I wanted to add by the way, looking at the discussion on page 5, that there are problems with the definition(s) of "casual" being used. I don't trust the wowjitsu numbers because they take as their assumption the notion that anyone who raids is in a raiding guild. The reality for almost a -majority- of the people I know is the opposite.

I'm a member of what is by most measures the largest guild on the Feathermoon server. We have hundreds of members... often close to 100 level 70 characters, and it's not uncommon for us to have 30+ people on of all levels despite covering every timezone. We don't raid. We had -one- Kara raid that managed to kill Attumen on the second week, and that was about it. We're extremely casual by almost any definition (we're the Seinfeld of guilds--we're a guild about nothing!) but with the sheer number of players we have, we of course have dozens of members (enough to form three or more Kara runs on our own were we organized) who are regulars in other guilds' raids. It's our model, for better or for worse, but it means that the few of us who get Gruul gear (or beyond) will lavel a guild of hundreds of players as having some raid progression down when the reality is, we have virtually none!

My impression (from the perspective of someone in a large non-raiding guild) is that only a small fraction of people have been stepped foot in Karazhan, much less gone through much expansion raid content.

The way Wowjutsu has compiled its figures has changed slightly, but here are the most reasonable guesstimates using as similar a methodology as possible.

Since 16th July 2007:

# There are 1363 fewer guilds in total

# However, the number of guilds getting to mid-Kara has increased by about 700 (a 5.9% increase).

# The number of guilds with kills in Gruul's lair has increased by ~1800 (a 25% increase)

# The number of guilds entering SSC has increased by ~800 (a 49% increase)


The "average raiding guild" has almost completely cleared Kara, as before.

The "average ranked guild" has cleared Kara and Maulgar, as before.

The "average 25-man guild" has killed Maulgar and Gruul, as before.

The "average T5-capable group" has cleared Gruul, Mag, 3 SSC bosses and 1 TK boss, once again as before.

Conclusions:

"The average group" hasn't changed much because the numbers are fairly large and the median assesses the shape of the distribution rather than total numbers.

Overall numbers are up, but the fraction of people getting into even SSC is still low in comparison to the numbers that got into MC and BWL, let alone ZG and AQ20.

On the other hand, Karazhan has been a roaring success, which is presumably why they're putting in more 10-man content. The unsolved mystery is whether the dropoff between Kara and SSC is due to people not *wanting* to do 25-man content, or not being *able* to do it. The high proportion doing Gruul and Maulgar would seem to indicate that there's a demand for easier 25-man instances which is not being met.

Forgot to add: On the other hand, the sharp increase in the number getting into SSC is very encounraging in this regard. Let's hope it continues!

Yeah, as someone who posted earlier in this thread representing the viewpoint of a "Casual" guild I'd have to agree that more people should be doing SSC and TK. They are definately enjoyable and doable now by any guild that can do Gruul and Magtheridon. Some bosses are a bit tougher than others but overall none of the ones I've done yet are out of reach of any raiding guild as long as they possess some decent organizational skills so that they actually consistently raid. Just getting in there and doing it is more than half the battle in my mind.

To be honest what I think it'll take now is time. WoW took a long time - 2 years - to build up a wide "casual" raiding base. My personal unscientific observation is that around half of the most casual of those have simply given up on the 25-man raid game in toto. They've either quit the game, or they raid Karazhan and are too traumatised by the pre-2.1 experience to even try to go further. The leaders of the most casual guilds have burned out in droves, and are no longer leading (in many cases no longer playing).

The raid game's not in too insane a place though. They'll be back. But it will take a very long time for people's perceptions to change, and for the casual raid game to rebuild. Even now, the message at that end of the street is not "Great news, ZA is comign for us", it's "My God, they're making yet *another* instance that's too hard for us?"

More will step forward to take the place of the burned ones. And in time maybe the perceptions will heal. Or it may take another 2 years and another expansion before anyone, anywhere believes that real "casual raiding" is possible. And at this point, that applies irrespective of the actual difficulty of the instances, simply because of the perception factor and the burnout factor.

This is very definitely the sort of thing that varies according to server culture. On my server, for instance, I have never heard of progression raids being done by anything other than guild raid groups. There'd be the occasional pug of a low-end raid (i.e. there were ZG pugs back in the day, Kara pugs now), and some guild alliances (always with the aim of getting some experience so the guilds involved could eventually go it alone), but I've never heard of regular ongoing raid groups consisting of people from non-raiding-guilds.

My impression is that that sort of thing is more common on RP servers, for some reason - it surprised me not at all to see that you were posting your experiences from an RP server.

I wouldn't mind if ZA offered T5-equivalent loot (ilvl 128, maybe ilvl 138 if you complete it on uber-hard-fast mode), but I think putting tokens in there is the wrong approach. Instead, put complementary items: the old ZG set was great for this. A bracer-belt-neck-ring-trinket set would be really cool, especially if it had a 2, 3, and 5-piece set bonus, with the 3-piece being really nice.

Putting gear into ZA that is already in the game is something they have never done in the past, and I hope they never do in the future. I know I got my T5 helm from Vashj, and I beat that fight with my guild. It was a real accomplishment. I don't want to be able to wander into a 10-man instance and find another one off some random troll. It's just not the same.

Nope. For a 10-man, putting tokens is a necessity. Every piece of armor that drops is usually specialised enough that one, at most two people in the raid are going to use it - and quite often, already have it. The only exceptions to that rule are DPS cloth (which 2 classes can use, with a third looking for it depending on spec) items.

The only items which benefit more than two people in the raid are weapons, or non-armor (ring, cape, necklaces, and the odd trinket, when there's one) - and those aren't covered by tokens in the current system.

In fact, the token system doesn't go far enough. What do you do when Curator drops yet another mage/warlock/hunter glove? Nothing.

Given the use of the "bartering vendor" system (where vendors sell you not for gold, but for specific items), you can move from a one-token-one-item model to a three-token-one-item one.

Instead of dropping "Gloves of the Fallen Champion", or whatever, the boss drops:
- One armor pattern ("A spectral glove")
- One material piece ("A plate of strange green metal")
- One symbol ("Tower's Symbol of Defense")

You can take those three items, and have your tank go to Shattrah and pick a tanking plate glove. Or, if your tanks have these, you can give the pattern to the warlock, and the material and symbol to the tank. Then, when the next boss drops a spectral bracer, verdigris chain links and a symbol of magic, you can either have your element shaman pick all 3 for his bracer, or give the bracer to the tank for a bracer, the chain to the resto shaman, and the magic to the warlock, who now only needs some "moth-eaten silk" to complete his glove.

It's more complex than the current model, but it gives you endless possibilities. The boss sets the difficulty of the piece (easy bosses drop mostly bracers & belt patterns, median drop shoulder and boots, harder one drop chest & legs), but all parts have potentially a use.

That, or move to a single token: "A spectral glove", which can be traded for any glove, tank, fury, ret paladin, moonkin or shadow priest, it doesn't matter.

(of course, if you do that, then your raid gets fully equipped that much faster... and you can bring a fresh recruit, go thru the whole dungeon, and next week, he's full epic. Is that a big problem?)

I don't think Constantius implied that ZA should move away from the token drops, but that the instance shouldn't drop the current T5 tokens themselves. As in, the exact same tokens for the exact same T5 set. And given the current model Blizzard is using for itemization and distribution, I both concur and agree it's unlikely.

Blizzard has stated in the past (I think it was at a Developer panel at Blizzcon) that they don't want to do just 1 token for everyone, as it often leads to prioritizing the tanks, then healers, then dps. While this is most logical (assuming those people need the gear), with any sort of rotation in personnel for the group, this potentially leads to DPS being left 'high and dry' for extended periods of time. Honestly, this could prove true no matter how people prioritized the groups; the moment you give everyone access to the same thing, some groups will inevitably focus on one class or group, thus 'finishing' them in the instance sooner. Once they're done, they're more likely to sit out, either because other people need in more than they do, or they just don't want to go, thus opening the door to more of that class/genre stepping in, and the cycle repeats.

It's a drastic exaggeration, but with the current 3 token setup, at least you have a 1 in 3 chance of your token dropping, and then a roughly 1 in 3 chance of getting it. 11% isn't great, and the RNG's streaky nature (curse you, randomness) can lead to stupid things like my guild seeing more T4 Warrior/Priest/Druid tokens than the other 2 combined. We've gone months without seeing a Hunter/Warlock/Mage Shoulder token from either Gruul or Lootreaver. However, in a perfect world, I think the 3 token approach is a good one.

It does raise an interesting question; how will they divvy up the tokens with a 10th class? 2 tokens perhaps, 5 classes apiece? Spec balance might sway that, but with the Deathknight presumably having at least 2 sets (dps and tanking), I'm curious to see where they put them.

Anyway, thank you for the analysis update Songster. While I continue to push my crew to get Al'ar and Leo and finish up our supposedly 'farmed' content, the fact that the numbers (well, the median at least) hasn't drifted much at all makes me hope that perhaps Blizzard will nerf these encounters at least a little bit more, to promote rapid progress into the so called "starter" zones.

Edit: in regards to the multiple drops system, personally I'd prefer if they avoided that. Just a simple, single token is so much more accessible than relying on the RNG to be kind to you not once, not twice, but thrice. I went into ZG on every character class there is, and I can't tell you how many of them had their Primal Hakkari Piece Of Garbage sitting in their bank for months, as they got a Revered level one while Friendly, and then waited months to pick up even the bracer piece. Or who got their bracers smoothly, but then went months without seeing a single Primal Hakkari piece for their later gear. Such a system (by the very nature of the RNG) just puts people in a position to be screwed over repeatedly.

Median probably won't shift far even if they nerf it. As people progress up the ladder, more people join at the bottom, so the median stays fairly fixed. As I said, it measures the shape of the distribution rather than the total numbers.

What's much more necessary IMO is to find some way to simply increase the total number of raiders. So much effort goes into building these zones that it's a huge waste if the majority choose not to raid.

By the very end of TBC I'd expect/hope to see the median be somewhere in mid-late SSC as opposed to it's corrent position at Maulgar. That's inherent in the nature of the beast - you'll always have far more at the entry level than at the top.

I would agree. We have our fair share of "join us if you want to raid with us" progression-oriented guild-raid combos and one that has cleared BT. But it's almost as though everyone knows those are the "hardcore" raids and the majority of the rest of us are in situations like mine: progression-oriented, enthusiastic about raiding, but in a raid that may be "sponsored" by another guild but most definitely is not exclusive to that one guild's members. I think it is in part due to the fact that few guilds have the resources to tackle this kind of content exclusively on their own... everyone has 5, 10 or 15 people interested but 25+subs raises the bar a good deal higher. Hence, raids whose members wear multiple guild tags. Here, it's very common and I've been in many of them over time.

They skewer the wowjutsu.com numbers however and leave me very uncomfortable drawing conclusions based upon them. My experience has been that many casual progression-oriented raiders are still trying to figure out how to find a stable Karazhan raid, in sharp contrast to the wowjutsu-based claims that the average raider has had Kara on farm for a while now.

Agreed. Sadly, most casual guilds I've had the pleasure of being in were about half pre-hardcore raiders and don't mind dying 40 times to Vael and the other half never raided before and after 40 wipes they were ready to just pvp for their epics...

Complementary gear would be less than ideal for ZA's target audience: guilds that can easily clear Kara but don't have the numbers for current T5 content. We want a progression in difficulty and gear. The guild that complete the "extremely difficult" timed challenges should be rewarded with clear upgrades for their main slots.

You killed Vashj. The memory should be important to you, not your helm. Is it worth denying progression to smaller guilds just so you can feel more special? If that "random troll" requires as much out of the ten raiders that clear her as Vashj does out of each of her 25 killers, why is it "second-class-citizen" content? Will it bother you that Vashj's current and future nerfs lower the bar for wearers of your helm?

Ideally, ZA's most difficult content would be tuned on par with Vashj, so it would be a parallel means of progression. Realistically, ZA is tuned to be a "quick-clear" zone, so we're going to have to resign ourselves to tons of arms warrior plate and moonkin leather 2 or 3 ilvls higher than Kara's itemization.

I wish Blizzard would learn from Vanilla WoW's endgame issues, and offer some sort of endgame progression besides huge dungeons that 3% of the population is clearing. If my servers are any indication, there are a ton of competent guilds out there that simply lack numbers. This large demographic really ought to get some sort of progression, too

As of 8/07:

5-man content: Stops with heroics.
10-man content: One instance.
25-man content: 2 tiers over 6 instances.

It's interesting how Kara is part of 25-man progression, instead of the beginning of its own, parallel path.

Removing the random target abilities like watery grave- Morogrim and even infernals-Prince would help semi-casual guilds alot. I'd much rather see more ground slam, spout, arcane bolt, spawning adds abilities as they are much easier to handle for a "normal" raid. If you are in a hard core guild it wouldn't be much of a problem getting 2-3 of your MT healers sent to a watery grave, players would adapt by them self or the VT communication would take care of it fast enough. For Semi casual guilds the same event would most likely lead to a wipe simply because the raid communication and the natural adaptation of the players aren't as good. Compare to another easy encounter like Lurker you will occationally have "not so sharp" players killed from spout but here it's easy for the raid to compensate. Re position, assign or what ever needed you have time to do it, the raid won't wipe within 3-4 sec due to a random abilitiy.

Don't get me wrong, I love to be challenged and I don't mind wiping or encounters to be hard but I do not like these random wipes. It's hard enough as it is for semi casuals in 25 man raids, you won't get 25 imbas and the % of someone making a rather stupid mistake is large enough not adding random abilities. I much rather prefer fights like Al'ar over Morogrim even though the fight itself is harder.

This might have to do with our guilds composition but the fights that we seem to struggle with is the random ones + farming silly fights like Magtheridon. Bring a few new players to this fight and someone will mess up the clicking, if you bring your very best it will be 80% loot sharding (just as well skip it).

Karazhan also has more bosses than Serpent Shrine and Tempest Keep combined. A better comparison would be unique boss encounters, of which 25-man raids have roughly twice as many, not 6 times.

There are screens shots of Illidin kills with warriors wearing Gruuls shield. Ill just throw that out here.

If we hadn't been lucky and finally gotten a Gruul's shield two weeks before our Illidan kill our MT would have been wearing the Nightbane shield.

When I heard that they were adding a new 10-man, I was ecstatic, even though I'm in a "hardcore" raiding guild. I absolutely loved Karazhan, and I still love to go there, as every boss encounter is fun and well-designed. There are only a few problems here and there with trash (as in, too much), but otherwise, it's a very good instance.

I can only hope Zul'Aman is as good, and I definitely do hope they add more 10-mans in the future.

You misunderstood my point. I don't care about progression for smaller guilds: I'm all for promoting them getting gear in a smaller, easier to access environment. I don't even mind the concept of ilvl 138+ items being available from a 10-man instance. In fact, I'm quite looking forward to being able to flesh out my raid's gearset with Vashj level loot on a faster reset timer (FINALLY something faster than a week, if the rumours are true; I need something to do on off nights ... ).

Having said that, I still stick to my guns and say that they should not, and, more accurately, WILL not, put T5 into ZA. There's no point. It doesn't make sense.

And that's why I think they'll put in some sort of set that is completely complementary to *all* sets out there -- T4, T5, S1, S2 Gladiator, etc.. Stick to cloaks, necks, rings, trinkets, weapons, offhand slots, boots, bracers, and belts. You can easily make a 5-piece set from that, as was shown in ZG, and even have it be useful, interesting, and entirely worth putting on.

And it doesn't *replace* what you already have (how many PvPers would replace S2 gear?) but complements it. Unless they're planning on an entirely new Tier ... T4.5 anyone? ... they should avoid overlapping slots with the head/shoulder/chest/glove/pant slots, so that you don't force a set break just to wear the new, complementary set.

Sad to hear that, I was actually liking those. They were like a "State of the Raiding" type of post. I guess I'll have to crunch my own numbers then.

I think the thing that gave ZG it's biggest life was the head/leg enchants. Guilds that were well past where the average item level in ZG was were still going back to get the enchants. It was also ~MC level so it provided an entry level instance for guilds.

Putting t5 in ZA would be pretty boring... I'm already getting t5 from SSC. Sure, getting it from ZA on a faster reset would be easier, but then there would be no reason for me to care about SSC and TK apart from Hyjal attunement. Plus, I get tired of Blizzard re-using armour models. If they actually reused the armour itself that would be just... sad.

However, tokens are good (and gear of equivalent power to t5 would be good). I would like to see a small (or even 5-piece) token-based set that doesn't overlap with the tier sets.