◊ Praetorian

Ah, but there's a large difference between giving a mob an ability and giving a mob an ability that can also be used when you mind control it, no?

(Also MCing Razorgore makes him take vastly increased damage from all sources, so you couldn't tank the room regardless -- it used to be fun when he'd bug out and keep his debuff for phase 2.)

 

Sebudai

We never did any of those silly things. The reason a lot of guilds killed him a bunch of times in the first few days was because you could still use an out of combat rezzer back then, and because they kept reseting the raid ID's.

 

• Snowy

I am sure it's a combination of both reasons -- the fact that our gear got better all around allowed us to drop another healer, allowing us to increase DPS considerably.

For example, take this Teron parse of the week that we scored our first Illidan kill: Loading... -- 8 healers, 17798 RDPS.
Our most recent Teron kill: Wow Web Stats -- 7 healers, 27062 RDPS.

One less healer certainly can't account for almost 10k RDPS. If you look at individuals, you can see a flat 25-35% increase across the board in DPS -- even me as an spriest.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

Krazen

There were 2 things with naxx, IMO:

1. The 4 horsemen, and the complexity of the fight. Remember D&T's spreadsheet?
2. The length of naxx allowed them to form a lower tier of the first 4 wings and an upper tier of Sapphiron/Kelthuzad, which allowed Blizzard to balance Kelthuzad assuming that players had a significant quantity of Naxx loot, which takes weeks to obtain. By contrast, how much gear do Archimonde and Coincil require? Sure, Shahraz needs the SR, but the last t6 fights clearly aren't balanced around a full t6 raid. The Chinese proved otherwise.

Ultimately, I guess it depends on how strict the tuning is: If being tuned for t6 means you only need a couple Illidan pieces here and there, full t6 guilds are probably going to blow through it. The previous post shows how big this gap is. The secondary part of this is how Kil'jaeden is tuned.

 

Diogo

Well, there is a lot of speculation over 2.4, but I, for one, can't wait to see all these new mechanics in game. If they are able to succesfully patch this responsive world in, and can stablish a more interactive way of determining progression, then wow's shelf life might be a lot longer than originally imagined.

I am particularly looking forward to learning more about this supposedly new way of progression through content that they have in mind. For all of BC's successes, I really dislike the current method of pacing end game content for the general population. Up to this point, the developers apparently have 3 "stages" for each raid instance in mind: tough attunement process, hard "cockblock" boss followed by pushovers in the next tier of raids as a reward; then "cockblock" bosses get nerfed; then finally attunement gets lifted. While this has allowed more players to experience more content, which is a good idea in my mind, it has also had the undesired side effect of making content irrelevant much sooner than it should be. People were still doing MC and ZG right up until 2.0 was released, and they were only made obsolete and irrelevant after pvp became all the rage as we geared up for an expansion. Right now, the lifting of SSC/TK attunements made Mag obsolete as lurker, void, astromancer, morogrim and others are so easy and have better loot. (and the only reason gruul is still somewhat relevant is because of the weird fact that it still drops items like the DST). People's concerns about what will happen with SSC/TK if BT/MH attunements are lifted, or what will happen with BT/MH if there is no attunement process for the Sunwell, only reinforce the point.

How to keep the hardcore interested while at the same time not introducing some arbitrary cockblock to prevent undergeared John Does from cherry picking and clearing just the easy pushover bosses? Maybe they are on to something, as reps, and rep rewards, might help keep to allow players to progress at their own rate, without having to do like they have until now, which is farm easy bosses and wait endlessely for mag/vahj/kael/random cockblock boss to be nerfed in order to progress.

 

Dukanull

With such a small instance, I can't see them tuning Kil'jaeden around loot in Sunwell. Well, they could always put in a [Dagger of Kil'Jaeden Slaying] requiring 6weeks of guaranteed drops off bosses, which, I'd imagine, everyone is opposed to. Without adding a major gimmmick to the fight he's going to go down as soon as rep requirements are fulfilled.

I find it interesting that in the "teaser" stage of MH and BT, and now SWP, the four horsemen were and are brought up again and again. I personally am of the opinion that the logistics just aren't there with a 25-man raid to create an encounter that complex.

Vindication-wow.com

 

◊ Praetorian

That's not true. 4H doesn't remotely represent a ceiling on possible complexity. In fact you could very easily implement the exact 4H encounter as a 25-man fight requiring 6 tanks (war/pal/dru) by increasing the Mark timers slightly to allow enough time for six tanks to rotate, without changing any of the overall complexity of the fight.

 

• frmorrison

I could see another resist fight. Arcane resist really doesn't have a hallmark encounter (Curator and Solarian and back in MC Shazzrah have Arcane resist usefulness, but it is not required), so maybe that will be added.

 

Kazanir

They don't have the gear in place for a full-on Shahraz-style resist fight in arcane though -- the few blue pieces available aren't really high enough quality for a tier-7-esque fight. Solarian, I think, was intended to be that marquee Arcane Resist fight but it ended up turning out differently.

'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. I told you. This is bigger than a war. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.

You can come with me. I can protect you.

 

◊ Quigon

Well not only that, the day 1 version had zero cooldown on the egg timer - meaning you could clear the whole thing in under 30 seconds or something ridiculous like that. It was hard when you had to keep relearning things, and most guilds (at least our server and us) didn't raid NEARLY as often back then.

Also, about the MC thing - its probably right what Praetorian said - makes me think of the Grobbulus tooltip, and partially think about that FR buff mob in UBRS... boy was that buff powerful on rag (used it on our first kill and it was night and day). But mostly I guess that stuff is likely to be remnants or scaffolding to a different encounter that just didn't work out for whatever reason.

 

Pyros

In my opinion, it was mostly designs, and the fact that they were new. I still haven't cleared current BC content, but I'm gonna go with the videos I've seen and strats I've read. There's almost no innovation between current content and AQ/naxx encounters. There's a few encounters where you have to loot items that didn't exist before(vashj orb, kael weapons, najentus spine), and one mechanic that looked interesting(the sharaz teleport, where you have to spread out in different directions to break it) but everything else looked like a rehash of existing stuff. If you've done it once, you can do it as many times as it takes. Chtun first, then the 4horsemen and Gothik pretty much took the raid coordination to a level that most encounters in BC don't reach.

I truly believe raids preBC were harder, mainly because they were new, but in some occassion because they were straight up harder, and that wasn't only because they were 40man(but I guess one fuckup in a 40man was more common than 1 in a 25man). Hell Ossirian is harder than almost everything I've seen in T4 T5 and T6 content up to now(3/5MH and 5/9BT), or at least looks like it. And it was more FUN too. There's a lot of boring fights in BT/MH. I know a lot of people hated ossirian, but Chtun was also more fun than pretty much everything I've seen.

To be honest, I'll be happy when we can do naxx again on the way to 80, or at 80 I'm not sure what they said about it, cause it's still one of my favorite instance. If they could somehow add Ossirian and Chtun to WoTLK, I'd be really happy.

As for sunwell, well I hope they do add some new mechanics, or tune it so it's harder on execution. A lot of BC fights seem rather easy to me on execution, and since they're not really tuned for high levels of gear either, that makes them appear too easy.

P.S: My opinion might be biased by the fact I was playing a tank preTBC, and I'm now playing a healer. Looking at bars and only moving when I get targeted by some random AE sure makes it look easier than maximizing threat while keeping an eye on positionning and spikes to use consumables.

 

Sapp

I actually thought about it and decided you could make an even more complex fight that wouldn't require raid stacking (IE 5/6 tanks) by making two of the four, presumably Zeliek and Blameaux, ranged tanked mobs. Then you could use the normal ~3 tanks most raids run with for Korthrazz and Mograine, and add on ranged tank mechanics for the other two. Either hunters/warlocks/mages could get some sort of taunt-like tool on the way to 80, or the ranged tanked mobs could get some sort of periodic threat wipe.

 

◊ Klasto

And you can also add the lovely Gaze mechanic!
Well then again it comes to the state and progress your server is in, sure it is not a wise solution in one of these big servers but if the best guilds aren't even farming Illidan then in my opinion yes it is worth it, since you are always in a desperate shortage of proper PvE'ers in such servers.

 

Tyrian

I really do hope they consider adding a Caverns of Time: Best of Warcraft Raid Encounters type short-instance. Basically a way to see your favourite bosses from 1-3 years ago without spending 3-4 hours of clearing trash to reach them. I know many of my friends are dying to see C'thun again (among other sentimental favourites) . Rewards could be something like Heroic Badges, a selection of raid consumables/flasks that only work in Raid instances etc.

 

◊ Acustar

I agree Tyrian. I'd love to go back and fight the "epic" or unique bosses. C'Thun was hands down one of the coolest fights I've ever done. We spent so long learning him, and we only ended up killing him once just to say we did it.

 

Nuveena

Well... Here is a timeline of Naxxramas:

20.6.2006 Patch 1.11.0 adds Naxxramas
20th of June - 4th of July. 14 days, 11 bosses down: Anub'Rekhan, Faerlina, Maexxna, Noth, Heigan, Patchwerk, Grobbulus, Gluth, Thaddius, Instructor Razuvious, Gothik.
17th of July Loatheb
25th of August Four Horsemen
2nd of September Sapphiron
7th of September Kel'Thuzad

BWL was cleared up to Nefarion inside.. 2 days or something? Sure, people were able to bulldoze through the start for various reasons, but even without that, it was only really the tuning of Neffy that held anyone back. MC was cleared to 9/10 inside 2 weeks and I think to 7/10 inside 1 week.

So, really, apart from the exceptional Four Horsemen fight, the -only- thing that has ever really slowed down rapid advancement in raid instances has been bugs/tuning, and to a lesser extent the rather silly amount of consumable use Loatheb required. Those two happend to be in Naxxramas. Without them, I can only see Sapphiron being a potential roadblock, due to the Frozen Runes. But all in all, progress in TBC instances isn't particularily exceptional imo.

If anything, the first T5 clear was probably the slowest of all instances so far, if you discount 4H and Loatheb

 

Vazu

I think the real question is, when (or if) will they remove keying requirements for Black Temple? To keep the attunement quest chains alive, will they just nerf Vashj and Kael'thas again? There are still casual guilds on my server stuck on those end-instance bosses even in their current nerfed form. I mean, it's nice that they removed boss kill quest chain requirements for Sunwell, but I seriously doubt anyone in SSC/TK gear would have a shot at the harder bosses in Sunwell. Which, like Naxxramus, turns all of their hard work on Sunwell into another instance that 1% of their playerbase will ever fully enjoy. Hell, we're only a few short weeks away from 2.4 and according to WowJutsu: World of Warcraft Guild Rankings: All Realms only 1.83% of guilds in the world have killed Illidan. We hope that may be 1.84% today. We're on our first round of Illidan attempts today with 4-5 hours of raiding tonight.

 

• Karakas

Honestly Blizzard can solve a lot of tuning issues just by tuning the first boss of Sunwell to be extremely difficult from a numbers perspective. It doesn't even have to be TOO strategically complex, just have it focus on the fundamentals of quick assisting/focus firing, proper healing assignments for various sources of damage, being to put out high DPS/TPS, and maybe some type of threat ceiling/agro wipe shenanigans for good measure.

Tuned well, you can make an extremely difficult fight that only those who have spent a decent amount of time farming T6 content can beat, by virtue of numbers alone (maybe something tuned to every member in your raid having ~50%+ T6 gear). Hell, you can even solve the problem of farming trash epics/gems by having the first boss have no trash ala Razorgore and just make it a gigantic gear-check cockblock that tells guilds who haven't / can't kill Illidan to GTFO and come back when they've defeated previous content.

 

spawnstah

Will Blizzard really be able to tune/limit it like that since we now have the S3 gear which kind of help the T4/T5 dressed guilds?


I think someone mentioned in earlier in the thread but I would really like to see Heroic and Normal versions of the raid instances. For example introduce and leave all bosses and instances buggfixed but not nerfed in Heroic mode. Instead of nerfing the bosses after some months to let casuals see the content, then release a Normal version of the raid instance where the bosses are nerfed in various ways (maybe less abilities, less HP or less damage from aoe effects etc)
Only drop the attunement object for the next instance in the Heroic mode and most guilds will have a chance, just as in 5mans to learn the content in easy mode and then later do it in Heroic to progress to the next tier. And also drop 1-2 more items per boss in Heroic than in Normal mode, I can even see that only TierX items drop in Heroic mode while other random epics drops in Normal mode.
That would hopefully make it possible for Blizzard to release harder content for the Nihilium/D&T style of guilds and all followes but still make casual gamers see the endgame content and instances.

And yes, a bit egoistic but it would also prevent me from feeling cheated when they nerf a boss and Joe Casual comments that boss X is so easy, and asks how it could take you 3 weeks to learn it when they did it in 2 days?

 

Acacia

And here it is for your holiday reading pleasure: Acaciaizm.com | New Sunwell Details – Part Three
Here's to hoping the web server holds >.>

[Edit: aw wth, here it is in full, don't want to go through another server overload ^^]


Amendment

I’d like to start off with making one amendment to my previous translation in part 2, in regards to pvp balancing actions being taken. (On the question of “other information regarding 2.4″, Kaplan is secretive as always, though hints that there will be balancing actions taken in regards to PvP for certain classes). As this was a part of the “other information for 2.4″ heading I skimmed the information pretty quickly.


The exact wording is however suggesting that it’s not necessarily a specific 2.4 feature: Kaplan “… I can almost guarantee that by the time of the next patch, there will be some class balancing, especially in terms of PvP”. I’m not going to speculate any further on this quote, just wanted to make sure I provided the correct information.


The Questions

The questions below are mainly collected via EJ forums, WoW Insider and MMO Champion.


Q: Is the “Legendary Hunter bow” previously mentioned, mentioned in the interview? (#)
A: No, no talks about the bow.


Q: Is there any information in regards to new Badge Rewards, Honor Rewards or Reputation Rewards? (#)
A: No, no talks about new rewards, though there is a new faction mentioned, The Shattered Sun Offensive.


Q: Any more specific information on the gear in the 25-man?
A: The “non specific class” sets previously mentioned will however include a more Warrior tuned plate set and a Holy tuned Paladin set. They are said to be better than T6 and better item balanced than the AQ sets.


Q: Any mention of the fact that the Sunwell is deep in Horde territory, and might be a concern for Alliance on PvP servers? (#)
A: Yes, Kaplan mentions that they won’t force you through Eversong Forrest, and that you won’t have to go through Silvermoon. Flight paths from Zul’Aman will be implemented and they are considering teleportation options. The successive rebuilding of the expedition camp on Sunwell Isle should also unlock more transportation options.


Q: Why is the Daily Quest cap raised? 25 is more than anyone should be able to do in a day anyways? (#)
A: Kaplan mentions that they have realized that there are many different types of WoW players. In regards to endgame content, there are many that enjoy PvP or Arenas, some raids, some do 5-man instances. And then there are of course people who need to grind money to fund their different activities in the game. And the grinding part isn’t really that much “fun”. It’s more fun to be able to follow quest lines, and have the option of playing the game as you did 1-69. The 25 daily limit (which is the amount of quests you can carry in your quest log at one time), is basically set to let you have no limitations what so ever.


Q: I hope Sunwell doesn’t turn out to be too “dark”. Any insights on the general design? (#)
A: Kaplan mentions that players should love the new design of Magister’s Terrace (5-man). The design idea is mainly drawn from Silvermoon City, which will also give Alliance players a chance to experience the beautiful Blood Elf architecture. The Terrace contains the Blood Elve Observatory, where they could gaze on the stars and look down on the Sunwell to make sure everything went according to plan. The Sunwell Plateau (25-man) design seems to vary but will include moving outside and inside different buildings, which includes visiting chambers where Naruu’s are being held captive. These captured Naruu’s are also the main power source of the town. The last room in the 25-man will contain the actual Sunwell.


Q: Why is Kael’thas being recycled in the 5-man instance? (#)
A: Firstly, it appears that Kael’thas is only going to be in the Heroic version of the 5-man instance, and it will be an updated model. It will show that you, in fact, didn’t manage to kill him in The Eye. Kaplan says that this time he really is nuts (what, as opposed to before? - Acacias note), and that they feel that they wanted more players to be able to fight him (also see below).


Q: Did the interview go over any mistakes the developers felt they made? Like talking about attunements in 2.0 vs attunements in 2.3, making heroics easier, etc. And WHY they felt those were mistakes? (#)
A: Some. (1) On the thought of reusing Kael’thas in the 5-man Heroic, Kaplan says that they learnt from The Burning Crusade. Their philosophy now is to let as many as possible experience as much of the lore as possible, and get the chance to meet characters such as Kael’thas. They feel that those characters are important to the world and the story (Naxxramas is after all returning in WOTLK) (2) The thought and reasoning behind the Heroic re-tuning was somewhat touched in part 2 of the translations. To elaborate, Kaplan however mentions that they felt that the heroics was well tuned at the time of the release of The Burning Crusade. But as previously translated, they felt that they can’t exclude new players or people leveling alts. He specifically mentions that people who gets WoW as a Christmas present in the days to come, and truly are new players, has to have the chance to “catch up” without a brick wall between them and the end game content.


That will conclude the final part of the Interview of Jeff Kaplan, translated from Level Magazine. If anyone have any specific questions besides the above answered and besides those already answered in Part One and Two, post a comment on the blog and I’ll try to answer them. And of course, if you have access to it, the complete interview is still a worthy read.

UI's: Acaziaizm Original | Acaciaizm MiniMe | Acaciaizm MiniMe: Healbot Edition | Acaziaizm Semi

 

◊ Praetorian

Thanks for this, the updates are really helpful. It's always nice to be able to go back and get some additional explanation of an interview, instead of letting a single ambiguous comment fuel months of speculation.

 

Nezralix

Boy, this is certainly true. I've been trying to gear up a resto druid lately, and getting PUGs for 5-mans is just horrendous these days. The ilvl on the PvP gear is so high that the suboptimal distribution of stats doesn't matter and, I assume as a result, most reasonably aware players are focusing on the half-asleep honor grind instead of doing dungeons.

There has to be a better way of cycling PvP rewards without completely marginalizing the PvE process. In theory the higher average gear level of players these days should make it easier to get successful groups for 5-mans, but between Karazhan and PvP rewards, players very quickly get to the point where they're not interested in running said 5-mans in hopes of some 13% drop, yielding almost nobody with anything better than greens (and particularly not tanks) interested in running them. As a tank or as a healer, it's still not realistic to jump straight into heroics in just-hit-70 gear, leaving a very uncomfortable gap that needs to be bridged via PvP grinding or sympathetic Kara groups. For those who aren't interested in a tedious PvP grind and don't have access to Kara raids, it's considerably more difficult to gear up now than it was on TBC release, which is something that I think a lot of people fail to grasp.

 

Pyros

That's only half true from my experience, getting a normal instance group is a pain, finding groups for heroics is rather easy, even more so because of the daily. Every heroic, even if you don't get drops, is a small step toward better gear with badges(either the old loot that's still rather decent, or the new expensive loot that on T5 level). Sure it's even easier getting S1 gear, and some pieces of S2/S3, but depending on your class, this can be useful for raiding, or not so much. The lack of hit% on what I checked is staggering from a pve point of view.

Now now, I'm not arguing that progression is a bit weird compared to preTBC. Actually I really hate the fact that I won't be able to get my alt any T5 loot because we don't run T5 anymore, because of time issues. In the past, you'd still run the tier before the one you were in, unless you were racing, or you had a LOT of naxx bosses on farm. Skipping AQ40 was just an option in early naxx. But now in BC, as soon as you can start doing T6 pretty much, every guild I've known dropped T5 content instantly. Makes it hard to gear up alts correctly, have to rely on kara/badge and za when you can get in with a shitty char. But I think that's a whole other subject.

I'm really interested in knowing what ilvl the 5man sunwell drops will be, iirc DM drops when it was released were about equal to strat/scholo stuff, but they were much better itemized. Maybe they'll do the same thing and fine tune the gear drops based on exactly the stats classes need, as opposed to normal 5man loot which is still half trash half decent.

 

Mode

I agree on the tank point, but disagree about healer's. As a tank, I've found that my healer's gear really doesn't matter. For example, I recently ran Heroic Mech with a resto druid druid that hit 70 3 days before. He was wearing a typical mix of blues and greens. He had absolutely no problems keeping me up - He even successfully healed through Charged Fists.

I also agree on your main point: PvP gear is so good it renders most dungeon blues obsolete, even though it is poorly itemized for PvE. Everyone's caught on that grinding honor gives better results than grinding instances; in just about every PUG I put together, at least one of the DPS'ers is in full purple honor gear. This is probably the major reason Blizzard is so reluctant to reduce the honor grind. There are a couple ways out of this mess, but my favored one is to up the amount of gear 5-man bosses drop.

---

Was there anything in the interview about crafting? Maybe particular professions that are going to be getting some love in the near-future?

 

Nezralix

It's funny you should say that, because Resto druids are typically one of the most gear-dependent classes (given that HoT's scale almost directly proportionally to +healing). If it's doable with a tank in blues and a resto druid in greens, then it would be much easier with a resto druid in epics. I imagine that's not realistic for some heroics without the proper CC (for example, a large number of the double pulls in heroic BF hit for 3000 each), but even so.

Tanks are still in a rough spot, but on the other hand, they're the class that's most likely to get an invite for a non-heroic instance.

EDIT: I might as well add here that I think they need to add some kind of benefit to running content that you're overgeared for. All of this content is thoroughly structured around acquiring loot, even to the point where you're coughing up big money (or time) just to participate. If there was more of a feeling of "yeah, I'm not getting loot from this instance, but at least I'm getting <X>", then some of that focus would be mitigated. Whether it be potions or flasks or other consumables that reduce farming load elsewhere, they really could be offering something to people for participating other than a feeling of lost time.