Now my (new) guild is in BT, and I'm not sure anyone else Horde side is even consistently raiding T5 content. There seems to be have an endless succession of guild formations/mergers/implosions.
I am sure this has been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere, but part of the problem is it turns out a lot of people I thought were doing their job were not, and a lot of people just plain suck at the game. I am not saying that to make myself feel good- if you look at where I am in terms of progression to where most of the folks on this board are, I am way behind. Regardless, it became obvious that 40 man raids hid a lot of really bad players. At least in my old guild that was the case.
My server has also gone from a pretty healthy collection of raiding guilds to almost none. Somehow before we had multiple 40-man guilds doing BWL/AQ40 still, even though Naxx was out, and the people in those guilds were content with their place along the progression. I would have like to do Naxx but I was satisfied with our progress through AQ40 with a 3-day raid week, even though we were always "months behind".
Now my (new) guild is in BT, and I'm not sure anyone else Horde side is even consistently raiding T5 content. There seems to be have an endless succession of guild formations/mergers/implosions.
I really don't know why this is - maybe if T5 had been "the end", more of those guilds would have stuck with it rather than feeling "hopelessly beind". I also think arenas have taken a lot of people out of the PvE raiding pool. I think some of those people PvE'd only to PvP, but found that they enjoyed raiding - just not enough to do it given the alternative of arena epics.
As has been previously stated though, you can't really prove causality here. There's been a lot that's happened since then. Raiding has gone from being the ONLY advancement method to being one of several. Many old raiders burned out from raiding and have become more 'casual'. Lots of players who were able to be carried through raids before are now unable to hold their own weight. Gear stratification also factors into this. If you got somebody attuned to Naxxramas, you could take along a handful in T1, T2 or even ZG gear and they'd easily be carried by the rest of the raid. With the DPS and stamina checks of our current raid game, it is more unlikely that this would happen.
Add in the ability to recruit across servers, and you really have a wide stratification of players Excellence breeds more excellence, but that's the top end. As someone stated earlier, the T6 guilds recruit from the T5s. The T5s recruit from the T4s, and the T4s are stuck with the people who haven't figured out how to raid yet, or don't really want to. There's a constant vaccuum upwards, because at every level there will be churn. However, since you're churning at all 3 levels in addition to recruiting, it causes a lot more guild attrition than previously. It hits those on the bottom hardest, because they have more difficulty finding good players that don't just abandon ship when given the opportunity to go further. It's especially hard on guilds who are trying to maintain a core of dedicated and good players, but unable to find the last few to fill out their raids at their given level of advancement.
It eventually leads to the cannibalization of guilds, and the "death" of the raid game on the server, because the T4 guilds just finally give up the ghost and quit. Then the T5 guilds run out of people to recruit from, and slide back down. That drags the T6 guilds down, and so on and so forth. In an extreme sense, it's like what would happen in the arena system, if Blizzard stopped giving out rewards to anyone without 1800 rating or higher. The <1750 teams would likely all quit, which pulls the 1800+ teams down to 1600 due to no more cannon fodder, and so on and so forth.
Honestly, I think that if they had paced the release of the raid content out more, it would have only mitigated this somewhat. The problems inherent to the system would still remain, simply because of the nature of the beast. The people who are learning T5 content now are still having trouble filling their raids due to the churn/recruiting rate. The people learning T4 content are still having trouble finding quality applicants that they don't lose to the T5 guilds after gearing them in Karazhan.
Reading this thread reminds me of "mailman" syndrome and how crazy it must be for developers to feed the never ending all consuming beast. It makes me scared for my career as one.
Honestly, I think that if they had paced the release of the raid content out more, it would have only mitigated this somewhat. The problems inherent to the system would still remain, simply because of the nature of the beast. The people who are learning T5 content now are still having trouble filling their raids due to the churn/recruiting rate. The people learning T4 content are still having trouble finding quality applicants that they don't lose to the T5 guilds after gearing them in Karazhan.
To some extent, sure, but a major issue is simply that SSC is the first 25 man and requires the level of play that it does. Even High King Maulgar is pretty complex for what I'd expect out of an entry-level raid encounter.
I don't think anyone here would debate the need for an "MC-level" instance to bottom out the raiding roster. You know, the kind of instance you can gather up 40 random scrubs for and zone in with little to no preparation or consumables and still have a decent shot at the first boss as long as the handful of people in charge know what's up & can assign tanks, pullers, and healers appropriately. Right now we have that in Karazhan and there are TONS of people in Karazhan. There are ~50 Horde guilds on Bloodscalp who've cleared Karazhan at least halfway and almost 40 who have it fully cleared. Over 30 who've killed something in Gruul's lair. I think it's pretty obvious that Bloodscalp has a raiding population to have at least 20 fairly successful 25-man raiding guilds. But, in actuality, once you get down to #8, they've killed only 3 bosses total in SSC + TK. : / Hard to feel yourself successful, eh? Especially when they can look at my guild, more than three full instances ahead of them.
But if there was a 25 man at a Karazhan level of difficulty with an endboss as difficult as, say, Bloodboil or Naj'entus (that is to say, challenging but not mindbogglingly complex), how much better off would servers be? How much healthier would the recruitment pool be?
That's been discussed to death elsewhere, but the point is that I think people are accounting for that, not saying "This and this alone in a vacuum will solve our difficulties."
But if there was a 25 man at a Karazhan level of difficulty with an endboss as difficult as, say, Bloodboil or Naj'entus (that is to say, challenging but not mindbogglingly complex), how much better off would servers be? How much healthier would the recruitment pool be?
That's just it though. I don't think it would be any healthier. There'd be an easier way for early 25-man loot, but with Karazhan providing nearly equivalent gear for less adminstration required (10 vs 25 people) people would take the path of least resistance, and end up exactly back where we are now.
Lurker isn't exactly rocket science. Loot Reaver is more of a gear check than anything else. T5 content isn't really all that much of a jump. I really don't think the complexity level of the early T5 encounters is significantly above Aran, Nightbane, Netherspite or Illhoof.
But if there was a 25 man at a Karazhan level of difficulty with an endboss as difficult as, say, Bloodboil or Naj'entus (that is to say, challenging but not mindbogglingly complex), how much better off would servers be? How much healthier would the recruitment pool be?
That's been discussed to death elsewhere, but the point is that I think people are accounting for that, not saying "This and this alone in a vacuum will solve our difficulties."
I think that would be an amazingly good thing.
I, along with a lot of people who are just getting into T5 content, LOVE the complexities that come with new fights. Hydross, though not killable yet by my guild (stupid NR/FrR gear collecting first <_<; was hillariously fun the few times we tried him. Lurker, Tidewalker and VR all have been challenging... but they all seem to lack complexity beyond "don't stand in the spout!" or "dodge the wrench!" or "don't pull agro on the murlocs!" These fights are soooooo much fun for me, because I have to be working hard to do my job right. It makes me feel good when we finally beat it. Morogrim is still handing us our asses, and we haven't tried VR in a few weeks, but I jump at the chance to fight them because I enjoy it so much. If there had been a less-steep slope into 25 man raiding, as opposed to going straight from Kara to Gruul, I think we'd have less problems with people messing up to lack of situational awareness or what-have-you.
Of course, this still doesn't help guilds like EJ and Nihilum that are bored farming T6 stuff (take me with you! <3) but it'd be a step in the right direction, I think.
That's just it though. I don't think it would be any healthier. There'd be an easier way for early 25-man loot, but with Karazhan providing nearly equivalent gear for less adminstration required (10 vs 25 people) people would take the path of least resistance, and end up exactly back where we are now.
Lurker isn't exactly rocket science. Loot Reaver is more of a gear check than anything else. T5 content isn't really all that much of a jump. I really don't think the complexity level of the early T5 encounters is significantly above Aran, Nightbane, Netherspite or Illhoof.
Oddly enough, though, those aren't the "first" bosses in the instance either...and often require painful double trash re-clears for newer guilds that have to wipe recover and the like. Al'ar will wipe the floor with most entry T5 guilds, as will Hydross.
Solarian (now) and Void Reaver aren't very hard at all, even if they are resonable gear checks. Al'ar, Hydross, Morogrim, Leo, and Karathress are a totally different ballgame though. All of them are quite complex fights. (Magtheridon is also quite difficult for a fresh guild, I'd say, also.)
So, you end up with Gruul/VR/Solarian being gear/gimmick checks, but the rest of the content being rather hard to learn. I'd imagine that creates a significant barrier to entry for newer raiding guilds.
That's just it though. I don't think it would be any healthier. There'd be an easier way for early 25-man loot, but with Karazhan providing nearly equivalent gear for less adminstration required (10 vs 25 people) people would take the path of least resistance, and end up exactly back where we are now.
Lurker isn't exactly rocket science. Loot Reaver is more of a gear check than anything else. T5 content isn't really all that much of a jump. I really don't think the complexity level of the early T5 encounters is significantly above Aran, Nightbane, Netherspite or Illhoof.
Still kludgy and neither of those are the first things you see when zoning into the instance, the fact that both require essentially double trash clearing doesn't help...
A more linear layout of SSC/TK with easy bosses up front hard ones in back would probably help. Hydross is ridiculous as the first thing a "new" raiding guild would see.
There is another hidden poor design choice in SSC which is the ridiculous run-back time and the fact that wipes on two of the encounters (Hydross and Vashj) mandate a run-back. I believe this is a factor with Kael as well. I wonder if the Vashj/Kael "wall" wouldn't be lessened simply by putting a graveyard at the entrance of SSC or a teleporter into TK somewhere.
Consider your 3 night a week raiding guild and how much time they spend simply running back to a Vashj to get another attempt in, it could well be more than 33% of the time they play one night.
That's just it though. I don't think it would be any healthier. There'd be an easier way for early 25-man loot, but with Karazhan providing nearly equivalent gear for less adminstration required (10 vs 25 people) people would take the path of least resistance, and end up exactly back where we are now.
Lurker isn't exactly rocket science. Loot Reaver is more of a gear check than anything else. T5 content isn't really all that much of a jump. I really don't think the complexity level of the early T5 encounters is significantly above Aran, Nightbane, Netherspite or Illhoof.
An entire, introductory 25man instance has two main psychological advantages.
1) It would reduce the psychological impact of "wow there are all these bosses around us that we can't kill and have to skip to get to the easy Void Reaver." People who don't read the forums tend to be only vaguely aware of content that they aren't attempting. They know instances are there and have cool loot. This works in favor of raiding since they think "Wow, look how cool this stuff will be when we get there." It's a different story when you walk them past a boss and tell them they lack the ability to kill him. Suddenly, you have people giving up since "We'll never kill those bosses because we suck."
2) It would also give the sense of progress even if the loot was indifferent. Let's assume a guild needs to learn how to pay attention to their immediate surroundings and boost their dps. Let's also assume every player is terrible and it will take the group 10 weeks to learn these lessons to a level sufficient to kill T5 bosses. If those 10 weeks are spent on one boss, the guild is very likely to dissolve. If those same 10 weeks are spent learning on a succession of 5 easy bosses with a new boss every two weeks, the guild is much more likely to stick around.
Oddly enough, though, those aren't the "first" bosses in the instance either...and often require painful double trash re-clears for newer guilds that have to wipe recover and the like. Al'ar will wipe the floor with most entry T5 guilds, as will Hydross.
Solarian (now) and Void Reaver aren't very hard at all, even if they are resonable gear checks. Al'ar, Hydross, Morogrim, Leo, and Karathress are a totally different ballgame though. All of them are quite complex fights. (Magtheridon is also quite difficult for a fresh guild, I'd say, also.)
So, you end up with Gruul/VR/Solarian being gear/gimmick checks, but the rest of the content being rather hard to learn. I'd imagine that creates a significant barrier to entry for newer raiding guilds.
But it gives them a good place to start gearing up. Given how much information is disseminated so quickly now, I don't think that it would take long at all for newer raiding guilds to figure out that Lurker, Void Reaver or even Solarian are where to start. Hydross is also not exactly difficult either; it just takes time for players to actually farm their frost/nature resist gear. From there, the next step up is Tidewalker and Karathress. It really isn't the steep slope you're making it out to be. We've had this information for months now. Look at the wowjutsu info for random servers. You'll see that the first bosses dropped in SSC and TK are invariably Void Reaver and Lurker, followed by Tidewalker and/or Hydross.
Still kludgy and neither of those are the first things you see when zoning into the instance, the fact that both require essentially double trash clearing doesn't help...
How is this different from Molten Core? The first boss you see in there is Gehennas, but the "real first boss" is actually Lucifron, who requires a lot of trash clearing and is tucked far out of sight.
A more linear layout of SSC/TK with easy bosses up front hard ones in back would probably help. Hydross is ridiculous as the first thing a "new" raiding guild would see.
It isn't rocket surgery. Hydross is a resist check. He isn't really all that hard otherwise.
There is another hidden poor design choice in SSC which is the ridiculous run-back time and the fact that wipes on two of the encounters (Hydross and Vashj) mandate a run-back. I believe this is a factor with Kael as well. I wonder if the Vashj/Kael "wall" wouldn't be lessened simply by putting a graveyard at the entrance of SSC or a teleporter into TK somewhere.
Consider your 3 night a week raiding guild and how much time they spend simply running back to a Vashj to get another attempt in, it could well be more than 33% of the time they play one night.
Compare it again to what you are extolling. The original premise was Molten Core, which is even more unfriendly to entry level raiders with the huge amounts of trash and quick respawn times.
I'm not saying I disagree with you that putting Void Reaver where Al'ar is, or moving the Lurker to the front are not good changes. However, I am saying that these are small things that don't really provide as much difference as you make them out to be.
SSC content (excepting Vashj and maybe Leotheras) really isn't all that hard. The only real difference in coordination requirements, especially with the early bosses, is that you have to kill more trash for them than you do with Gruul and Magtheridon.
There's no objective way to answer this question, but that's my impression at this point.
Yes, but when you were done with Naxxramas, or while you were "experiencing" it, did you enjoy the content on a personal level? Moreso than TBC (including issues like pre-2.0, post-2.1, post 2.2, etc)?
Did you enjoy the pacing, or have less complaints about the overall experience?
I think even if we remove the historical perspective there was little to complain about in Naxx aside from Thaddius-lag... again though this is from my guild's perspective. Also as an aside, I think your guild's perspective in Naxx is an extreme - with an incredible start, demolishing so much in literally record times, and then a "relatively" slower finish for how quickly you started. That might skew things a bit. I'm not insulting your guild or finish at all, just saying how in your guild's experience with encounters were compressed and stretched. Although I doubt you disliked 4H, even if you did relearn it probably 3-4 times like we did. Imagine 3-4 weeks of Shahraz.
On a side note, these types of topics always turn into huge discussions - I think it is somewhat interesting that everyone has a rather well formulated opinion on pacing mechanics, content, and tuning. Nearly impossible to keep up though
Lurker isn't exactly rocket science. Loot Reaver is more of a gear check than anything else. T5 content isn't really all that much of a jump. I really don't think the complexity level of the early T5 encounters is significantly above Aran, Nightbane, Netherspite or Illhoof.
Lurker, VR are nearly perfectly predictable fights. The random elements in both of those are fairly minor.
Contrast with Hydross, the "first" SSC boss. Whoever thought of making the following the "first" boss of the real 25 man instance should be chastised (Hydross/Lurker should have their positions swapped honestly):
- Resist gear required on multiple tanks (at last MTx2, preferably mixed resists on OTs).
- Agro wipe on untauntable boss every ~minute
- Adds every ~minute
- Random "bad" effects that can be hugely detrimental (especially the frost side).
Sure, those are all controllable, but in contrast with the other bosses in the zone, Hydross goes bad alot quicker than any other fight.
In relation to pacing, raiding guilds should form a kind of Pyramid, top guilds being few and at the top, and a very large number at the bottom raiding the intro content. Unfortunately, I think I recall Songster posting on here that ~5% of raiding guilds can kill Vashj (forgive me if that's incorrect, going off of memory). The end boss of the first full 25 man raid zone. If more guilds were advancing at a decent pace, then having all that content out at release (or 2.1, whichever), would make alot more sense to me. Given the current landscape though, Sunwell looks like it may be set up as a "keep the Illidian killing guilds from not being bored" instead of an instance that might be more widely enjoyed (such as Naxx was at the end of original WoW).
The pacing problem is directly related to the sharp stratification we're seeing for raiding guilds, there are two extremes and not much middle, and the pivot point between the two is Kael, those past Kael have a pretty easy raid (by all accounts I've read, I'm on Vashj atm), meanwhile those pre-Kael have a significant struggle.
If I were Blizzard, I'd want to release content when a "significant" section of raiders could access it. I'd be curious to see a breakdown of raiding guilds that kill the following as their top progress:
- In SSC/TK
- Killed Vashj
- Killed Kael
- Killed Arch
- Killed Illidian
The % number would theoretically get lower each level down, thus a "pyramid" I was referring to earlier. Seems Blizzard would aim for a % of players to consume existing content before releasing new content, though who knows for sure?
Hmm maybe we have different concepts of casual. From my perspective, casual doesn't necessarily mean worse/less skilled/less competent or anything like that.
I never said that it did. It does, however, mean having people who play off and on when their schedule permits or they want to, not a carefully honed roster of specific classes and specs. It means you're probably not going to have more than one or two shamans (alliance) or paladins (horde) since the people motivated enough to grind a new character to 70 and gear them up generally are going to be motivated enough to want a non-casual guild. It means your players are not going to want to respec all the time.
As for off-specs, less consistent attendance, etc - I still think that all of these were worse in Vanilla WoW than now. From the perspective of a paladin, I didn't know _any_ pallies who raided high-level stuff in a non-healing role (They may have not been specced healing, but that was certainly their only role). It actually seemed like more classes were pidgeon-holed than I'm seeing now. I know our guild is even seriously considering getting a ret pally(!!).
By 'off spec', I don't mean 'non-healing specced', I mean someone who is not specced for the role they're filling. There are more different roles that classes can fill, but there's way less room for a ret pally or feral druid to swap in and cover healing. How many full-time healers do you run with now who are not heal specced? How many shadowstep rogues do you bring? Any of your MTs not prot?
The comments about people not showing up and hampering the raid are pertinent, but comparing to Vanilla WoW, I don't think hold that much weight. You expected people in Vanilla WoW to be completely random, to ninja-afk, etc. 40-people was a _ton_ to get even the sameish group together on the same schedule consistently. Basically I think you're saying that people missing raids hurt less in Vanilla WoW, while overlooking the fact that getting that critical mass was far harder to begin with.
I think you're completely and utterly wrong, getting that critical mass is WAY harder in TBC than it was in WOW for a casual guild. I'm sure it's easier for a 5-day-per week, 80% mandatory attendance guild like yours to organize now than it was in the 40-man era, but 5-days per week and mandatory attendance are not characteristics of a casual guild.
You only really needed 30-35 players at all, 10-15 of which really knew what they were doing to progress in MC. It tightened up some later on, but to get started and get that critical mass to get our the door you didn't need to carefully recruit to exactly forty. I saw several guilds on daggerspine start with a core group and invite 10-20 randoms from /LFG just to get started, and they would successfully down multiple bosses. And this wasn't 'let me check your armory' invites, my druid was still using Illusionary Rod at the time.
Contrast that with today, where you pretty much need 25 to start Gruul - come in with just 20 guys when you're learning, and it's unlikely that your raid will do more than clear trash. You can't really just bring in randoms, since you need to know that people can handle things like 'stay away from the mage'. You need to recruit people to fill out to 25, but you can't offer any success at the 25-mans you're recruiting them to beat, so you're not going to be flooded with good applicants.
As for the class requirement fights, where you can't do a certain boss with XYZ classes, I don't think that's any different than fights in Vanilla WoW either. Look at Garr and Domo in MC. If you didn't have enough warriors/locks/mages then those fights weren't really possible till you outgeared them. I'll agree those type of fights don't promote casualty, but that aspect hasn't gotten any less casual from Vanilla either.
How many bosses could you clear in MC with no warlock? It was several at least, could be all but Gaar if he was skippable (I forget). OK, now how many in Gruul+Mag? A big fat zero. There's a world of difference between 'can do several bosses in the first 40-man instance' and 'cannot do any 25-man raid content whatsoever'. Plus you're looking at 8 classes split amongst 40 players ('average' of 5 of each class) versus 9 classes split among 25 players ('average' of less than 3 of each class), there's less leeway in the numbers.
Also, it's not just class requirement fights, another big problem for the casual guild is having anything near an optimal class makeup. The example I keep pointing out is alliance shamans; if you have '1 shaman most of the time', your raid suffers signficantly in DPs compared to a raid that has '2-3 shamans consistently'. Same with losing pally blessings, or any of the other key synergy bits. And other times you're going to get too many of a class you only need 1-2 of, 4 feral druids on Gruul is not exactly optimal.
Just a few thoughts in regards to "being bored" and the apparent gap in high end raiding...
Most people are driven not so much by the encounters in the game (just a generalization, exceptions DO exist) as they are by "what's in it for me". In other words, loot. It's human nature, if there's nothing concrete in it for the average individual, then their interest will wane. Take a look at the people who are missing raids, or seem to be "burning out" and I think you'll see that they are more loot-centric than some of the other people who continue to show up and help farm instances to help their teammates out even though there is absolutely nothing they want from those instances themselves. This isn't an overt criticism of those personalities, it exists in even the most altruistic person to a certain extent, but the current gap will bring to light who is more concerned with personal progression over guild progression.
I think that's an oversimplification of things. I would be hard pressed to point out any 'loot centric' people in my guild and yet still there are some people who have taken breaks or left raiding. Most of them could still get upgrades from BT/Hyjal... they just simply don't care anymore about items and are probably just tired of the prospect of running the same content for the next 3-4 months. At the moment, I'm taking a week off (after having pretty much 99% attendance) and, as I'm sure most people can attest to: the longer you spend away from WoW, the less appealing it is to return -- especially when you have nothing new to look forward to for quite some time. I still don't have 4/5 Tier 6 and still could 'use' one or two other drops from BT/Hyjal but lately I find myself not really caring.
At the moment, I'm taking a week off (after having pretty much 99% attendance) and, as I'm sure most people can attest to: the longer you spend away from WoW, the less appealing it is to return -- especially when you have nothing new to look forward to for quite some time.
Hah, people taking long breaks during stagnant periods usually results in them coming back, playing less than they used to for a little while and saying "hey, this sucks, I'm quitting again, who wants my account?". MMO "addiction" (its one of the best words for it, and seemingly more correct than 'compulsion' but it isn't the correct one)and overdose is an interesting thing.
Originally Posted by ebbv
Why not? What would be an acceptable percentage to you? 70%? 30%?
It depends on length of time and gear progression during that time.
A month after an expansion hits, you shouldn't see a (class) who turned (levelcap) 2 weeks before said expansion hit, having experienced 0 group content whatsoever coming within 10% of the effective gear as a (class) in full (top raid dungeon before the expansion hit) gear.
When that does happen, you aren't playing WoW: TBC or WoW:WotLK, you're playing TBC as brought to you by the makers of WoW or WotLK as brought to you by the makers of WoW. When you lose interest in half your content before your expansion hits (it could have been Alleria, but there was 0 interest in doing... anything, from mid november on [0 progression, cutting back massively of progression raid content], outside one guild who really wanted to say they had finished off AQ the legit way) because your playerbase knows its pointless to do that content, your design philosophy frankly sucks.
As I've said, expansions should not be new games, it should add on to a gradual building of the already existing game.
As for serious, "maybe you shouldnt play MMO's for a while, if ever" burnout, I saw more of that in the MC/BWL era than I ever did in EQ. Hell, I'm on my 3rd. I'm my own case study (working on my masters in psychology) these days
Just to pick up on that analogy and echo the sentiments of others in this thread -- TBC was truly a 'binge' on frontloaded raid instances from late Spring to Summer. Now we get the 'purge' which will pretty much last all Fall and Winter.
Also, another false assumption I believe is being made is that if they staggered content releases the progress would look more like '2 months progress, 2 months break'. I think those numbers are fairly incorrect and just an ideal representation of how people would like things to be.
First of all, there were much bigger than 2 month breaks in vanilla wow, like a 4 month break between bwl being completed by the first guilds and aq becoming available to all. Also, the break from aq to naxx would have been much greater if c'thun wasn't actually cockblocked. But for the majority of guilds stuck on him, I am pretty sure they weren't bothering at all with him and they were just working on farm mode until he was nerfed when they realised he was impossible. So the actual break between aq and naxx was much longer than what c'thun's kill date would tell you. Optional bosses like viscidus were propably not even attempted by a lot of guilds.
Also, the 2 months progress is kind of a bogus number too, since I can't reliably see any top 100 guild spending more than 1 month in any new instance anymore. Yes, 4horsemen took a long time for various reasons that concern the complexity, stacking and actual difficulity of the encounter, but that's rather the exception to the rule and is unlikely to happen again.
For the reasons stated here a milion times (better experience, less deadweight in raids, more videos, less loot dilution, transfers etc) I sincerely doubt that assuming blizzard doesn't release anything totally mistuned or bugged any guild starting an instance and averaging 5 days a week working mostly on said instance will have eny trouble finishing it in 1 month or so. It has been true for everything since aq. If I remember correctly top guilds were at c'thun like 5-10 days after the gates opened. They were at 4h which was a in a much larger instance 2-3 weeks in. Hell, even us who are not top guild material have managed to almost clear t6 content in 2 months since we started it. And the 'but it's easy' part won't work because aq or naxx might have not been as 'easy', but they were cleared in the same amount of time. T6 was simply the first time in blizzard's history that the relative instances were free of major bugs, tuning was properly done (perhaps a bit on the easy side) and there was no ridiculous requirement to kill any of the end bosses (like gather 295 fr for everyone by farming brd or farm onyxia for months to get enough cloaks or farm green dragons or wait until next patch to get the gear you need-you should be ready for the the 'resist' encounter in bt by the time you get there and if you are not it's easy to fix). So naturally, as blizzard said, the bosses just fell over.
So the alternative model you are looking at is more like '1 month progress, 4 months sitting on our arses' which really isn't radically different than what's happening now. You won't really achieve or truly feel like you have spent any less 'dead time' in that way. The core problem really is that sunwell is just late and so is zul aman, possibly because their focus on sound improvements was misdirected, possibly simply because it's not humanly possible to produce any more any faster. I am not really inside blizzard to tell.
First of all, there were much bigger than 2 month breaks in vanilla wow, like a 4 month break between bwl being completed by the first guilds and aq becoming available to all.
But AQ was playable on the PTR within 2 months of Nef first dying. Even that, letting players tangibly see what is next in store, helps sustain interest.
It was, but that was a byproduct of bwl being terribly bugged and taking a lot longer time to be completed than it was supposed to. I can't remember if Razorgore had any problems initially, but pretty much every boss after him did. Vael was up for 1 hour only, Broodlord could instagib tanks a lot of times, firemaw was yeh, bugged in various ways, chrommaggus the same and finally Nefarian was a totally new sort of encounter that propably most people confused with razorgore at the start trying to find the 'gimmick'. Also the topend guild community hadn't really formed back then as we know it today. The current endgame community was formed around the time c'thun was killed and before that I feel even top guilds of the time were a mix of great and so so players. With today's data, bwl would have been a 1 month deal for everyone as well, making the break to aq even hitting the ptr much longer. I am pretty confident that after the initial bwl fiasco and the early tbc fiasco it's really unlikely to see anything so mistuned or bugged reappearing in wow.
It was, but that was a byproduct of bwl being terribly bugged and taking a lot longer time to be completed than it was supposed to. I can't remember if Razorgore had any problems initially, but pretty much every boss after him did. Vael was up for 1 hour only, Broodlord could instagib tanks a lot of times, firemaw was yeh, bugged in various ways, chrommaggus the same and finally Nefarian was a totally new sort of encounter that propably most people confused with razorgore at the start trying to find the 'gimmick'. Also the topend guild community hadn't really formed back then as we know it today. The current endgame community was formed around the time c'thun was killed and before that I feel even top guilds of the time were a mix of great and so so players. With today's data, bwl would have been a 1 month deal for everyone as well, making the break to aq even hitting the ptr much longer. I am pretty confident that after the initial bwl fiasco and the early tbc fiasco it's really unlikely to see anything so mistuned or bugged reappearing in wow.
And these are all things that Blizzard has to keep in mind while designing of course. 2 months isn't expected to be the norm every time, but the current distance we're looking is stupid. I've pretty much finished my gear and I don't even know one boss in the next zone, that's a bit messed up.
The pacing problem is directly related to the sharp stratification we're seeing for raiding guilds, there are two extremes and not much middle, and the pivot point between the two is Kael, those past Kael have a pretty easy raid (by all accounts I've read, I'm on Vashj atm), meanwhile those pre-Kael have a significant struggle.
Actually, there are a couple of pivot points. One is Kael, but the far larger one is Gruul/Magtheridon. Take a look at Wowjutsu's stats. The drop-off between guilds who can kill High King Maulgar and can kill Lurker/Void Reaver is massive. Kael is a blip on the radar in comparison.
On a different note, one argument I don't really understand is how staggered releases is "catering to raiders". Blizzard is going to put time, effort and money into Black Temple anyways, so I don't see how it affects non-raiders if BT is live at release or goes live in a patch.
One other thing I've noticed is that the "lead guild"--both on the server, and world-wide--doesn't seem to change as often. Pre-TBC, I remember having the lead on my servers change hands a couple times, as guilds caught up to each other. Now, it seems like there really isn't a race anymore. Nihilium pretty much jumped out in front and lead all the way to the end.
I never said that it did. It does, however, mean having people who play off and on when their schedule permits or they want to, not a carefully honed roster of specific classes and specs. It means you're probably not going to have more than one or two shamans (alliance) or paladins (horde) since the people motivated enough to grind a new character to 70 and gear them up generally are going to be motivated enough to want a non-casual guild. It means your players are not going to want to respec all the time.
But how is this different than Vanilla WoW? I think it's easier to find like-minded souls in TBC, simply because you need far less of them. An example: Some of my friends that live on opposite coasts run Kara on the weekends. Usually there's 6-7 of the 12ish of us on - which is enough of a group to get Kara going, without really needing a schedule. That's casual raiding at it's best. Now, were we to attempt Gruul, there's no way we could be that casual about it. We'd need a set time, some sort of list of who we could expect to attend, etc. The jump from 10-25 people means it has to be a lot more rigid and defined raid. Going from 25 to 40 would be another quantum leap. I'm pretty sure I could find 25 people to do an instance given a week or so to plan and spread the word. I'm also fairly certain I wouldn't be able to find 40 people to do an instance. Once you have a critical mass of 40, it's a lot easier to adjust to losing a few here or there, but I think you're underestimating the effort it takes to get there in the first place.
Originally Posted by Karamoon
By 'off spec', I don't mean 'non-healing specced', I mean someone who is not specced for the role they're filling. There are more different roles that classes can fill, but there's way less room for a ret pally or feral druid to swap in and cover healing. How many full-time healers do you run with now who are not heal specced? How many shadowstep rogues do you bring? Any of your MTs not prot?
Why is forcing people to do things they aren't specced for more casual? I don't know about you, but when I specced something, it's cause I _enjoyed_ doing that thing. We run with several priests that aren't healing specced....and they don't have to heal. They get to dps like they want to. Same deal with our warrior who isn't prot. He's not MTing, but he is dpsing like he wants to. In Vanilla WoW, you were thrown in with your class's "designated" role whether you liked it or not. In TBC, you're more often grouped with your type (dps/heal/tank) than class. As someone who was shocked upon getting my paladin to 60 that we were a sit in the back and heal class if we wanted to raid, no matter what our spec was, I have to say that
Originally Posted by Karamoon
You only really needed 30-35 players at all, 10-15 of which really knew what they were doing to progress in MC. It tightened up some later on, but to get started and get that critical mass to get our the door you didn't need to carefully recruit to exactly forty. I saw several guilds on daggerspine start with a core group and invite 10-20 randoms from /LFG just to get started, and they would successfully down multiple bosses. And this wasn't 'let me check your armory' invites, my druid was still using Illusionary Rod at the time
Contrast that with today, where you pretty much need 25 to start Gruul - come in with just 20 guys when you're learning, and it's unlikely that your raid will do more than clear trash. You can't really just bring in randoms, since you need to know that people can handle things like 'stay away from the mage'. You need to recruit people to fill out to 25, but you can't offer any success at the 25-mans you're recruiting them to beat, so you're not going to be flooded with good applicants.
Rosy tinted glasses a bit much? My first days in MC were with 30ish people and we wiped a ton on the trash, and I think _saw_ Luci, but didn't attempt him. And if you had less than 35, with crap gear, you were basically screwed. I definitely had more than one canceled raid because we only had 30 people on at raid time. And it's not like Vanilla WoW had a lot tougher mental checks than HKM or Gruul. Luci - decurse; Mag - avoid conflag patches and deal with fear mechanics; geheness - MS like debuff, move from rain of fire, kill adds; Garr - control the adds, watch out for them exploding; Geddon - paying attention to bomb debuff and moving the fuck out; etc. I mean what's more complicated in HKM or Gruul than in MC? Situational awareness of where the mage is? Watch out for cave ins and run away from other people? And I think if you can PuG Aran then PuGing random spots for HKM or Gruul isn't out of the question. Especially if you have a core group (which can be much smaller than in Vanilla) that know what they're doing.
Originally Posted by Karamoon
How many bosses could you clear in MC with no warlock? It was several at least, could be all but Gaar if he was skippable (I forget). OK, now how many in Gruul+Mag? A big fat zero. There's a world of difference between 'can do several bosses in the first 40-man instance' and 'cannot do any 25-man raid content whatsoever'. Plus you're looking at 8 classes split amongst 40 players ('average' of 5 of each class) versus 9 classes split among 25 players ('average' of less than 3 of each class), there's less leeway in the numbers.
He was skippable, but not if you wanted to down Rag. And why can't you kill HKM or Gruul without any locks? You'd have to control the summoned demons in the HKM fight, but that's not that hard. I will say I'm confused as to why they basically made locks necessary for a lot of these fights though.
Originally Posted by Karamoon
Also, it's not just class requirement fights, another big problem for the casual guild is having anything near an optimal class makeup. The example I keep pointing out is alliance shamans; if you have '1 shaman most of the time', your raid suffers signficantly in DPs compared to a raid that has '2-3 shamans consistently'. Same with losing pally blessings, or any of the other key synergy bits. And other times you're going to get too many of a class you only need 1-2 of, 4 feral druids on Gruul is not exactly optimal.
Not optimal and not killable are two different things though. Casual guilds, almost by default, won't have optimal groups. But I would argue that 25-man groups have actually been better in allowing for different strategies. Take something like Mag. If you go in there with only 3-prot specced tanks, you can still do the fight. If you go in with 5 prot-spec (we've had more even), you can still do the fight, just takes a bit longer. If you didn't go in with a combined 9 warlocks/tanks for Garr, you were in for a tough fight. And you needed to kill him to see Domo, which I certainly never did with less than 4 mages and 4 tanks. And if you wanted to have a chance at Rag, you needed to down Domo.
All of this doesn't even bring into account the mind-numbing amount of trash that was MC. Think how many fucking lava packs, and dogs, and imp packs you had to pull before you got to Luci. It was painful, and the reason why Onyxia was the most casual-friendly raid boss. You went in, you didn't need a full group, there was little trash and a semi-tough boss that dropped nice loot. Same deal with Mag and Gruul.
Rosy tinted glasses a bit much? My first days in MC were with 30ish people and we wiped a ton on the trash, and I think _saw_ Luci, but didn't attempt him. And if you had less than 35, with crap gear, you were basically screwed.
First week we cleared to the imps with 25. 2nd week we killed Luci with 31. We worked out way up to 3 bosses in 1 night, with 1 nights raiding per week. The very first time we did 2 days raiding in a week we immediately had 6 bosses down and reached Domo the week after that.
I dont think killing luci with 30 is rose tinted glasses at all. As for Garr 9 tanks/warlocks was often 4 dps warriors,4 tanks and 1 warlock. Dont forget that as long as you kept a paladin or two out of combat you had infinite ressing. Pretty sure I can remember doing a repair run after Magmadar because some of the rogues/warriors allready had broken gear
They already do this. Every raid instance ever has been nerfed from it's original incarnation when the bleeding edge guilds were progressing through it. Look at Gruul and Magtheridon for perfect examples. And in addition to direct nerfs there's also the nerfing influence of better itemization/talents, and new forms of gear progression (S2 arena weapons for example).
I mentioned they have always been doing it
My point was, that it might become more official. Like whenever next raid instance comes out, Blizz announced before they would nerf down X old instances to a certain level. Right now they prefer to call the nerfs for "bugfixes" etc. So even though we know they do nerf old content, its kinda unsure when it will happen. A staggered release of both new high end instances and at the same time nerfs of old instances, exactly as the Arena system works now, might make it easier for the "casual raiders" to know when they get raids balanced for them.
Like being able to look at 2.4 patch knowing that you could gather 25 players, not care much about the class setup and go into ssc and clear it with 2 days of raiding for a few weeks as a casual raid group. A 25 man UBRS (exaggerated slightly) or maybe more close; a 25 man ZG.
Hell, maybe some of them would get taste for 25 man content and try harder doing the pre nerf stuff next time.
I know some would hate to see the content they worked a lot on to get nerfed down to "pug level", but why really, at that point we will have shiny new instances to play in, so its hardly a problem that some very casual 25 raid instances are made out of the old content.
But this is beside the point of the thread anyway.
From the information about Wrath expansion so far, it looks like they will release the raid instances in exactly the same way as it happened in TBC, with everything in the first few months ("Wrath of the lick king" without Arthas actually being in the game at or shortly after release, might not be a good selling point? :/). Hopefully threads like this might make them think twice about it.
10/03/07, 5:00 PM
was hillariously fun the few times we tried him. Lurker, Tidewalker and VR all have been challenging... but they all seem to lack complexity beyond "don't stand in the spout!" or "dodge the wrench!" or "don't pull agro on the murlocs!" These fights are soooooo much fun for me, because I have to be working hard to do my job right. It makes me feel good when we finally beat it. Morogrim is still handing us our asses, and we haven't tried VR in a few weeks, but I jump at the chance to fight them because I enjoy it so much. If there had been a less-steep slope into 25 man raiding, as opposed to going straight from Kara to Gruul, I think we'd have less problems with people messing up to lack of situational awareness or what-have-you.
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