling that you really DID anything.

Take for example your average trash pull. You walk in and you've never seen it before. You have NO IDEA what it does. You tank some stuff, try to sheep some stuff, and hope it works out. Two or three minutes later you're looting the trash, rezzing the 20 people whose deaths you can't quite explain yet, and planning how to do it better next time, but it's not like "WOO! FIRST TRASH DOWN! WATCH OUT TRASH PACK NUMBER TWO, WE'RE COMING FOR YOU!". There just isn't a sense of accomplishment that comes with killing trash mobs, or most 5-man bosses for that matter. There's probably a psychological element in there, but regardless if you're not putting any effort into getting it down then actually getting it down doesn't mean anything.

I believe the concern people are having is related to what I said above. People are killing Rage Winterchill on their first try with what would be considered average gear for that level of progression and without even having a full raid group. They're taking the 22 people who didn't have to go to bed after Kaelthas, hoping they have something remotely like raid balance, expecting to learn the trash to the first boss and instead they literally 1-shot him. There are trash pulls that they've wiped to and they just 1-shot a tier 6 raid encounter. Yeah, he's the first boss in the zone and the concept of a reward encounter is something I'm very much in favor of, but nevertheless he still got 1-shot by people who had no idea what he did with 90% of a raid group and average gear. I think this in combination with similar stories coming out of The Black Temple is what's causing such an uproar moreso than any world first drama.

I think we're doing about average for a semi-hardcore guild. We've got 20 hour scheduled raid weeks with mopup/karazhan on offdays. We were killing stuff in SSC before 2.1, but Vashj felt much more distant pre-patch than now. For what it's worth, we're finding 2.1 raiding to be extremely enjoyable. We wiped on Hydross something like 30-40 times before finally killing him and all I could think about was how horrible it would have been to do that pre-patch. 40 Shadow Potions, 40 Adepts' Elixirs, 4 Flasks, 40 Basilisk Meat, 40-50 Mana potions...but with those elixirs taken off the list, flask materials reduced drastically, and mana potions available in exchange for coilfang armaments in generous quantities? Sure it was still a bit harsh on the old repair bill, but I didn't get a stomach ache thinking about the hours I'd have to spend farming for herbs each time we wiped, either. Coupled with the changes to trash(which could suck less, but it's much better) I'm honestly loving TBC raiding.

I've done the hardcore Naxx progress thing. Flasks every week for Patchwerk even on farm kills(til 2.0). The massive mats farm-fest for Loatheb. Hell, all of Naxx was a consumable black hole and I loved it anyway because the encounters were fun and challenging. BC encounters might not be quite what Naxx was, but they're still unique and require us to focus and learn how to deal with new challenges that we had never faced previously. We still have to adapt in new ways and even though we're not the only Horde guild on the server who can do it anymore, we're STILL having fun. Quite frankly, I now spend more time PLAYING THE GAME than FARMING SO I CAN PLAY THE GAME and I love it. So what if the encounters are tuned lower than they used to be? We're having FUN. So long as you guys keep coming up with new ideas to keep us busy I don't think I'll ever have any complaints. "Reward bosses" like Lurker and "Epic bosses" like Kaelthas definitely have their place, but I think the majority of encounters should be somewhere in between and it looks like that's what you guys are trying to do. My hat's off to you all; you're doing a wonderful job. I'm especially appreciative of how much communication we've received from Daelo lately when it comes to bugged encounters.

I can't speak for BT/Hyjal and it's possible that there's been a tuning oversight(from vodka's experiences, for instance, it does concern me that they're able to go in and kill a boss on the FIRST attempt with no prior knowledge of the fight), but I can't speak for it 'til I actually see it. However, I do very much hope it's an instance full of Heigans instead of Grobbulusses.

Once again for emphasis: Heigan good. Grobbulus bad.

I'm glad Nihilum has "finished" TBC and I really, really, really hope you don't go in now and retune Black Temple in 1-5 weeks so its much harder. WoW is a game, not a job and I am glad you have made the encounters not require 25 insanely geared and skilled players to beat.

Since I finaly see this as a way where I can actually communicate with Game Developers (since EU subscribers can't post on USA forums) I will adress all my concerns for endgame TBC raiding in the same post.

First about the highlighted topic. Black Temple has proven to be one of the best looking and most entertaining instances I've done so far. As already mentioned, it starts of easy with the 3 first bosses, but already at Gorefiend and Bloodboil it gets a bit harder and you have to figure out the mechanics of the encounter before you can down the boss. Essence of Souls is by far the best encounter I've seen in the game so far, that requires total focus of every single member in the raid. It's also very close to bugfree, except some problems in p2 that could be argued to be bugs (pm me tigole if you want me to specify). I've yet to experience the last 2 encounters of the instance, and I can only hope that Illidan has the same quality as Essence of Souls. The trash in Black Temple feels rewarding to kill not only because of all the epic drops and hearts of darkness, but because the reputation aswell. It's actually quite enjoyable! I'm really happy with the changes that were made to the consumables as it lets me have some more time off for other things in life.

I can however understand how some people get disappointed by seeing their heroes and idols progressing through content that is so far away from them with ease. All that people in general see of the encounters is the actual time it takes to defeat it, and not the real effort and coordination and strategy involved. People only see the killmoves where everything goes sort of perfect and everything looks easy, what you don't see is all the small misstakes that normaly happen, that in the end lead to a wipe. What makes guilds like Nihilum and Curse and in my (not very objective) eyes Forte special is how well organized everything is ran - guilds that doesn't have the same kind of calm and order will have a lot harder time learning new encounters.

What really concerns me now is when we're going to get some new content, because paying a monthly fee to farm old content doesn't seem very attractive to me. As far as I understand, Zul'aman will not be 25man content so that's really not of any interest to me. There are some problems though. Releasing a new 25man instance so rapidly after a previous one has been cleared will make the gap so much bigger between guilds like Nihilum and more "normal" raidingguilds. Illidan was already killed before barely 5 guilds entered the instance. The difference between a hardcore guild and a normal one has simply become too large to be able to tune content properly to satisfy everyone.

Now about the major concern that I believe both us and several other guilds experience: Hyjal. Hyjal in it's current for is just not enjoyable at all. The trash is harder than the bosses, and the recent "hotfix" (hotbug) made it so much worse since the Jaina and especially Thrall are so fragile that you can't really bring them into combat without a large posibility of losing them. No matter how good you get, and how much better gear you will have in the future, it will still take around 25minutes to clear through all the packs before every boss. I have noticed the upcoming patchnotes but I hardly see that as a proper sollution. Something I would like to see, since I actually enjoy the epic feeling of a battle against shitloads of mobs and NPC's running around with famous characters from the lore while trying to controll the chaos, is to keep the waves at 12. But!! If you manage to get all 12 waves down you shouldn't need to do that again but directly get the boss. At least for that instance reset.

And last, since someone might actually be reading, make mages do at least comparable damage to warlocks and rogues.

I really really hate to mention this, considering I thought the arguements went out the window when they announced Blood Elves would have paladins but...

BoK and Devo aura? When you consider the difference they make on undergeared tanks, it's a pretty serious difference. I remember we were in Naxx, attempting Loatheb, and one of our tanks was helping someone on an alliance guild from the server we used to be on doing Twin Emps. Their tanks had slightly better tanking stats overall than him with raid buffs, even though he was in 5 piece dreadnaught with Widows Remorse and the Plague Bearer, along with some of the best other random items. I'm pretty sure we would've cleared Naxx if we'd had *just* BoS too. Every fight seemed to be a threat problem, especially Thaddius. Unfortunately we ended up collapsing in a heap midway through learning Gothik because of slack raid attendance (having cleared Abom/Spider/Plague wings).

Anyway, less derail, more raiding discussion.

It's very interesting what's being said. Most people seem to appreciate the raid content, and will go through it as it is. As has been pointed out, the time investment that Nihilum/Curse have put in to BT/Hyjal is on par with or possibly exceeds the time put in to Naxx. People have become more efficient at doing things, there are less things to learn because of all the previous encounters that we've been through just getting to BT. It was quite interesting to go in to BT today with 18 people (lack of people attuned/online, stupid SMV quests and IRL commitments getting in the way) and getting Naj'entus down to 71% after 5-6 minutes with 5 healers and me in healing gear while still feral specced, along with a major lack of DPS classes. I see what people mean about some of the content just not quite feeling tuned to the point at which you have to be just to kill Kael in the first place.

I can't praise the Kael fight enough. It's varied, causes a lot of people to a lot of things that they wouldn't normally have to pay attention to, and requires a lot of adaptation of people during the fight to contend with some of the random elements, as well as thinking outside the box slightly for some bits. Vashj is of a similar nature (although I do believe the entire fight is in P2, as many people have said before).


I think the major factor in the "epicness" of fights now is that when we get to a boss that's hard, you just try it, and try it, and try it. There's no more "let's flask up, pot up, world buff up, (soulstone up) and do this" like the first time killing Loatheb et al. I came across a screenshot of the first Loatheb kill we had the other day, which is the only time I can actually remember myself ever using a Flask of the Titans (healing specced back then) and had over 8k health raid buffed. It was truly a one-of-a-kind event for my character. There was serious tension there because everyone knew, if they screwed up that might be it and you've just wasted 39 other peoples last hour getting buffs and their time and money on repairs/consumables to get through the fight.

I think there's also something to be said of the publicness of raid encounters now. Naxx was the first place where people really started publishing exactly what bosses did, because you actually needed really good tactics to get past them. Huhuran was essentially stick NR on melee, assign some healers fairly well, and then the tanks sort the rest. Twin emps was detailed enough to actually need raid wide tactics that everyone appreciated on their own, and that followed through to the Naxx encounters. It seems now that unless you're in the first 3 or 4 guilds to actually get to (not kill, but get to) a boss, you know exactly what it does, with a boss mod already written out for it, and it's just execution to get sorted (which is sometimes easier said than done).

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.

And on people talking about the Kael fight, even that I don't find to be quite where I want it to be. We wasted way too long on people deciding to die to stupid shit like getting hit by Thaladred, and then we wiped like 4 times on the Pyroblast phase while I figured out how to live through pyroblast, and then perfected the timing. We got him sub 50% on a dps burn with people dieing and didn't see the next phase, the first time we got him to come down and do the levitating stuff, he died, it was pretty anticlimactic that the hardest part of the fight was the adds? That pissed me off. I mean overall the encounter is better than most of what they've done in pre TBC, but I just didn't like the way that it was set up so that we wiped more getting positioning and orders right with the adds than we did to Kael. Maybe that was just us though.

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.

I've only seen a couple of posts try to do this. While I agree that this is the wrong place for it, I can understand people wanting to try and get their voices heard by Tigole since he's generally an entity that they can't communicate with, and the WoW public forums in general are a place where people make a lot of thought out posts that seem to just fall on deaf ears because not every single one gets a response. Even I couldn't help throwing a thanks Tigole's way for the good work they've done with 2.1 near the end of my initial response to the thread.

@ Aphyrax: You do realize that Tigole designs raid content, right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure he's not the person to be directing questions to about arena gear.

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.

This reminded me of Final Fantasy. The first one, you go into a dungeon, you spend hours clearing it, and then whoops - the white mage died, and the one survivor is posioned so you die walking out of the instance - turn the Nintendo off, you've just wasted today. All those level ups you got in the cave? Psh. Gone!

That was fun, right? Why'd they ever do away with such a thing?

Oh man, remember save points? And then they started throwing them everywhere? Heck, some games, you can even save at almost completely arbitrary points, so if SomeEmoBadDudeWhoWantsToDestroyThePlanet kills you, you only have a 5 minute fight to redo (and if you fail, you can just walk outside and go kill a few rabbits - instead of losing all intermediate rabbit killing progress).

Of course, then you have like Crystal Chronicle's last boss, which is the three hour dungeon crawl in one encounter and unlearning the lesson, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.

The point being, not only do you and I agree - but market economics seems to as well.

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?

I think for the first time I disagree with the general opinion of the EJ Forums collective.

A lot of you are calling for buffs to the Black Temple and calling it too easy. I think if it has any type of learning curve and it's fun it should remain as it is, this content really does need to be accessable to your average joe raider. The elitist mentality that only some people should be able to see content and clear it has got to go. The mentality that something that should take a week or more to learn, and wipes after wipes after the first kill to master said encounter really has to go. First and foremost if people choose to raid it should be an enjoyable experience. I think Tigole is finally getting that, and if Black Temple is as fun and "easy" as you all say it is, I think they're on the right track.

Comparing the encounters to Grobbulus in Naxx is just harsh. I think when more people get to BT, you'll see people taking a bit more time on the encounters, and you'll see your average guilds actually enjoy learning the encounters, they'll get to the collective difficult encounters as they're supposed to and take the time they need to learn the encounters and beat them. The most important thing overall is that people are able to get to BT and Hyjal, and see and defeat The Betrayer, if the fight feels epic and you're having a lot of fun doing it, then so be it. Beating the last mission of WC3: Reign of Choas or The Frozen Throne on Hard mode isn't extremely hard either, but it's really alot of fun, and it FELT Epic leading your army against Illidan's at Icecrown and the Legion's combined forces at Mount Hyjal. If Blizzard can recreate that feeling in WoW, more power to them I say.

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