On the verge of playing Devil's Advocate here, but allow me:

Breaking protocol is bad when you're heading up a game played by 9 million people across the world, and you're doing their customer service. Allow me an example:

- The decision is reversed based on good-will, and the CSM guys get their loot. "What the hell, they started the 'death script', might as well make 'm eligible to the loot".

- A second guild runs into a similar issue, except 20 people have already released and are running back when a feigned hunter jumps up, crits an Arcane Shot on a barely-not-yet-resetting-but-running-back Illidan, the death script is started, and he dies. "But CSM got their loot when the death script was initiated! We just had a misunderstanding with the raid who had released and were running back!". Blizzard response after some discussions: "Well, the death script was started, maybe we can show some good-will and send the loot around to everyone they claim was present.".

You can probably take it from there. Yes, very extreme example and no, it's not something that's going to happen. It's because Blizzard don't want to compromise and I can understand that. "No, because it's not in the logs" sounds anal, but it's a definite no, a line they've drawn which they can cling to, hold themselves to, and make clear to the raiding population.

See how fast the Method-Vashj kill is brought up in this matter already? It's exactly my point. Such precedents are incredibly dangerous, I'm surprised Tigole (if that actually happened that way, my memory is hazy on that) had the guts to set one. It was a trade-off between setting a dangerous precedent and dealing with the possible after-effects, and public appearance. Public appearance won. I'm very, very curious what kind of talks they had after that in their Irvine offices.

I realize I'm making it sound like they're making life and death decisions here, which does sound kind of stupid when you look at it from some perspective, but do some of you guys remember the "outrage" when that poor brain-disease kid got his wish fulfilled and got, as I can almost literally quote, 'free epics' ? That's the kind of mainstream public they're dealing with here, when those kind of precedents are set.

I feel very sorry for the CSM guys, first-time Illidan kills are pretty big for any guild. I'd prolly be right behind you raving about it instead of typing this if I was part of your guild. But you're -and I don't mean this as an insult, it's well-played regardless of how it may come across- the 'umpteenth' kill of Illidan by now. You are not getting a lucky deal like Method's Vashj kill, the first kill of a the first, big 25 man raid instance boss and lore character in TBC. Good luck on your next reset, I'm sure you will be making it count. I'm pretty sure the rest of us know where we stand when this particular event happens now, too.

However, 9 million people are not killing Illidan, and this is a specific bug with plenty of evidence that the guild involved basically did kill the boss - the death script doesn't start itself. I think that pretty much negates the rest.

Further, there is a precedence already for guilds being reimbursed on Illidan. It is clearly at the discretion of someone not involved in making policy.

I think this is obvious enough, and apparently common enough, that there will ultimately be an Illidan policy, or this bug will be fixed... because when 500 or 5000 guilds are killing illidan a week instead of 50, something will likely need to be done. I believe something similar was happening once in Hyjal.

Yes, but where do you draw the line? I recall some movie being linked of someone starting the Illidan event on the PTR and Akama taking him to 95% eventually on his own. Yea, it took ages, but he did it. Where should they draw the line now? Dots? Ankhing Shamans healing themselves to get back on the threatlist while Maiev does the rest?

I agree. It's sloppy. I did not read the page in between with some more examples being given, I jumped on the quoted part and typed my thing. However, it only strengthens the point I'm making: some guilds are getting lucky with this at the discretion of a senior who's top dog of a night shift, and thinks "What the hell.", while a clear standpoint should have been made in the first place. That way, it will at least suck, or not, for EVERYONE who gets affected by this.

I do hope to see some kind of official point or policy on this, I just think they should stretch it to accommodate future encounters as well. Do you really want to have said discretion in your case, while 500 or 5000 other guilds are killing Kil'jaeden?

Anyway, I'm not agreeing with their actions, I'm just trying to explain why I feel they made such a call, and should be making it more often and faster.

Seems pretty cut and dried to me -- if the boss dies, you should get the loot. Akama is on our side, so it's dumb for us to lose the tap becuase he happens to be the one that finishes him off. If it's the last 5%, then so be it. Blizzard could always have made Akama hit for less if they didn't want him to be able to budge Illidan's HP.

That is the part i also dont get. Why not make Maiev hit for 1 symbolic damage and lower Illidans hitpoints accordingly?
It cant be hard to scale the hitpoints of the only mob involved according to that, but it would lower the chance of this happening to almost zero. And i doubt alot of people would whine about Maiev not doing lore scaled damage.

Illidan Stormrage dies.

Its in the combatlogs of the guilds involved having that bug, i dont get how they cant track that one event.

Also Akama is by the script unable to finish off Illidan, a well implemented NPC i would say.

Don't use stoneclaw totems to try and attract parasites. That is all.

Story time! What happened?

My guess is that the totem died and immediately spawned 2 more fiends? We've had it happen with priest shadowfiends and water elementals, but I had no idea that it could happen to totems as well. :P

In phase 1 one our shaman decided to get creative and use a stoneclaw totem when he had parasites. We killed his parasites as usual with no problem and were dpsing Illidan waiting for the next parasite spawn when all of a sudden there just two parasites in the raid. No warning or anything, they just appeared. We wiped in the ensuing chaos as parasites multiplied. Everyone was just like "what the hell happened? where did they come from?". The shaman in question posted a combat log of Stoneclaw Totem being infected with parasite.

Here's the snake trap stats from one Teron attempt we made right before the end of our raid last night:
Venomous Snake - WWS
Viper - WWS

One of our raiders made this image for his forum sig:

Would be nice to see some input regarding the tanking in phase 2, seeing as it's probably what's causing most problems for quite some guilds.
Probably 95% of our own wipes on Illidan have occured to tank deaths in phase 2.

Tanking phase 2 is really easy once you realize that standing in the blue flame is OK.

Follow these rules:
- Keep the elemental facing away from the raid
- Don't stand in the laser
- Stay as close to possible to the totem, going around in a circle. As soon as blaze hits, rotate

When you have to turn it around, run through the mob (don't swing around so that it faces the raid). Wear max FR and try to get crit immune.

A helpful word of advice for anyone at Illidan.

Do not let him transition from P3->P4 at 30% when he is also transitioning from human to demon form. In our case, he got stuck as a demon during the mediv script and started running around melee'ing for 100k. GG Blizzard, now we have to raid again on Saturday =(.

We almost did that today, but I guess we stopped dps just in time. We had him hit 30% after he had been in demon form for a few seconds, and the transition worked out fine. No bug. Tonight we also let our MT die to a demon with Illidan at like 2%. Booya!

Four days off. Oh god I love the "offseason".

Last week, we had Illidan at 30%, everyone was alive, clearly a kill, then he switches to Demon Phase. I move up to tank. He switches back to human and Maiev comes out, and suddenly I remembered that we shouldn't have done that .

Maiev actually becomes active at like 28% though, not 30% exactly. We usually have to stop DPS at 33% and wait for an extra Demon phase.

I need something to do during the day, 3 raid nights is just too few /sigh.

I think they should definitely add this. Or change the attunement to some earlier bosses in TK/SSC (although this wouldn't fit with the lore). Having only four nights a week we have to use at least three nights to do BT and MH. There's no way we could do SSC/TK in one day, and it takes at least two weeks to attune new people. Yesterday's TK raid didn't even have enough people and we ended up clearing BT trash instead.

Ps: We haven't killed Archimonde or Illidan yet so I guess my post isn't entirely valid.

I think they need to add attunement keys to very early bosses, not the end ones. If they ever want guilds that raid 3 / 4 days a week in these zones, they have to make it easier to have a fully flagged raid, as right now the requirements are extremely tight. One person going on holiday can leave you back to tier 5 for an entire week, which is most certainly not fun, and that's the aim of the game.

They could do a "guild flag" (as has been talking about at Blizzcon) that gives the guild attunement rights on quest completion by XX people in the guild being flagged. Say for BT or Hyjal, having 20 people attuned in guild will allow anyone in the guild, even those not individually flagged, to be able to enter. It certainly seemed like that's the kind of thing they're looking at.

As a hotfix-style-thing they could certainly implement a drop (like the old scroll systems). Something like fragments that drop off each boss, and after 5 fragments you can bind them into an attunement key, rather than a "complete" attunement off the end boss. It would be more useful to have a Hyjal attunement than a BT one though, as the BT attunement is relatively simple to do (karathress and al'ar is a lot quicker than vashj/kael, obviously).

I don't understand why they came up with the awesome idea for attunement scrolls for SSC and TK, then rendered them useless, then never applied the idea to BT and Hyjal. It's a great idea and it really needs to make a comeback immediately.

I thought this was an excellent backflagging method.

I will treasure my Scroll of the Sun forever.

Not only add a scroll to backflag people, but also I think they should add a quest item reward for killing Illidan / Archimonde.

Nefarian, C'thun, Kel'Thuzad, Magtheridon, Kael'Thas have one, why not Illidan and Archimonde, who are after all "bigger" bosses than the aforementioned. Some kind of warcry zone-wide buff in Shattrath would also be neat.