One additional thing - my recollection is that Blizzard got a lot of screaming about the lack of raid content early on in the original release, especially with the gap between the releases of Molten Core/Onyxia, and BWL. It seems likely to me that the decision to frontload a lot of raid content in the expansion was informed by that early criticism.
Maybe next time they will get it "just right"?
that's what i've been thinking all along. w/ tbc they fixed a lot of things people complained about but created a few other problems as a result. knowing blizzard, even though they might not get shit right the first time they usually learn a little from their mistakes.... most the time :P
that having been said i really hope wotlk will address issues such as this.
on this topic specifically, i agree that stuff should have been spread out a little more. a good amount of content feels like it was just run it once or twice and never run again. it encouraged a really quick rate to burn through content. i personally would have enjoyed slightly more difficult encounters, maybe closer to the 2.0 level of difficulty and fewer dungeons to raid but less down time after you "beat the game" every month or two.
Staggering the release of 5 man instances would have just meant the instances would be mostly obsolete when they are finally released.
Assuming that they had been released with the difficulty and loot they had upon release, surely that would be the case, but why would that assumption be true? While I agree with you that having the 5 mans immediately available in a large number upon release was overall a good thing, there's nothing that says that 5 mans have to be inherently limited to iLvl 115 rare items (105 epic for heroics) with the same overall level of difficulty and gear requirements. If Blizzard had staggered 5 mans, I would expect the difficulty and loot to be staggered as well.
That said, to return to Praetorian's original question #1 and how different sorts of guilds are dealing with the staggering of 25 mans, let me jump in at the absolute low end.
As a member of a guild that is, in comparison with the majority on this board, very backwards and unsuccessful raid-wise being a sort of raiding/casual/PvP mix (0 SSC or TK, and we've been at that stage since July due primarily to a huge outflow and inflow of people, making 1-2 visits to TK or SSC per week and dying horribly, while constantly working on gearing up yet another crop of "nearly done with Karazhan" applicants in Karazhan and Gruul's lair), the impact of the rapid releases of 25 mans has been minimal.
While there are some members a bit overwhelmed by the "huge amount of content ahead of us" it isn't a general issue - we are having enough challenges with the content as is, and the few for whom not "being first or best" is a real problem tend to guild-hop (which leads to other problems of not maintaining a stable raiding base, but that cannot really be blamed on Blizzard's release schedule).
In many ways PvP and arena seasons takes a much higher toll - pretty much guaranteed rewards and upgrades coupled with a reliance on a few people and, let's face it, a fairly low weekly investment of time, makes it a very attractive alternative to raiding for those who are primarily interested in raiding in the first place because it is the only place to find new content they haven't seen or new shiny items, rather than a real interest in raiding for its own sake.
All taken together, the overall feeling insofar as there is one is that 25 man raiding content just isn't designed or scheduled for guilds like ours, so why care about how it is staggered so long as we have some content to attack? Being 1, 2, 3, or 4 instances behind does not really make much practical difference.
A telling point is that Zul'Aman is something that is looked forwards to, and bitterly cursed for not coming sooner (most had hoped to see it fairly soon after Blizzcon), while the Sunwell is currently a "so what?" issue. Zul'Aman is seen as something that can, hopefully, be fun in its own right and can also be used to jump-start us on the content we've stalled on by over-gearing it, since our 10 man coordination is far superior to our 25 man coordination.
That was a view from pretty close to the floor of the raiding game with regards to 25 man pacing, so to speak.
If they took more time in "spreading" the dungeons out progression wise - i.e at least one real T4 dungeon (SSC?) with a T5 Boss (Vashj), one T5 (TK) who has a T6 Boss (Kael), remove the Key requirement for BT/Hyjal, and ensure that there is a "Gate Keeper" mob somewhere early in the zone to prevent just anyone from wiping the zone clean - but do keep the first 1 or 2 bosses relatively easy - almost like the last tier ala Naj'entus and Supremus/Rage.
Also in every tier ensure that off of the last boss? and throughout the instance very nice "items that last" (rejuv gem, etc.) are placed along with a slow to acquire rep (relatively) to entice raiders to come back to those zones.
I loved the AQ/Naxx progression model - lots of guilds were stuck on Twin Emps or C'thun and 3 bosses into Naxx. They're experiencing the content, but the bleeding edge is still quite a ways ahead of them, and lets be honest - everyone wanted to go kill C'thun again and again. Some of us so bad we hack doors!
That model works I think - there is no real reason to go back zones. If we had a reason to go back to TK or SSC, I'm sure we would rotate one or the other on Sundays, and it would be a generally fun clear. But currently if we clear the place, we walk out with 1 or 2 loots, and a bag full of void crystals, and probably a repair bill because we are bad.
Kael/Vashj/Illidan/Archimonde should all be almost a tier ahead of what they actually are, and be 100% optional for moving on to the next zone. Either that or place more bosses like Ouro and Viscidus that are not required, but very difficult for hardcores to bang their heads on.
I think people had fun in naxx and recall it as better than it was as far as complexity goes. In the end i think the content and difficulty of naxx was VERY similar to SSC+TK. There were a whole bunch of 1 trick pony bosses and then a couple sweet encounters at the end.
When we started SSC we had already 'stepped up our game' from experiences in naxx so the content seemed easier. People would actually have all the appropriate pots and oils and demonic runes etc etc. Raid leaders had learned how to optimize groups all the little things that did not have to be relearned. So SSC etc seem easier but it is because we can skip over the L2Raid and go straight to the bosses.
Also I still strongly feel that the biggest 'nerf' to raiding (and thank god it happened) was the alchemy change. Content was designed around 100% potted and flasked raids. The most diehard guilds would do what it took to have a flask and 3-4 pots on everyone but that burned people out. Switching from an alchemy love fest to maxxing out at one flask was a godsend for the serious but not die hard guilds like mine. We went from never really being a fully buffed raid to always being a fully buffed raid and so did many other guilds. I think this alchemy change above all others is why hyjal and bt fell so quickly.
What this actually says is that the gulf between the "most hardcore" and "average" raiders is far wider than anticipated. Now, it's possible that it always was, and that a staggered release simply covered over the cracks. But I suspect it's equally likely that the monumental upheavals post-TBC really have stratified the raiding game much more than Blizzard could have predicted.
No, I do think it always was. The top guilds in the world killed Vael in a couple of days. Other guilds were stuck on him for months. Twin Emps? A 2-day fight. For some guilds a 2-month fight. That's a tremendous gap. The only thing that narrowed it to an extent was the pacing of the raid content. We killed Nef on October 2nd or so. Another guild perhaps killed Nef on January 2nd. But when AQ opened for most people in mid-February, both guilds were roughly at the same point. If AQ had been open all along, and C'Thun/Ouro were properly tuned, we'd have probably had C'Thun down by November, while the other guild was still struggling with Firemaw or Chromaggus.
You said:
I think they intended more people to be ready for BT when it came out
but actually according to all indications BT was originally intended to be TBC release content. It was pushed back to 2.1 to allow for more time to tune it.
I'll freely admit that a year ago I was asking for the opposite thing. If you search these forums you might find me waxing rhapsodic about a world in which I can hit 70 and zone right into Black Temple and get completely destroyed, knowing that some day I'll be able to come back and hold my own there, with better gear. That was a pipe dream -- for PvP and other reasons, the gear curve simply isn't steep enough to permit that sort of strict gear check, and the reality is that if it's available, people will do it. The more content you make available right away, the faster the hardcore players will burn through it and find themselves bored, creating a twofold problem: 1) bored players; and 2) too large a gap between the top and the middle.
Part of the "ease" of encounters, I believe, is due to paid transfers being available. The concentration of talent is much better than it was pre-BC, so those top guilds will advance all the faster.
Creating incentives to transfer
This might be an important point, and I see these potential dynamics at play here.
1. All raid content available immediately.
2. Paid transfers available
3. Consolidation of skilled competitive players
4. Extra marginal utility from an hour of raiding
5. Burning out players faster.
6. Huge gear stratification
With so much difference between t4 and t6, it would seem to encourage the top progression guilds to consolidate skilled and high play time people into smaller elite guilds which can rapidly blow through content. (I.e. Why climb it? Because its there.)
Incentivizing Transfers
Competitive players gain a strong incentive to jump ship to move up a tier, since they can easily see easier paths to success in front of them. If all guilds were closer in competition, the talent would stay spread around more, and you might see more guilds in the top tier.
The Marginal Utility of more raiding
In addition, since guilds have an incentive to progress as fast as possible, there is still value in raiding on a more stressful schedule (i.e. 6+ days/week). While some people can certainly do this, it would seem to lead to faster burn out. So top guilds are essentially 'churning' players at a faster rate, in order to cut through content faster. This decreases the overall pool of raiders available, and leads to a situation where a handful of stacked guilds are sitting on top of T6 on farm, but servers like mine where the top alliance guild has only just killed Vashj.
Gear Stratification
I know Gurgthock has touched on this before, but I can imagine the huge gap in gear makes the transfer/staffing problem that much worse. If you are working on T6 content, I would think you have a hugely limited pool of people to work with. You probably can't just pick up a T4 geared player and plug him in. When the leaders are so far in front of the pack, they end up picking up all the top geared players from all around, where as, if gear was less stratified, they would both have less recruiting problems, and less incentive to pull the top geared players from guild behind them.
That said, as I'm no longer on the 'raiding track', I'm observing this from the outside, so I'm not sure how much these incentives are playing out.
I'm on a fairly healthy RP server, that's just always been 'months behind'. We've competetively been the #1 or #2 guild on the server for a long time. No one ever made it to Kel'thuzad, or even the 4-H in vanilla WoW.
My guild is similar to Shakka's. We raid 4 nights a week for 4 hours a night, a very set schedule. We're a very raid focused guild, we've had roughly a new boss kill every 1-2 weeks since our beginning. We keep a tight roster of 4-5 per class. We rarely have attendance issues or any major drama. We've never had a guild split or break-up. The entire raid is always potted or flasked for new content. We've always prided ourselves on being a guild that enjoys playing together, and I can truthfully say we do. We're very picky about recruiting, and have very low turnover. Many of the people in our Lucifron kill-shot are still with us.
We formed up in July of 2005 when BWL was now the bleeding edge.
We killed Ragnaros in December of '05 when AQ40 was on the PTR.
We killed Nefarian in May of '06 when Naxx was about to be released.
We killed the Twin Emps the same day Nihilum killed Kel'thuzad, and C'thun a few weeks later.
We had roughly 1 boss kill a week until the 1.2 patch was released, and ended up at Thaddius when TBC released.
I was so sad we never got to kill Kel'thuzad. We were capable, we just never got there. I still regret it.
We painfully trimmed down the guild at TBC. We fine-tuned and polished the edges.
We paced through Karazhan and killed Maulgar at the end of February.
We killed Gruul at the end of March, and Magtheridon at the beginning of May.
We managed to get everyone in guild TK attuned a week before they removed the attunement.
About 1 boss a week through SSC, and Vashj dead mid-way through July, and Al'ar and Solarian both in the next week.
We killed Kael'thas first week of September, and I have no doubt in my mind that this raid-force can kill Illidan. Maybe before Sunwell, maybe not.
But it scares me to death that we'll be mid-way through Sunwell when WotLK is released, and I'll never see Kil'jaeden die, just like Kel'thuzad.
Where should the pacing be set? Does my guild not deserve to see all the content? Are we really that under-performing?
I agree with a lot of what Gurg said regarding the pacing and maybe having Hyjal and BT spaced out on their release more. I don't think there's ever going to be a truly happy medium though. Being top 10 in the US to clear content when millions of people raid to some extent feels like catering the SAT's to Harvard Med students. I think there should be rewards to clearing content first or early, but where should the line be drawn?
The only reason Naxx went unfinished for so many was the expansion release, but if the expansion had been pushed back, how long would've been enough? Long enough for my guild to kill 6 more bosses? Long enough for the guild's just killing Nefarian to clear the whole thing? By then the Nihilum's and such would've felt the same boredom as you're getting to now.
Blizzard admitted to cutting Naxx off too early, and hopefully they'll leave enough room this time. Nihilum had 4 months of clearing Naxx before TBC release. EJ killed KT in December, if EJ had gotten 4 months of Naxx farming, my guild would've probably downed Kel'thuzad. By the time EJ has been farming Illidan for 4 months ZA should be released and tide some guilds over for a few weeks to a month. Maybe Sunwell will be up on PTR by then. It doesn't feel that off pace.
I think the big problem was Blizzard just kept 2.2 on the PTR way too long, even if it didn't give much to raid content, that PTR drew out forever. Otherwise the pace of things doesn't feel too far off to me.
The question I have is, why do Kael/Vashj have to be the huge cock-blocks? I see many many servers with guilds stuck in the T5 -> T6 transition. Many people have said that Kael, especially, is one of the toughest fights in the game. Why put this mountain that early in the progression path?
This is exactly the problem I see being discussed. Why is the end of T5 content "early in the progression path"? If Kael'thas were C'thun, and defeating him meant you were done with raid content until Hyjal/BT were released at some later date, it wouldn't be a cockblock. It's not like Kae'thas and Vashj are in the middle of the instance and you can't reach the tasty endbosses with their loot after all. They are the endbosses of Tier 5. The PROBLEM is that Tier 5 was never separated from Tier 6, so completing Tier 5 is nothing more than a stepping stone to your actual goal, rather than an end in itself. The fact that these endbosses are viewed as cockblocks to the content is a result of the mass release of that content, not of the bosses themselves.
Fast moving thread; can't keep up on this forum like I used to be able to.
My guild is pre-Kael'thas, but even pacing has had a unique influence on us - we're facing medium-level content yet it feels like we have a long road ahead of us. Illidan is still the end-game for us and many of our raiders want to beat him sooner or later, but given we're pushing hard just to try and find the time and ability to get in to a clean Ph4 Kael, the amount of content and time before Illidan is simply daunting. That content has been sitting there for an eternity too, so the temporal distance between where we are and where we could potentially be has always been great - and demotivating.
If it were the case that Hyjal/BT were released sometime later, when we were entering TK/SSC we would have been staring at relatively new, cutting edge content. As it is we're drudging through top guild hand-me-downs. It's not an enjoyable experience, especially for our top-end players who know the amount of content we're missing out on.
Like many, the numerous dynamics of raiding that exist outside the here and now of beating an encounter are what contributes most to malaise.
Hopefully, Blizzard's increasing support of casual and hardcore 10-man raiding, non-raiding hardcore player options, and non-raiding casual content, will allow each progression path to be appropriately tuned for that type of player.
That's a better way to describe my feeling on Sunwell. If they were able to stick to the one year plan then stopping at BT/Hyjal and the overall pacing would have a much better feel to it. Sunwell just sticks out like a sore thumb. There was a symmetry to Gruul/Mag, SSC/TK, and BT/Hyjal. Sunwell just seems like a bone being thrown out because WotLK fell behind in its production schedule.
And Zul'Aman... its timing makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Difference being that Zul'Aman holds little to no interest for 25 man raid guilds that are already farming BT/Hyjal. At best the gear will be approaching Tier 5 level. Most high end raid guilds will probably run it once or twice for fun and then quickly abandon it unless there are more than a few itemization gap fillers to be had. As I said: Zul'Aman is probably the most poorly timed of all TBC instances and should have been available at least with 2.2 if not 2.1.
This is purely speculation but, I think you're going to be completely wrong on this one. If I remember correctly, this is the exact thing people thought about ZG when it came out. Flash forward to now, people ran ZG for the enchants up until the day TBC was released (and some still do!) and the trinkets could still be considered useful for some classes up to and even at level 70.
It's been said before but, blizzard will certainly put highly desirable items on rep rewards, repeatable turnins, and hopefully the stratholme-style timer offers a challenge to even the most progressed guilds with adequate rewards. Perhaps ZA IS the answer everyone is looking for here. Something that isn't going to take up a full weeks schedule, but can be run a couple times a week for fun and straight up character improvement. No, it might not be "progression" unless they put in some tricky, execution-based encounters for guilds that are probably going to out gear the instance, but hopefully it will put something fun in the game to pass the time between the next big instance. We all still play this game for fun right?
It's been said before but, blizzard will certainly put highly desirable items on rep rewards, repeatable turnins, and hopefully the stratholme-style timer offers a challenge to even the most progressed guilds with adequate rewards. Perhaps ZA IS the answer everyone is looking for here. Something that isn't going to take up a full weeks schedule, but can be run a couple times a week for fun and straight up character improvement. No, it might not be "progression" unless they put in some tricky, execution-based encounters for guilds that are probably going to out gear the instance, but hopefully it will put something fun in the game to pass the time between the next big instance. We all still play this game for fun right?
The guilds that need the gap closed the most are also the ones that can't afford to take 1-2 nights out of T5/6 content to run what is, essentially, a step backwards in pure progression.
ZA is great for the ZG guilds of TBC (slower paced, smaller grouped, low ambition) and for the super fast paced folks who don't really need it until Sunwell. It's an odd situation.
BSG Reference Sheet
in EJBSG 10 -My instincts tell me that we cannot sacrifice democracy just because the president makes a bad decision.
I don't think it would have been possible for them to hold back much of the 5-man content. That content was necessary to gear up for Karazhan.
The one thing I think they could have done is not slapped a half-assed heroic onto every 5-man; if they just did 2-4 at a time and polished them, made them enough different from regular to be interesting, and staggered the difficulty they'd have a 5-man progression chain with minimal work, instead of a huge mess of heroics that people only visit a few of.
This is my first post. I am/was part of a guild on a low population server. On Ysondre server, the progression has basically capped out at high astromancer Solarian, and since the population is so low, people have almost completely switched to pvp at endgame, and not just because it is a pvp server. Perhaps blizzard thought that people would be held up because they would want to do arena constantly like people trying to get ranks did pvp before BC. However, since it is based on ratings, people just play 10 games and log out or go raid. It would seem to me that arena was supposed to take up more time and slow down people who had the skill to progress through all the bosses and kill them, or be a small amount of programming which was supposed to take up alot of time.
The guilds that need the gap closed the most are also the ones that can't afford to take 1-2 nights out of T5/6 content to run what is, essentially, a step backwards in pure progression.
ZA is great for the ZG guilds of TBC (slower paced, smaller grouped, low ambition) and for the super fast paced folks who don't really need it until Sunwell. It's an odd situation.
Well, really it's the next progression instance for small guilds who don't run 25 mans. As someone mentioned, this is a long time coming (nothing since January for those guilds). This thread though, is a discussion of pacing. I am saying that, regarding pacing, this is a "downtime" instance. For those who have been flat out since January, it could potentially be a good change of pace, and keep people entertained, interested, and developing their characters until the Sunwell is released.
Plus, it's hard to say "super fast paced guilds wont need ZA". My original point was, people thought that same thing about ZG, but even the most end-game guilds still ran it up to TBC release.
I think it was definitely too fast. We killed Kael a couple times, then went to hyjal/bt. I know we were not on the cutting/bleeding edge in terms of progress, but we were not too shabby. Very very few people completed their tier5 set. In fact, Tier 5 felt like a waste to me. I think if Hyjal / Black Temple was delayed by 6-8 weeks, more guilds would have had some 'farm time' with Vashj and Kael, while not being too much of a delay for the top PVE guilds. I think we will see Sunwell before Christmas (just a hunch), which is only 3 months off, and a 6-8 week pushback would leave us at a fairly consistent content lvl, instead of what we have seen.
Well, really it's the next progression instance for small guilds who don't run 25 mans. As someone mentioned, this is a long time coming (nothing since January for those guilds). This thread though, is a discussion of pacing. I am saying that, regarding pacing, this is a "downtime" instance. For those who have been flat out since January, it could potentially be a good change of pace, and keep people entertained, interested, and developing their characters until the Sunwell is released.
Plus, it's hard to say "super fast paced guilds wont need ZA". My original point was, people thought that same thing about ZG, but even the most end-game guilds still ran it up to TBC release.
Hence mentioning the slower paced, smaller grouped, and less ambitious groups which ZA really benefits (myself included- check my profile. Kara and ZA are going to be my playgrounds until Wrath.)- not necessarily lower skilled.
It's the folks in the slow lane and the folks in the fast lane that really benefit. I never said anything about them not needing ZA- simply that the guilds who, in deference to the topic at hand, are stuck in the middle and could really use the boost to gear etc to catch up to the big dogs. Sadly they'll be forced into a difficult situation- farm ZA and fall behind in T5/6 progression... or not farm ZA and be working in less ideal gear. It really depends on exactly how good the ZA loot is to determine which choice they'll need to make.
BSG Reference Sheet
in EJBSG 10 -My instincts tell me that we cannot sacrifice democracy just because the president makes a bad decision.
Someone posted earlier that SSC and TK is too hard, they arent, What is hard is having a 35 man raid force of commited and good raiders who are geared appropriately.Anybody who has that moved through the content quickly
This is true also, but SSC + TK are still too hard, Hydross seems to be one of the hardest bosses for people to kill (not so for my guild) reliably, Al'ar/Solarian have very few kills compared to all other t5 bosses, Morogrim seems entirely dependant on having a paladin or two with Merc Glad gear so they have the hp/ac to tank the murlocs, leo is just a bitch for soo many guilds, the timer makes it very close for us almost everytime we do him.
These aren't introductions to real 25man raiding, hell, look at my servers magtheridon kills, they are terrible, almost everytime we go kill him we wipe multiple times because ONE clicker dc's/lags just as he is about to click...why are they making people be perfect in the first real 25 man raids. (Gruul/Maulgar really is about sticking 2 kara groups together...Mag onwards is about everyone working together)
Surprisingly here is a topic that no one has yet discussed: Server progression.
For all the same reasons that have been posted in this thread, the hardcore vs. casual pacing, the peaks of interest, or the lack thereof... this has an impact on overall server health as well.
Guilds who are 'just starting out' will lose talent very quickly to the more established raiding institutions as soon as internal strife hits- not to mention multiple disbands among the guild population. Leadership quality and guild direction prove a big factor in loyalty, but let's face it, not everyone in the guild you're in raids for the same reasons. 'Why should I join Gig A that matches my experience and gear when Gig B just opened a spot for my class/spec and is miles ahead?'
With such a stark contrast in guild progressions, servers might find themselves with 1-2 guilds way out front (Hyjal/BT), a couple not so far behind (working on Kael/Vashj), but then a plethora of guilds stepping out of Gruul and into Lurker/Reaver.
Throughout progression, every guild/ every raid needs to be challenged. There needs to come a time when the raid falls flat on their face and the raid leader announces 'Guys, this isn't happening this week, but we know what we need to work on for it to happen'.
1. Gear checks
2. Resist fights
3. Strategic milestones
4. End of current content.
This list should not be a 1, 2, 3, 4. It should be a 1, 2, 3, (4), 1, 2, 3, etc. Most guilds had either just downed Rag or working on Domo/Rag when BWL came out. AQ40 hit when lots of guilds were working on Chrom/Nef. Twin Emps/Cthun were the peak of progression for the 4hr, 3-4 days/week guilds when Naxx hit. Even TBC came out in the same general flow when the same sort of 'benchmark' guilds were on 4HM (or just before/after- progression through Naxx was very diverse).
One aspect is indeed that the t6 content seemed to come very early in the game, i.e. at a point where the most advanced guild on each server was typically entering t5 content. But there other factors that added up to create the mess we see today:
a) Karazhan - I was not there to experience it, but it's obvious by looking at what happened on my realm (and among my friends who were playing pre-TBC) that Karazhan broke many many guilds. The shift from 40-man to 10-man was not painless to say the least. It made the whole picture worse because it created a 3-month delay for a lot of raiding guilds to recover, and just when most guilds were comfortable running Karazhan, the top guilds were being offered content 2 tiers above.
b) gruul/mag - the other half of t4 was also tough to organise for most guilds. First of all jumping from 10-man to 25-man is not easy (and yes, 25 is not a multiple of 10). Second, the encounters were quite tough compared to Karazhan level of difficulty. Actually I find it funny to see that most of my friends who played pre-TBC were doing the 20-man and 40-man content, but nowadays very few of them have actually done any of the 25-man content. They're stuck at the end of Kara and heroics. That's it. 20-man t4 content with a good difficulty curve would have solved that.
By making t4 an organisational nightmare for most guilds, it meant serious delays in progression on a lot of servers. On Terenas (EU), a server with low horde population, the first KT kill horde side was one week ago... it's good, there's lot of content to look forward to. Nobody on the server would have noticed if BT had been released beginning of August.
In the end if I look at the situation on my server, on the horde side 1 guild is in MH (and BT soon), 1 should be in MH soon, a couple more are running t5 content regularly, and the vast majority of others is stuck in Karazhan with some tries on t4 25-mans. Rather bleak picture on an average server. Due to alliance:horde ratio being almost 3:1, the alliance side is a bit more progressed but nothing really significant.
Whatever might have been "planned" for TBC raid content was really thrown for a loop when t5 and t6 content were not ready at the same time the expansion was released. This forced them to creatively slow down the top guilds by making t4 and t5 content impossibly hard. I think looking back on it, they regret what this difficult tuning did to the raid game in general, but they were so afraid of raiders focusing on the fact there was no Illidan in game that they thought it was neccessary.
Upon finishing it, its easy to say that they should have held off releasing t6 content. But from their perspective, they had to get Illidan Stormrage in the game as soon as possible. He is the focus of this entire expansion and on the cover of the box. Short of making Illidan t4, which would have been an equally undesireable situation, they really didn't have many options other than the tiered attunement process to create a false sense of content pacing.
This was Blizzards first Expansion to an online game, and no doubt they have learned a ton that will help them for the next, but in the end they and us will face the same looming questions. Arthas will still be the focus of the next expansion and Blizzard will want to release a game with him in it. Either the expansion is front loaded with attunements that seek to slow people down and keep them raiding the lower tiered content, or Blizzard creates new ways to force guilds from ignoring 2 tiers of content and getting straight to Arthas.
The obvious answer to me is tuning. Design content that can not be accomplished without a certain amount of gear from the tier below it. Create tiered armor sets that are huge upgrades from the tier before it and make sure the entry bosses of these zones require a guild to have it before he can be beat. Imagine if Mother Sharahz had been the first boss of black temple but all the hearts of darkness were in Tempest Keep and SSC. In this way, Blizzard can manage how much time a guild has to spend in a lower tier of content before they can advance even though its front loaded.
Of course the downside for blizzard is that we will still complain. Guilds will attempt to skip instantly to the next tier and complain that the boss is too hard. Guilds will wonder why blizzard changed from an easy to difficult linear progression in dungeon design and people will threaten to quit. If Blizzard only had to design a game, they would be fine, but their second and more important job is trying to please and unpleasable mob of players.
Actually I find it funny to see that most of my friends who played pre-TBC were doing the 20-man and 40-man content, but nowadays very few of them have actually done any of the 25-man content. They're stuck at the end of Kara and heroics. That's it. 20-man t4 content with a good difficulty curve would have solved that.
For me this is the most obvious 'proof' that the raid game pacing and structure in TBC could have been much better (in addition to that the most advanced guilds now sit with very little to do for an unprecedented long time). Although I lack the hard data for all servers this is very true on my server. The entire low- to mid-tier raid guild waist disappeared in TBC. And I really think this is a bad thing for the game, and ultimately for the raiders. The wrong conclusion from Blizzard would be that the raid game is not worth to put too much effort into since so few experience it now (even though there is a logic to that argument). The right conclusion would be that they got a few design parameters wrong that they can change in the expansion.
On my server (korgath) there are 5 alliance guilds on Kael with 2 more almost there. At least 2 other guilds have stopped raiding due to kael'thas We have 3 other alliance guilds who have killed Illidan. It just seems to me that Kael is in the wrong place progression wise.
When we kill him it will probably only happen 2-3 times for attunement then we will never go back. That just seems wrong.
Here's a couple of diagrams I threw together to try to help illustrate the main initial point(s) brought up in the thread.
The fastest guilds will still clear content X times faster than the average guild, regardless of if content is frontloaded or spaced out. This is represented by the steeper slope in red in the graph. The dotted light blue line would be what I call the cutoff point of "deserves to 'beat the game' by next expansion". An 'average' guild that is good enough to fall above this dotted line would be what I call a typical progression guild, and is represented by the dark blue line. The typical theorycrafting, EJ-forum-camping crowd would be way above the blue line, yet still a ways behind the red line.
First diagram shows front-loading raid content (Similar to but not exactly what TBC looked like, esp. with pre-2.1 fiasco's etc)
There are a few instantly apparent problems, as have been brought up in the thread:
- Top guilds have a long period of non-progression slump which can lead to a loss of guild focus/etc.
- Guilds who are more average may get discouraged by much larger gap between forefront and them (devastating to progression even though only psychological)
- "Serious casual" guilds further disadvantaged by having to reclear beaten content and push next few bosses at the same time, while on a limited weekly schedule.
Second diagram shows what staggering instances would look like (Similar to vanilla WoW, but not exactly the same, either)
Not only does it significantly alleviate the problems above, the 'closer' competition on a server promotes a much healthier raiding scene by providing enough raiders around the same progression level that replacing/repairing a roster is much, much more feasible. Ask the sole BT forefront guild in an average server how fun it is to recruit.
Now, of course, neither option is preferable for a guild that just doesn't make the dotted blue line cut, so let's just leave them out of the equation for now. I'm not trying to sound like an elitist asshole, but that's just a fact. (Also bear in mind that many factors, including one of the three points mentioned above, can always dip a guild that -should- by all rights been above the cutoff, to below it, which is why the staggered release may after all be the preferable option)
The thing which WoW Vanilla got wrong (yes, I know TBC needed to be pushed out, etc etc) in terms of release rate was not enough of an extra slack/grace period after Naxxramas for nearly enough guilds to catch up and beat the game even while being slightly behind on content release rate (i.e. still working on Nefarian when AQ goes live, still working on C'Thun when Naxx goes live, etc)
Adding to the discussion of the thread itself, yes, T5 was rushed out the door. What COULD have been done would have been to focus on balancing Kara/Mag/Gruul properly, releasing them, then focusing on T5, releasing it months later after proper testing, then focusing on T6, releasing it months later after proper testing. Instead, BT was tested and released at the same time SSC/TK were being rebalanced for a proper progression line, after the devs were playing catch-up on fine-tuning balance for Karazhan/Mag/Gruul. Ouch :/
10/02/07, 10:28 AM
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