Wolven

Not just the 2.3 heroic stuff but also the removal of SSC/TKE attunements. Blizzard is walking in the direction of making the game more casual friendly, this would be a large step in that direction since, as you said, repops do not really slow down progressive groups.

 

Nezralix

The research I've done is relegated to my realm and faction, where the stated time expectations for nearly every post-Kara guild is 4+ hours. I could look over other realms, but as I don't have terribly much interest in paying out the nose to transfer five 70's and a storage character, it wouldn't be very useful to me.

Running a guild is a massive time commitment, far more than meeting such a guild's raid schedule. It's also rather stressful if you don't have a core of people you can rely on to not jump ship at the first sign of trouble (which I don't). Frankly, it's silly that you even bother to mention this. Not only is it a drastic oversimplification, but it's just plain idiotic that you suggest cross-server recruiting in this scenario.

 

Denogran

Blizzard has explicitly stated (at Blizzcon, and I think in print although I don't have that now), that respawns are meant to be an internal timing mechanism. If you've put 2 hours in on a boss, and haven't downed it, respawns are essentially Blizzard's way of saying "You're really going to have to want to down this boss to keep going tonight, why don't you consider taking a break and try again another time?" Vashj is the only boss that I've seen (TK+SSC and lower) that doesn't have trash( Nightbane sorta ), but I don't think they're going to change that mechanism any time soon.

Honestly, I don't mind it either. There have been more than one nights where we're just butting our heads against some boss for some unknown reason, and the raid's been called instead of trying futilely again because of trash respawns. I.e. I've seen the system work in the manner Blizzard intended it to, and was thankful for it. Is that always the case? Of course not. And I do think that Blizzard could play with the timings in the area to change the expected raiding times.

 

Wolven

I understand what you are saying but really, is that needed or even wanted? As a raid leader I am more than willing to stop a raid that isn't going forward anymore. If you reach that level of cognition breakdown where people are no longer paying attention and are certainly not going to accomplish anything then stopping the raid is going to happen, either by the raid leader seeing it an calling the raid off or by having the people leave. Throwing trash into the mix and having it respawn is just a time sink and from the posts coming up in this thread I'd say it is becoming an ineffective and annoying time sink that is preventing people from seeing the content that Blizzard is putting out.

In case you forgot, Blizzard doesn't make content simply for the elite, they want people to see end game content. They are even going so far as to reuse Naxx just to ensure that people can enjoy that content. Are they going to have to do the same thing with the Black Temple or with Sunwell? Would something as minor as removing respawns help facilitate more people getting to see content?

The same could be said for the speed of gearing up. Instead of giving gear by random drop tables that could see different groups gearing different people and different speeds the loot could be turned more towards faction and/or badges that combine to give you your rewards for progressing through an instance and have the whole group progress at the same rate. Again, the elite and hardcore players would be able to accomplish this much faster than casuals but in the end at least everyone would be able to get through it.

 

GSH

Those of us with limited raid times already have a self-imposed time limit. If my raid ends at 9pm, we will end at 9pm. Why do we need to deal with Blizzard time limit that may or may not sync up up with our real time limit?

If you only raid 3 hours a week, 3 days a week or something, your time is precious. Losing a half-hour to trash respawns, or having to call a raid early, hurts you more than it does a guild which is willing to put in more time.

 

Denogran

So do you think there should be no penalty for multiple failed attempts at a boss? Or do you just think that the penalty should be tailored around when's convenient for your specific group and their time constraints? I really don't think that 2 hours is an unreasonable time, it's actually pretty damn short.

 

Sillia

There's already a gold penalty for multiple failed attempts at a boss. Respawning trash is Blizzard's way of saying 'you're done for tonight'. It's a way to naturally gate their content, and it sort of makes sense. The problem is that different people have different schedules. Here's what I mean:

Let's say that Blizzard balances trash to take 30 minutes to clear, and respawns after 2 hours.

Raiding team A spends 3 hours a night learning would get a total of 2 hours practicing on the boss. 30 minutes to clear trash, then 1 hour and 30 minutes to work on the boss. After which the enemies would begin respawning, and would require another 30 minutes to clear, which would put the team at 30 minutes of boss time before calling it for the evening. It's not good for them, since that second trash clear might as well effectively end the night for them. If that were the case, they end up skipping an hour's raid time because of the trash, effectively making the time lost because of trash half of their total raid time.

Raiding team B spends 4 hours a night would get a total of 3 hours practicing on the boss. They spend 30 minutes clearing the trash and 90 on the boss. Then the trash respawns and they spend 30 minutes re-clearing, and another 90 on the boss, and then call it for the evening. The trash in this case is still reasonable for this team, because they get the full amount of boss time to trash time ratio.

The 3 hours per night team has a worse ratio than the 4 hours per night team, simply because of trash respawn times. This effectively penalizes raiders who do not raid for durations that do not coincide with arbitrarily chosen trash respawn time, and that sucks.

 

Prinsesa

There's already a tangible penalty for multiple failed attempts in the form of gold repairs, food buffs and possibly elixirs. Intangibly, butting your head against the brick wall of a boss you've been wiping on for the last 3-4 attempts is also demoralizing.

When the raid should be called is supposed to be a determination made by the raid leader, whether it's because subsequent attempts on a boss have been getting worse or because your scheduled raid time is up, not because trash has respawned.

I've lead a couple of raids in Kara and there's nothing more frustrating than seeing your team of first-timers progressively getting better and better at Moroes, only to have to call the raid because the dancers are back up and you can't reclear before your nightly time is due.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Disarbadia

My thought on the 'arbitrary' two hour trash respawn timer is, well, it happens to coincide with flask timers.

If I'm not mistaken, all trash packs don't respawn at the same time after two hours, but two hours after you killed it, meaning that the first pack you killed in your 30 minute clear is popping 30 minutes before the last pack you clear.

So you trudge through the 30 minute clear, you now have two hours before that last pack repops to (possiby) interfer with more attempts. You get to your boss, gulp your flasks, begin attempts, wipe for 2 hours, flasks wear off, last trash pack is now respawning to ruin your fun. Sure you'll probably have 5-15 minutes left on your flask depending on how long it takes you to buff and get ready for the pull, but thats pretty negligible.

That arbitrarily chosen two hour respawn makes a whole lot more sense to me now.

 

Denogran

But the thing is, if you're going for efficiency, and you have a max of 3 hours, just go till 1 trash respawn. I don't get why that isn't an option. The OP is wondering why there are no guilds that raid for 3 hours. The better question is: why there are no guilds that raid for 2 hours? Blizzard isn't forcing anyone to raid 4 hours, nor are they forcing anyone to raid any other time. They're suggesting you raid in a 2-hour multiple of time, as that will be the most efficient use of time. We're already going with the assumption that you're not hardcore enough to devote 4 hour blocks to raiding, why not go the opposite way and go more casual?

 

Ragnor

I agree with the OP that end game raiding time investment is too high but then I'm 25 with 9-5 job.

My guild does 3-4 hours a day 4-5 days a week, we are upto Archimonde and Teron Gorefiend to give you an indication. I would definitely prefer 3 days of 2-3 hours but we would never be able to progress with that schedule.

Sure hardcore guilds can do all of hyjal and BT in 2-3 days, I doubt we ever be able to maintain that schedule even when everything is on farm. We are an Australian/Oceanic guild and sometimes people straight up die or make mistakes due to lag, people disconnect often, people get data capped (it's common for Australian and NZ internet plans to have limits on how much traffic a user can use a month).

In TBC way too often (imo) 1 person dying or making a mistake, lagged or getting dc'd will wipe the entire raid. Archimonde is pretty frustrating atm for this. Eg: Shit bob get out of the doomfire, bob is offline, soul charge pew pew.. wipe

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

GSH

That's an interesting point. To us, 3 hours has always been a "natural" block of time. 6pm - 9pm, or 9-12 for the EST people. It's long enough that you can get many good attempts in, but short enough that people still have time to do other things in the evening.

As well, does Blizzard really expect people to only raid for 2 hours a night? If you take Gruul's Lair and Magtheridon together, that's about 3 hours. Most large instances take 5-6 hours total to clear. For example, the Red Scepter quest in BWL had a time limit of 5 hours, implying that Blizzard thought that was a reasonably challenging time in which to clear the instance.

At 2 hours a night, it would take 3 nights to clear most zones. At 3 hours a night, it takes 2 nights. You can do all the T4 25-mans in one night. Probably TK as well. SSC is two nights.

If you discount trash respawn timers (and remember that most of them used to be much shorter), the instances seem designed to take 3 or 6 hours to clear, seemingly tailor-made for a 3-hour raid. 2 Hour trash respawns are a discordant note in that design.

 

• constantius

How is this 3 hours? I mean, even in a world when T4 was cutting edge content, if you're spending 3 hours in those two dungeons, there's something seriously wrong. This is, of course, assuming they are on farm.

When we had just killed Magtheridon, and semi-declared him on farm, we would do Gruul's Lair and Magtheridon's Lair in just under 2 hours, including *travel*, buffs, afks, and random stuff.

Now, 2 instances later, working on BT, it takes under 30 minutes to clear Gruul's, most of which is wasted time on morons who don't remember how charging mobs work, and around 20 minutes including the boss kill in Magtheridon's Lair ... when we go.

Just threw me to see someone stating it took 3 hours for both together. Unless you're wiping multiple times, this should not be the case.

 

Lemmingherder

Why would you have to transfer all 5 characters? Just transfer the one you would raid with. Either way, it is an option that you are choosing not to persue. Yes, running a guild takes a little more energy. Massive time investment? Not really, only if you try to do everything yourself. But, the feeling that it would take too much of your time, and others in the same situation likely feeling the same way, is probably a much larger reason why there aren't very many guilds out there who raid on such a limited schedule that have done anything past Karazhan. Blaming Blizzards raid game design when there are options available accomplishes what exactly?

The trash respawn timers are really only an issue if the first mob of the evening is something that is progression content for you. If you have a farm mob or 2 that you kill before getting to the boss your guild is currently working on, then the 3 hour raid window coincides a little better with the trash respawn timers. Also, as someone above stated, you do not have to stop working on a boss just because the first pack in the trash clear respawned. It is very possible to res up and pull again with trash between you and the instance, it is only the packs that could potentially add during the fight itself that are the issue. When we were working on Teron, we would work on him until the packs just outside the room were due to spawn, killed those, the 2 pulls inside the room, then went back to the boss, leaving about 20 minutes worth of trash up for the remainder of the night. The only mob I can think of off the top of my head where something similar is not possible is Lurker, due to the spawns being tied to the fish. Fathomlord too I guess, but it takes all of 10 minutes to clear his room, if that.

The other thing is, lets say trash respawns and you will have to reclear it all. Things like Gruul, Mag, etc are perfect to fit into these little blocks of time where you would only have time to clear and maybe get 1 pull in on what you were currently working on. It is all about efficiently managing your time.

 

anathor

I think the lost time issue is a fully player controlled issue, and the bottom line is that either you're slacking or you're not. The difference between a top guild and an average guild is exactly the time spent NOT raiding during a time slot that was actually booked specifically for that (and the list of time-wasting activities in the first post is quite comprehensive). In other words: efficiency and self-discipline. Blizard actually went out of its way to ease this with daily quests, consumables tokens, meeting stone and so on, so there's really no excuse.

That being said, it's possible to raid in 2-hour, 3-hour, 4-hour slots or whatever you like. Most people prefer to spend 4 hours in a row because 2 hours or 4 hours, the evening is gone anyway, so let's just try to get the most bang out of our bucks for that night. Therefore it will certainly be more difficult to find 24 other people willing to raid 2 hours per night instead of 4 hours. But it's also harder to find 24 other people willing to raid from 2am to 6am rather than from 8pm to midnight. It's more a question of having the same schedule as the majority of players on your server, than anything Blizzard could actually do about it.

 

alkis

Every smart Joe 12hr-a-week should be able to get top end gear. We raid 3 times a week, 4h per raid. We downed Vashj after 15 hours of raid time and Kael after 10.5h. We did need another 6h on Kael for 9 new people in the second raid to learn him too. That might seem impressive to some but there is a lot going on that doesn't meet the eye:

• Theorycraft is a daily thing. Posts go back and forth on how to improve each members performance in each encounter.
• We don't post tactics, we post abilities of bosses and discuss how to beat them with our raid compositions and guild's strengths.
• We start (pull first trash pack) at the latest 5 minutes past the scheduled raid time. There is no half an hour late starting time as many seem to suggest here.
• Buffers have until a shadow priest (me in most cases) PW:Fort buffs the whole raid. That's 3 full mana drinks as it is now. In total it comes to 3 minutes for buffing and 2-4 minutes CRing for the next pull. Blessings are sorted before hand, there are no exceptions (one of the locks lock wants BoK and the other wants BoW and so on).
• We go to raids maxxed out. Pvp specs are out of the question in any raid and there are no experimental specs in progression raids. All gear is gemmed+enchanted for maximizing pve effectiveness. We fully flask the raid when progressing. Every single one of us.
• WWS reports are posted after each and every raid on the side and they are drive the discussion for the next.

12 hours is more than enough if you establish good habits in your guild. It is a fallacy that you need to be raiding every day to see the endgame. You need to raid every day if you want to be the first to do so, but given Blizzard's roadmap you can clear it fine on a sane schedule.

 

Uglesh

Now I don't disagree with what you are saying, because I completely agree that a small portion of the population will be able to spend 12 hrs a week raiding. Just make sure you don't fall into the trap of assuming even more then 10% of the population approaches the game like you do.

I left that quote because I think it sums things up... 99% of people would look at you silly if you mentioned "theory-crafting". Also I think you are confusing the fact that the "Joe 12hr-a-week" I'm refering to doesn't spend another 15 hrs farming, reading strats and sorting through last weeks WWS. The "total" time investment of progressing raiding guilds is quite high. I don't think people should discount all the time we spend on boards like this or sorting through some spreadsheet to get another 2 DPS.

 

alkis

I don't know if I am lucky and my server has cheap prices on flasks or anything, but I don't log for more than 15 minutes every other day (before leaving for work) to fish a couple of motes or kill a couple of trees in Skettis. That alone nets me more gold than I need for flasks and repairs. I seriously don't understand why people make farming such a big deal.

Ofc the time spent reading forums, theorycrafting and discussing tactics should be accounted in somehow as you say. I find that time to be easily scavenged during the day but it certainly adds up to more than a couple of hours per week. I would estimate about 4-5.

 

Fugazor

Simple:
+ delete alchemy from game
+ delete all reagents from game
+ give "arena" start buff at the very beginning of instance
+ remove corpse run, if you die you will spawn at the beginning of instance (put some "door" to avoid zerg)
+ nerf trash in numbers (match max Gruul numbers) and in "power" (if needed)
+ set trash respawn to 6+ hours
+ remove durability from items (PvP people will love you long time too for that) or at least the "-10% when you die" rule (durability goes down quite fast anyway, at least for melee)
+ make short "onyxia/gruul style" instances instead of big fat "karazhan style" ones - little not-that-hard trash plus 2-4 bosses

 

Nezralix

There seems to be some miscommunication in this thread that I asked in the OP about ways to finish raids in three hours. That's not what I asked. I know it's possible to raid in three hours (but I doubt there's any guild on the planet that raids for two hours, for reasons we've already discussed). I know what it takes to finish raids in three hours. The issue is that the vast majority of 25-man raiding guilds who've had any success are not doing it in three hours. It seems a very common sentiment is that (a) people must enjoy spending four hours in a raid (which directly conflicts with the experience that WoW players I know or have spoken to on Vent share with me), or that (b) people who spend three hours might as well spend four, or for that matter might as well spend five or six, because hey, what's time worth anyway.

What I asked was how it's possible for Blizzard to (a) reduce the average time investment that guilds are spending raids (with the goal of getting more people into the raid game), and (b) encourage players that it's a good idea to finish within this time, and (c) is it a good idea to do these.

Boss-specific trash really aren't that bad, but they don't accomplish much in the scheme of things. They're a little unnatural, they're punitive, and they only apply to a single boss. They do a little bit to protect the sanity of players from overzealous raid leaders. It is a little bit strange that a thread about reducing the time investment in raids would draw so many complaints about trash respawns, which only kick in after a pretty large amount of time anyway.

You can admonish guilds that aren't very fast all you want, but you might as well scream at a tree in the middle of an empty forest. People settle on what ends up being the most convenient for the circumstances, and what's working for most guilds is a four hour time window, and for time-oriented, nobody's going below three hours. The circumstances imposed by Blizzard are dictating that this works. Things like reducing buff time have some impact on this, but I agree that they're pretty minor. Since the current wipe recovery methods (ankhs, soulstone) have been rendered obsolete in many cases by the positioning environment of many bosses, maybe they could fix that sort of thing. I'm looking for ideas like that, for reducing the major "time taxes" so that it's easier for Blizzard to control the length of instances, because obviously they're never going to have raid instances that take an hour if a wipe recovery takes 20 minutes.

Advice like "stay focused, come prepared, don't have players who go afk" is so utterly commonsense that I don't see why it's even worth mentioning, even if that was what the thread was about. Suggestions like "start your own guild if it bothers you so much" don't help either, and might as well be "no u!"

 

Sillia

The problem is that the chosen time frame (2 hour blocks) is completely arbitrary. Why not go more casual? If you did, you'd run the risk of hemorrhaging players because you aren't progressing fast enough. Nobody likes clearing trash, and nobody likes clearing trash for minimal time to work on a boss. However, people also dislike feeling like they could do more, and seeing the cutting of 1/3 of your raid time because of a lousy trash respawn mechanic is more likely to stratify the guild members into those who don't care as much about progression, and those who do. This can easily tear a guild apart, because those who are more casual are ok with 3 hours a raid and those who are more hardcore are ok with 3 hours a raid, but the casual ones are not with 4, and the hardcore are not with 2.

 

Denogran

The problem is that the chosen time frame (3 hour blocks) is completely arbitrary. What's different about my sentence than yours? I'm in a 4-hour a raid guild, and let me tell you, the more casual are ok with 4, and the more hardcore are ok with 4, but the more hardcore would not be ok with 3 and the more casual would not be ok with 5...6....7 (there are several people in my guild who actively dual-raid....oy!).

This isn't Blizzard screwing you over because they made the respawn timer only appeal to people who can raid 4 hours a night. They've given you a perfectly viable option for 2 hours. This is you complaining that the arbitrary times don't perfectly match your schedule. Say they go to a time that fits your schedule, like 3 hour respawn timers. Then, you've completed fucked over my raiding schedule, as my guild will either have to cut back (the very thing we'd be trying to fix by extending the respawn), or extend to an un-doable 6 hours. Or go to 1.5 hour respawns, then forcing a guild like mine to go to 4.5 hours, and killing it for people who are already pushing it on the tail-end of the raids.

I'm not trying to argue that 4 hour raids are the best thing since sliced bread. Personally, it means I get to bed between 1 and 2am each night, which is significantly later than I'd like, given my full-time employment status. But I don't think that a) having a respawn timer is an unreasonable thing in and of itself, and b) that 2 hours is a particularly unreasonable length.

If I wanted to find a guild that raided in my perfect times, at my level, I'm quite sure it'd be possible. But I'd have to leave my server and my friends on my server to do so. It's a compromise I don't want to make. So instead, I compromise with my raid schedule. The option is still there though, it's just a matter of my priorities. Which I think is the key thing.

 

Nezralix

I challenge anyone here to find a guild that's beaten any 25-man content and has a two-hour-per-night raiding schedule. Even a single guild. If you can't find one, then that should be evidence enough that this problem is systemic and not entirely player-created, because there's a TON of demand for raiding on a reduced schedule, lots of people who enjoy WoW and have hit the end game but can't afford to devote the entire evening to it. If you can find one, well then, I'll eat my words, but I've certainly never seen it.

I contend that there are simply too many obstacles to it.

 

Evy

I think part of the reason that some guilds have a three hour schedule is because of non-raid content factors like getting people to show up on time, starting pulls on time, amount of time wasted between attempts, etc. Before I started to play more hardcore, I was in a few different semi-casual guilds and a large part of the problem was getting people organized to raid and not necessarily the raiding itself.

If what I said isn't entirely anecdotal and other people can relate to, then it really isn't a problem that Blizzard created, but just human nature. People won't really think much of breaking guild or game rules because most people treat the game as a hobby or pastime and not as a responsibility. I think a certain level of disparity in that will always exist between different levels of players.

The "win-win" solution to this for casuals and hardcore alike would be to reduce trash respawns and to make raid instances reset-able at will instead of on a weekly timer. But that's probably likely to never happen.

 

Sillia

You're not really seeing my point, are you? It isn't about priorities, or whatever. It's about making game content friendly to players. We could go back to the original mode of raids, where people were forced to compete for taps and no instancing occurred at all. If you really wanted the raid boss, you'd have to prioritize and be there for the spawn every 21-24 hours or whatever. And that's a decision the players had to make, back then. Now we all have instanced content, so we can go ahead on our own terms. Just because it gives the players a choice doesn't mean that it can't be made easier or more user-friendly.

If Blizzard places an arbitrary respawn time on things, somebody somewhere is going to get screwed. The only way to not screw people like this is to have trash only reset on a soft (or perhaps even hard) reset.

One of the big things I've noticed both as a dev and a gamer, is that a lot of players end up trying to figure out what they are doing wrong, rather than trying to figure out what the game is doing wrong. I've seen some pretty wacky ideas from higher-up designers (the project I'm working now, up until 2 weeks ago, was running under the assumption that the main character would carry a portable defibrillator, and (I kid you not) shock himself to gain more health.); I'd never hesitate to say when I think something isn't right.

The real question, and point I was making from the start, is this:

Blizzard sets a pacing scheme for their raid content, and tune for players to do their attempts and/or completions in that amount of time. They know how long they want stuff to go. Now, what can they do to maximize the amount of time that is 'fun' and minimize the amount of time that is not? The OP's premise is that the amount of time required overall is too much, and that if they were able to reduce the overhead time, they'd see a lot more people raiding.

How much are they willing to give, and how much overhead time should they require? These are the questions I'm seeking answers to.