I forgot about most of my TK/SSC woes when we got attuned to Hyjal/Black Temple. The instances became much funner, the encounters are better designed and the instances have a great atmosphere. Hyjal is soothing to raid in (after your guild gets it on farm) and the atmosphere of BT is unrivalled imo (Remember the first time you walked into Supremus' room and saw the Orc Army and the stormy sky + azeroth 'moon'?). Even the music in BT, its just standout. Did anyone even know if SSC/TK had any music? If there was, I never noticed it.

Clearly, BT was the poster-instance of the expansion and thats where the lions share of the design work went.

They spawned within a window of a few hours on the same days/time every week.

I think a lot of thought went into Karazhan and Black Temple for raiding (and possibly Hyjal). Everything else was rushed/done by the B-team IMO.

Karazhan is a massive instance, as is Black Temple, which is not the way anything else in the expansion was designed. I suspect Karazhan in particular was largely finished, at least architecturally, a long time ago. The encounters are highly varied, atmospheric, fit well with the them of the instance, developed in lore, etc. I also think the first round of the Kara loot was done when they had a rather different idea of loot progression...

And this is my gripewith complainers. Why blame them for giving you a full sandbox if you went through all of the toys as soon as possible. I'm in T5 and bits of T6 and I still like going to KZ just cuz it's that entertaining for me. And yes I was running KZ around a month after BC came out.

People just need to learn to pace themselves or enjoy the content for content's sake, not just race to get to the end. This is an MMO, there is no end, racing only ends in loot stacking and being bored with the game. 'I beat everything and now there is nothing new for me to do.' Pat yourself on the back and be proud. Don't be pissed because you are faster than how you percieve Blizzard should be.

MMO content racing is stupid unless you accept you are fighting to be bored. I want everyone complaining about not having anything to do now to read that a few times.

Ciunterpoint to my own opinion, the nerfing should be applied less. There are bugs and there is work, if it takes work, don't make it easier. Otherwise more people get to new content and get done with it sooner. Oh wait, guess I didn't counter my own point.

Which brings up a question , is it possible there is a a-team/b-team when it comes to raid development at Blizzard? Maybe not in the sense that one is good and the other is bad - but that one has more resources/time given to them for the more 'important instances' which, judging by TBC, would be BT and Kara as mentioned. Ive wondered ever since I heard that their lead Raid Developer (Blizzcon panel) is responsible for designing alot of the best end-boss encounters (Cthun. Vashj, Kael'thas) etc which made me wonder, 'so who the hell is designing all the filler stuff leading up to that?'

I mean, come on - we went from Naxxramas to SSC/TK 1.0 - what the hell happened there.

While there aren't technically any "winning conditions" in WoW, it's human nature to strive to be the best. Being the best, in terms of a gear-based MMORPG means obtaining the best gear. While you may take your time to play at your own pace, people who are striving to have the best character aren't going to have the same mentality. Being the best means having access to the best gear, and that means clearing the most advanced content available. That means doing what is required to get there while maybe taking a glance at the scenery along the way but continuing on with the end goal. People who are trying to win a Marathon aren't going to take some extra time on the swimming leg of the race to enjoy the water.

A game developer knowing this, should plan accordingly and pace the game to avoid having long spans of time with no content being released. This should not come in the form of frustrating, unbeatable encounters either. True gear checks, ala Patchwerk, are an excellent example of making sure players meet the necessary requirements to advance without having an artificial block. This forces players to go back to lower zones and gear up to access higher zones.

An avid gamer will fully explore the aspects of the game that they enjoy the most. To the player that wants to be the best (and win), swimming around while everyone else is crossing the finish line just isn't going to cut it.

Remember the design goals for Gruul/Mag was to duplicate the quick Onyxia style encounter. While they were quick and a stepping stone in guild progression, where do you think Blizzard went wrong with them?

Onyxia was a tough fight. Unless you joined one of the many Onyxia PuGs towards the end of WoW 1.x you might not have seen the people who wiped over and over again to that fight. Magtheridon is easily that level of difficulty but it requires a certain level of awareness and coordination to click the cubes for so many more raid members. Once you learned to stay out of the eggs and avoid Deep Breaths Ony wasn't quite so bad.

Was it the epic scale of the encounter? Again, Blizzard tried to do that with Magtheridon. You had quests pointing at him and even got to look down and see him clearing the second outlands leveling instance. While this might not match the storyline presented in the whole Alliance side Ony quest line it did build anticipation for the fight.

Or was it the other epic factor, the loot? Ony loot was good, very good. The TBC equivalent would be a tier higher than what Mag/Gruul drops. Should Magtheridon have been itemized to remain relevant through most of SSC / TK clearing instead of being something to go alongside Kara/Gruul?

Ok then Caligula. When you win the race and still see everyone enjoying running legs, don't whine. I don't need examples and references to support my point, that is it. You either smell the roses and don't sweat being first, or you race and bask in the glory of being the best and don't be upset that you got nothing to do now.

I'm at Illidan now and yet to kill him and I enjoyed the entire trip through here and aside from zones I personally don't like, will run just about anything...on my main.

I think Blizzard basically went wrong with no introduction to raiding. Having Onyxia style encounters was great, but I think they are desert not the meal. Another thing that is sort of odd, where is the T6 Onyxia style quicky?

Quick Edit: Now that I think about it Blizzard seems to me to have the whole raid progression backwards. It starts out very non-linear and broken up and then becomes linear for the people that have the experience to really make some choices.

Better would have been to start with a Black Temple style linear instance with the one-off Ony style encounters rouding out the T6 content instead of the T4 content...

You're delusional if you haven't noticed the lack of pacing and extreme content drought of TBC. It's pretty obvious if you just compare the timeline of events in pre tbc and tbc.

Would you be so kind as to draw out those timelines for us?

The pacing is CONTROLLED BY YOU. Why can't you accept that. You go as fast as you want in BC. Pre BC sucked for me because in order to get anywhere I had to go through EVERY PREVIOUS FUCKING STEP. I mean it's like comparing some other adventure game before GTA 3 came out to GTA 3. I can do whatever I want, however I want. The roadblocks are minimal and I don't have to get 40 people together just so I can catch up. I've had numerous friends so what I was doing Pre BC and start playing then stop when they realized how long catching up would take.

But hey, my motivations tro play in the first place were my own. You call me delusional then I call you that. It solves nothing and just builds up preconcieved notions of each other refusing to give an inch.

I chuckled. Damn work, else I'd have actually luaghed heartily.

Wunlastri, could you explain that? I have been to Naxx and we never had gear problems with PW, not with the tanks, nor the DPS or the healers. We had problems getting enough priests and we had problems with healer coordination, but never with gear...

Wow release Nov 2004 if I recall. People level to 60 and start raiding.
BWL July 2005
AQ January 2006
Naxx June 2006
TBC patch December 2006
Black Temple May 2007
Sunwell March or beyond 2008

Do you notice yet the nearly year long period between BT and Sunwell? Or the fact that, really, t6 content was there in the game in Jan 07, putting it at over a year?

WoW has become very, very stagnant.

Gar is an internet joke based on teh typoing of the word gay when someone on the infamous 2chan I believe were saying who was so manly they would be gay for them. Hijinx ensue and now gar means manly beyond reasonable levels. As such I found it amusing that your guild did not try the fight until you were manly (read, gar) enough. No insults meant there. And we have gone off topic enough.

For people like me the ZA patch added some interesting stuff. ZA is by far the best raid instance of TBC. It is however starting to lose its flavor after 4 clears and many half clears, and I hope sunwell and the expansion wont be too long to come. I can understand however how someone who cleared BT in July would be bored to hell doing the same bosses for over 6 months.

I'm sorry but that statement is so exaggerated and couldn't be more wrong. It's like you're jumping on the bandwagon.
First of all, on our first 4HM kill we used 2 T1/T2 geared alts and a AQ40 geared Feral Druid. Taunt resists were extremely exaggerated and could mostly be negated to a less than 10% chance of wiping you. If done right one taunt resist was nothing. Two meant you were in trouble. Three meant you were going to wipe. 4HM was completely about how to rotate while maintaining a healthy rotation on your tanks (fire res on Mograine and Thane helped a lot, while little people did it, especially in the halfroom rotation tactic), both fullroom and halfroom rotations were good tactics. Although I believe Halfroom rotation (4 on Mograine + Thane with FR, 4 on Zeliek/Lady with normal "weaker" gear, since they hit for less) was a lot more forgiving to a taunt resist. Also stacking healers was something I never got on the 4HM. As soon as one of them died (Mograine usually) it was pretty much good game...

The biggest problem with four horsemen was the difficulty of getting your deadweight to perform a rather "complicated" rotation. I mean, how do you get someone who dies on Heigan to rotate from Mograine to Thane, without getting too many extra stacks, while keeping an eye on timers for abilities (Marks specifically, it wasn't uncommon for someone to get aggro right after a mark, but also Thane's meteor was a popular one; runnning away too soon and getting splattered by a meteor alone, or your tank getting owned because it was too much damage without the extra soaks).

My point is, there was no real gear cockblock in the 4HM. Alts with t1-t2 could tank it. The gear checks were imo Patchwerk, Gothik, Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad. Loatheb too maybe, but he was trivialized with world buffs. Come to think of it, so was Sapphiron. 8k hp on your mages and other glass cannons really made the difference.

I'm not sure why you seem so opposed to the staggering of end game raid content. For guilds like yours and mine, who are just now reaching Illidan, we would not have even noticed it, since by the time we entered Hyjal we were already several months behind the top 100 US guilds. It would have spaced things out better for those on the bleeding edge, and instead of having nothing to do for 6+ months that could have been shrunk down to 3 months.

Also it would have kept the gap smaller between bleeding edge guilds and the rest of us. It was sort weird to for my guild to get our first Kael Kill 3 months after DnT killed Illidan. If the gap had been smaller it would have at least made it seem like everyone else wasn't so far behind.

Bottom line... staggering of raid content would not have adversely affected you in any way. It would not have slowed you down, it would not have negatively impacted you. It would have made the raid game better though, and thats something I think we all want.

My sense is that's gigantically selective goggles with regards to Tier 5 and Tier 6. (Tier 4 is a mess, of course).

Tier 5 is 2 instances in 2 Outland zones.

Tier 6 is 2 instances, one in Kalimdor, one in Outland.

Tier 5 is more evenly balanced across the two zones. Tier 5 has two traditional zones. Tier 5 allows you to move between the two zones without attunement issues.

While you can argue whether or not Tier 6 is more fun, let's not argue it's more disjointed. And since the topic is about disjointedness with regards to Tier 4 being spread across Kara, Gruul, Mag, I'm limiting my comments to that.

With regard to trash, I'd say the complains about trash in Tempest Keep are a lot more legitimate than those in SSC, where the trash is, um, generally just not hard. My guild still does incredibly stupid things on trash in both zones, but there is nothing preventing other zone from being single-night cleared easily once the encounters are learned.

I'm failing to understand how these zones are different from zones in pre-TBC WoW in that respect. In fact, the trash in TK and SSC seems a lot more forgiving than the trash in say AQ40 with regarding to a single-night clear. (AQ 40 was, what, a 6-boss zone as a practical matter? Skeram, Sartura Fankriss, Huhuran, Emps, C'thun) Seems to me easier to clear SSC and TK in 2 nights than it ever was to clear Naxx in 2 nights.

They started all this content out with too much trash, too fast of a respawn on it, etc. etc but they have fixed most of it. Maybe next time, they'll get it closer to right at the beginning?

I dunno, but they have a bit of dynamic tension. There appears to be no question that "Gruul hard mode" is there almost on purpose for Nihilum et al. to be the only guild level that can beat it at first. Otherwise an awful lot of people would steamroll the game. But when they put in the artificial slowing mechanism -- limited quantity of Vashj vials -- those same guiilds screamed bloody murder. I'd suspect having to do it over again that mechanism might be better tolerated and it's likely to be revisited by Blizzard. We'll see.

I think it's relevant to mention that when BT was released, I don't think a single guild had killed Kael yet. They could've released it 3 months later than they did and people still wouldn't have farmed it as much as they had farmed BWL/AQ40 before its release. I don't think it's fair to neglect the fact that while vanilla WoW shipped with one real raid instance while TBC had at least four (albeit most of them shorter than MC.) Blizzard could have (and arguably should have) stretched out the raid life by not putting in SSC/TK/Hyjal at release and trickling them in over the months.

I really wouldn't hold it against Blizzard that they actually included content that wouldn't be cleared right away in TBC rather than patching it in months later to make their content cycle appear more robust. Kara+Gruul/Mag+SSC+TK+BT+Hyjal+Sunwell = ~43 bosses, Ony+MC+BWL+AQ40+Naxx = ~41 bosses. Fair enough? And this is giving vanilla WoW's content cycle an additional 6 months from first to last addition. I'm sure that if Blizzard weren't planning on releasing WotLK for a year after patching in Sunwell they'd find a way to add another Tier 7 raid instance. (Deathwing's Lair!)

Is not racing really so difficult? That's what I don't get. You give and you take. You want to be first, then don't complain when everyone is busy catching up. I don't know the hard numbers but what percentage of raiding (not even all wow players) players have seen Illidan?

If it's more than 50% then I will concede that maybe a staggering is in order. But I am under the assumption that it is less than 15%, really I think it's less than 10 that have seen it. So the elite cusp of WoW is basically complaining about being good at the game. You don't see the flaw in that?

My point still stands that staggering raid content would (A) not have affected guilds like yours and mine and (B) would only have helped the raid game since the bleeding edge guilds would of had less "nothing to do" time.

The "elite cusp" as you call it has every right to complain, I see no flaw in that. If Blizzard did a better job of staggering the raid content your guild and my guild would still be exactly where we are now and the bleeding edge guilds would have less to complain about. Sounds like a win/win to me.