Amera

There are some exceptions, sure, but especially at release most heroic trash mobs and bosses were simply harder-hitting versions of the originals. I don't really understand your other point, other than adding a few abilities to encounters they have already made seems like it would take a pretty trivial amount of time compared to creating a whole new instance, so I really doubt it would set them back in working on new content.

 

Prod

I don't think slapping a 15 minute enrage timer on Illidan coupled with perhaps 6 demon spawns in phase 4 would take development resources. I don't think it solves the problem though. It will make raiding more difficult, and pvp season 4 will still be balanced are top tier pve. You're going to further distance the risk v reward. There would have be be some assurance that heroic raid loot would be comparable ONLY to some difficult to obtain 'heroic' pvp loot. Maybe top 5% bracket only, or something. That's all hypothetical though.

 

Hate Monkey

Changing already existing boss scripts to be more strict wont put a heroic feel to them. Adding a different ability to the boss couple with those changes makes it a lot harder. Halving the berserk timer with adding a stacking enrage and a reflective shield to some bosses would make that encounter nearly impossible. Take Naj'entus, take away a minute or two from his berserk timer, add a reflective damage shield that lasts 10-15 seconds with a reasonable cooldown, and the encounter just went from entry level to full T6+ level.

Taking the resources to design a brand new skill, or re-vamping an old skill, making it work properly for the fight, adjusting its potency, and so forth is about the same as creating a brand new boss.

Take Bloodboil's Fel Rage, same reverse taunt effect thats already in the game, but they had to add in the increased HP, damage, and add in the Insignificance(only new effect) to go with it. All the effects of Fel Rage already in the game files, but they had to be adjusted properly, so that none of the effects got to weak or too powerful. Then to balance it with all the rest of the timers on that fight. If you just do something like that for the whole instance and each boss, multiple effects rolled into one new skill takes far more time to code in and test than it does to add in a stacking enrage or reflective shield.

I mean taking Supremus berserk timer down to 5 minutes is enough to warrant him a heroic boss in Blizzards eyes.

Take away the Illidari Councils shared health, shorten the berserk timer, and make it so that when the mobs died in a certain order, loot got progressively better like the Bug Trio's. Kill it the easy way, the loot is no better than normal mode, kill the hardest way, and you get heroic loot.

Those are all small adjustments which can be made to existing bosses to make them conform to a heroic standard without having to develop brand new skills. I would much rather see new abilities on new raid content than on re-hashed content we are doing because stuff is currently on farm.

 

Maurice2u

I'm definently all for "Heroic Raids". Despite the justifiable claims of too easy raiding these days, the reality is, less than 2% of the players see the majority of the dungeon content. That can't be a realistic goal for the amount of time spent on making end-game content. Blizz really has no choice but to make it more accessible. The entire marketing of TBC was Illidan flying about saying "you are not prepared", that was not directed at 1/100 players.

On the other hand, there are a lot of us who like the raid life, and the combination of dumbing down content for greater accessibility along with the horrid (but apparently lucrative) muddling and mixing of pvp with pve has made the raid world quite a bit less satisfying. Heroic mode raiding, with maybe one (not all) exclusive item per dungeon, as well as maybe status symbol things (tabards/titles/pets) to reflect their completion in "heroic mode", would be an excellent addition in my opinion.

Saying this is too much work for a company that has almost 10million accounts pumping them with revenue is far from a valid reason why not to do this. All the ''painful'' stuff could be thrown back to the heroic modes too. Attunements, consumables, and any other painful little thing, as long as there were tangable ways to differentiate those who pulled them off and those who did not. Then the kids who don't wanna talk in cyberspeak in WSG all day, but actually want to see something new (content) can still raid and get reasonably far w/o the game losing any challenge for the semi-to-full hardcore raiding community. Get the number of people who at least "see" Kael'thas up to 25%, just give those who do him in v1.0 something to show for it.

 

Akron

Heroic raids ...maybe for WotLK. But this is about Sunwell, so speak about that It's an interesting idea and something Blizzard is already playing with: Timed Event in ZA. The third chest is a challenge even for T5 guilds and early T6 guilds while the fourth chest is very, very hardcore. We might see more of this in the future even in bigger raids.

As claimed in my earlier posts, my gut feeling is that Sunwell will have very interesting and unique encounters (which will be the main point of its success) and also tuned for T6-geared players. However, I simply believe the statement claimed thousand times by Tigole: They want raiding to be accessible to more people and do not want to repeat the mistake that was Naxxramas -- our dear imba dungeon everyone wants back is being classified as a mistake not to be repeated by Blizzard. This simply means that I doubt Sunwell will be tuned like the Timed Event. ZA has an option...you can choose not to do the Timed Event. As far as we know, Sunwell does not have such option. My gut feeling is that it will be tuned for mid-BT geared guilds, and full T6 guilds with "perfect gear" are gonna plough through it, while the rest who don't farm Illidan since Summer will have a harder time and will have a good challenge.

 

frber

They could reduce the impact of add-ons? Remove Boss-mods, threat meters, etc? Usage of those types of add-ons seems to remove alot of things that could potentially be called skill; and certainly removes a fair bit of the need to pay attention to what happens in the game.

Similarily cast sequence macro for hunters, that turns DPS into a one-button affair? Has the game gone too far with auto-mating game-play?

DoT timer macros that tell you when to recast? Sure may argue its not skill to keep track of when to recast DoTs but without a timer it would take paying attention; and at least some degree of multi-tasking ability to do that and pay attention to the rest of the fight as well. Would be a way to increase the difference between a good and bad warlock for sure.

Similarily they could add a random element to all the skills a boss uses. Not just have them use abilities as soon as the cooldown is up.

At least for me I suspect that in order to make encounters truly hard they need to lower bosses health and damage done alot. Also make the encounters sufficuently fast paced and unpredictable to make sure that misstakes will happen and the fights will be chaotic to a point. But of course can't have a chaotic fight with a boss that takes 10 minutes of perfect DPS to kill and who 1-shots people any chance he gets.

Doesn't matter either way for me I guess since I am out of raiding. Just trying to figure out if its worth it to reopen a subscription for some PvP and possibly some 5-man and questing fun.

 

Kir

I think you may have misunderstood what part of naxx they thought was a mistake. Not the difficulty, but rather the timing of the zone and the barriers to progression. That is, it's difficulty in relation to it's release date made it so that hardly anyone experienced more than the first couple bosses. They don't want to have a raid zone that only the bleeding edge of raid guilds get to experience fully. But, that doesn't mean they want to make raiding easier. They just aren't going to release a huge (largest # of raid bosses in a zone ever) that close to an expansion release. They want the hardcore guilds to go in and experience it, but they want more casual players to eventually see at least some of the zone before a new one is released. If it's taking casual guilds too long to get farther in the zone, they will slowly nerf it until they are happy with the % of players that have experienced the zone.

 

Fagrim

I really think add-ons (even though I love to pimp my UI and tweak add-ons to the max) make alot of things trivial. Boss-mods plus a movie released a week after a world-first basically pushes the raid game into 1) Hours raiding per week, 2) Guild leadership to manage attrition and recruitment correctly and 3) Sterical control of your char (where to stand when during an encounter). Thus it minimizes the skill component and maximize guild leadership (both 1) and 2) above). And 3) would benefit from being broader than sterical control.

This is actually my largest gripe with WoW, and I also find it the largest change of the game for me between our first Onyxia kill and TBC (when we killed Onyxia I had basically zero add-ons and no movie was released - we had only found one ascii text page about strats on the www).

 

Vhad

This is nowhere near the truth, Naxxramas was a sound succes, the problem was only with the four horsemen - which was the only encounter they admitted was a mistake - and perhaps to some degree Loatheb with the excessive consumable requirement. The problem with Naxxramas besides 4hm and loatheb was the looming approach of TBC, way too many guilds gave up and after seeing the green items you could get from zoning into Hellfire Peninsula you couldn't blame them. Had TBC been 3-4 months later I doubt anyone would ever dare to say Naxx was a mistake.


It pains me to see people think Naxxramas was a mistake, it was the best half year in my WoW experience, everything about it was exciting. Sure 4hm was out of whack with the logistics, but it was a brilliant encounter, truly epic. I can't remember a single time in TBC were I've cheered and was genuinly proud and impressed by my raids performance or the encounter we beat - only thing that comes close was Kael'thas because my guild suffered extreme attrition and had alot of retards to weed out. Nostalgia aside, it's just not the same raiding game, alot more are experiencing the content which is good for Blizzard. They will repeat what was a succes and we probably won't see anything like Naxx ever again (apart from Naxx 2.0 in WotLK)

What!?

 

Malan

Where did they admit the 4H was a mistake? Last I recall seeing interviews about it Tigole said that the encounter had been specifically designed with min/max guilds in mind to puzzle it out and that they were happy with it.

Oh and this was hilarious. Doesn't take development resources? Who do you think is going to "slap" that timer in? The janitor? If software dev isn't your field of expertise, you might want to avoid statements like that.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Akron

I did not say Naxxramas itself was a mistake. It was very well designed and an epic experience. In a video interview, Tigole said they had worked on Naxxramas for more than a year, Blackwing Lair and the rest were designed along the way with it. It does show they made a gargantuan effort in designing it. No doubt. I'm sure they are very proud of their dungeon despite speculation that "most" of their Naxxramas designers left Blizzard and thus they are now incapable of creating good dungeons - I don't believe this and proof is encounters like Illidan and Kael'thas (2.1) in TBC which feel quite epic and would have fit perfectly in Naxxramas.

The mistake with Naxxramas, and which they don't want to repeat, is found within your post itself. "Best Half Year of WoW Experience", "Brilliant Encounter", "I can't remember anything quite like it". These are all great things...but so few got to see them. So few. It's true: TBC expectations (Hellfire greens better than T3?) ruined raiding but don't fool yourself. Naxxramas was not released in October...it was released in Summer. A good half year for anyone wanting to complete it, but very few still did. You know the funny thing? One of the reasons you miss Naxxramas so much is the knowledge that beating it was something extremely exclusive and rare.. Naxx was never nerfed. If Kel'thuzad was killed by everybody, even after nerfs, he would lose some or most of his nostalgia value.

Again, don't fool yourselves with the TBC factor too much. Listen to reason. Many people, I dare say most people, did not complete Naxxramas because it was tuned too hard, period. World buffs...hours of consumable farming.....15-boss dungeon..... Way too hardcore. It was, as Blizzard themselves stated, a great dungeon for the very few. Thousands loved it, millions hated it because they knew it was great but they still couldn't experience it. Blizzard does not want this anymore, much to the displeasure of hardcore raiders.

Five final points, upon reflection, which identify the (new) direction in raiding post-Naxxramas:

1. A 25-man dungeon will never have more than 10 bosses.
2. Dungeons (especially the high-end ones) will always be released quite early. The best guilds will clear them in a few weeks then having to wait long months before anything new. They hate it. But believe it or not, there are tens of guilds getting their Illidan kills in November and December. For them, this new direction is a great thing, and they represent a majority. Guilds which killed Illidan in Summer are a minority.
3. The raiding system itself was "nerfed". 15 people cut from raids, consumable nerf (much, much less farming needed)
4. Non-Bugged Bosses considered to be "gear checks" will no longer be hard to reach as Loatheb or hell, even Patchwerk (which wasn't tuned that hard...) were. At least not hard for a raiding core decked out in full T6. Some would even go as far as to say there are no gear checks. The only gear check in 25-man raiding is Naj'entus and his main focus is Stamina, the easiest stat to get in TBC.
5. The only things that will hold back guilds from killing a boss in a few days are attunements/unlocking (like Sunwell's last three bosses) or bugged/(near)impossible encounters like Vashj 1.0, C'Thun 1.0 or Kael'thas 1.0. Most times I truly believe they're overtuned on purpose to stall progression and lengthen the lifetime of a dungeon.

If you want more people to experience end-game, then there's a price tag attached. The price is paid by the best guilds who are finding content too easy for their liking especially when you compare it to Naxxramas. Well, Naxxramas no more. But these guilds represent such a small percentage...so few are sad but so many are happier...why should Blizzard bother? If anything, Blizzard will probably nerf things even more. 1.5% killing Illidan? Still VERY LOW.

This is the question ...and I don't like my answer. Don't get me wrong. I'm a hardcore raider myself. But I'm trying to be realistic here.

I foresee that one-day, casual and hardcore progression can no longer be on the same platform and we will have "Timed Events" or "Heroic" versions of high-end raids. In that way, the Hardcore can be pleased with their highly tuned encounters while the rest can just choose whether to do the easy version or try their luck with the hard one.

Pleasing both camps with the same version is becoming increasingly difficult.

 

Liebestod

1. I don't see any reason why this would be true. While I think splitting each tier into multiple dungeons is pretty neat, it doesn't seem like a part of any design philosophy beyond the fact that Blizzard probably doesn't want any highly-linear raid zones. But obviously Naxx 2.0 will have 10+ bosses and be non-linear. Who's to say other tiers won't be similar, unless Blizzard simply has too many proposed raid zones to give each one its own tier?

2. They've done this lately, but I don't think any Blizzard dev has stated that this is part of their design philosophy or even that it's necessarily a good idea. SSC and TK should have received extensive testing either during the beta or on PTRs after the release, but they never did, and I can't imagine that Blizzard considers this a good thing. Hyjal probably only got testing on the 2.1 PTRs because no one had reached it yet, I can't imagine what a mess it must have been before that point. BT is really the only example of a dungeon released with relatively normal tuning that was cleared quickly, and I don't think that its experience can be extrapolated into a trend; indeed, seeing the instance cleared in a few weeks may have been something to a shock to devs, even if they maintained that it was "working as intended." Even if it were, it's probably a bad idea and Blizzard really is pretty good with correcting its bad ideas.

3. Okay. Yes, 25-man raiding is here to stay.

4. I'd agree that Loatheb is out, but I think it's too early to say whether gear checks are gone for good. But ultimately I don't think they're very necessary, at least not in the basic "tank and spank" or "beat the enrage timer" incarnationations - there's no reason why an encounter can't be complex and a gear check in the sense that you just can't keep up with the incoming damage or mobs spawning if your tank/healer/DPS gear is insufficient.

5. Hasn't this always been what held guilds back? Well, besides gear checks, which never held back the top guilds because they'd usually meet them right away. Ironically, I'm surprised that people don't call Vashj 1.0 a success - after all, there was a guild that had beaten her legitimately a couple times before she was nerfed, right? Maybe people just hated SSC too much to let this feat sink in? I think Method deserves a lot of credit for their Vashj kills, I'd say it's the single most remarkable kill since DnT got 4H.

 

Vhad

No, I liked Naxxramas because it was good, I honestly don't care that much that we were in an exclusive club to clear it. Really was only the last 3 bosses that people didn't have access to. Pacing was a problem, surely, but everything else was EASILY accesible.

There were no hard attunements, the only thing that kept people from clearing it was gear checks and 4hm + loatheb requirements. Everything else was accesible and cleared by any guild who was at that level of progress.

2 guilds clearing Naxx would still be upwards 100 players effectively seeing and clearing content, 2 guilds killing Illidan is more like 60 people effectively.

Clearing BT and Hyjal you get to see how many 'good' encounters? Archimonde was a really nice experience learning, took coordination and skill. Reliquary of Souls was a nice test too, Sharahz was stupid in it's initial iteration but a good encounter, Council I'm biased about because I sit there for 10 mins and spam spell steal and scorch.. Illidan was a really well made encounter, that's it. 4 Encounters that were truly great and had some achievement about them. 4 out of 15 for the record.

Now look at Naxxramas; only Grobbulus and to some extent Heigan were 'easy' and didn't really give a sense of achievement, everything else had the awesome feeling of beating something difficult were your contribution to the raid mattered. That leaves us with 13 out of 15 encounters that were truly epic and well put together. Not only that but if you were stuck on Patchwerk you had 3 other bosses to work on, always.

People saw Naxxramas, probably more saw Naxx in the timespan it was 'active' due to low attunement requirements than saw BT and Hyjal. Numbers out my ass, but I still think it's true, imagine if SSC and TK still had their attunements, even less would've seen BT and Hyjal.

What!?

 

Akron

Well, of course this is all speculation. We will have to see Sunwell. I hope you are right and Blizzard can really hit the nail on its head and provide accessible content which is still very challenging, epic and above all unforgettable. In my posts I was very cynical although I believe also realistic. Let's be clear: complexity is what is lacking at the moment. Everything is tank and spank and the enrage timers are not challenging. Illidan, Kael'thas, RoS and Vashj are fun because they are complex and varied...very interesting. A simple fight fight like Archimonde can also be interesting because of its unforgiving nature, but that's a fight half will love and the other half will hate. I believe the Sunwell boss selection has the full potential to deliver great encounters, although people have to accept that the game has changed and a "Naxx feel" isn't easily emulated with how raiding is in TBC post 2.3. If you go in there with that expectation it could be huge disappointment. However, I do believe we can have a "Sunwell feel" which feels like the pinnacle of TBC raiding.

Two points I would disagree with, however, would be:

- I think having relatively small (sub-10 boss) high-end dungeons is very much intended and a conscious choice. They divided T4, T5 and T6 loot among 2-3 dungeons and avoided one huge instance where everything is found. I think Blizzard wants to appeal to the majority crowd who'd prefer by a long shot having varied raiding settings each week rather than re-living the Naxxramas experience, where anyone taking the dungeon seriously basically raided only it for half a year. I think it's something we will continue to see in the future.

- I don't agree Vashj 1.0 is an example of success. Nihilum's kill was bugged and they killed her once only to make a point. If you've seen Method's videos, you'de notice that they had at least 10-15 people soulstoned and without such maneuver the kill simply wouldn't have happened unless they were extremely lucky. I doubt raiders want this sort of encounter. The Mind Control in Phase3 (together with Statics/Poison) was clearly overtuned, unlike for the example the one found at Kael'thas or Kel'thuzad. Mind Control is a pretty cheap way of tuning an encounter since it's so random anyway.

There are four fights in TBC which stand out as examples of design excellence, and they should simply make more of them: Kael'thas 2.1, Vashj 2.1, RoS and Illidan. Let's hope Sunwell is able to deliver!

@ Vhad:

Yes, from a design point-of-view, nothing has beat Naxxramas yet. Forget about difficulty etc. Just pure boss design. And with so many bosses, it will be hard for anything to "beat it". Sunwell has 6 bosses. However, if they get at least 4 of them right and we can add them to the Great Fights of TBC, it should be a great zone to remember.

 

malthrin

A more tangible benefit than variety is that a raid group can choose to sacrifice farm time to gain progress time (on an instance's final boss) by skipping the other 'wing' of that tier for the week. Compare that to Naxx, where clearing all the wings was a prerequisite to working on the final two bosses.

Travian - Resto Druid
Malthrin - Priest

 

Prod

Holding meetings to discuss new ideas for bosses. Coordinating with scripters and artists. Justifying the lore. These are things that take development resources. I have actually worked in the mod community (fps and rts) and I don't believe something as simple as changing an enrage timer takes a significant amount of teamwork. Obviously someone has to actually do it, but the difference is single digit man hours vs hundreds or thousands.

 

Obligatory

I've got nothing against blizzard nerfing content a few months after release so that other guilds can progress through and experience it. Sure it bruises my ego a bit, but I don't think I would care if I was too busy having fun killing the current tier of raiding. In fact, I think that philosophy is a great way to go, since I'm sure even "loot pinatas" like rage or supremus would be pretty well-tuned for most of the current t5 guilds.

Heroic raids, of course, would be even better, since you wouldn't have guilds that feel cheated when a boss is nerfed after they've started attempts but before they get a kill. It would also leave the original encounters intact, in case a more casual guild wants to test themselves for a shot at better loot and/or epeen rewards like mounts, tabards, and titles. The main downside is that a new dungeon would require a lot more development time, and given how behind blizzard already is at providing content, it could create painfully long wait times for new content. (then again, if the vast majority had essentially double the content, they would probably be pretty set)

Basically, I don't care too much how blizzard goes about it, but please try to make the highlight of our raid nights something other than the soundboard of that crazy raid leader being played on vent during trash. The only TBC boss fights I ever looked forward to after the first few kills were Vashj and Kael (kael not so much after the most recent round of nerfs). They were hard, and without challenge, there is no accomplishment.

 

Copernicus

I'd put Anub, Razuvius, Faerlina, and Noth on the 'easy' scale. If they were an entirely new encounter, Patchwerk and Maexxana would also be considered easy fights today (mostly due to the changes in HoT stacking for Maex). The encounters were well put together though.

I think the main problem with Mount Hyjal is that there are four guantlet-style encounters. The difficulty on those fights is often split somewhat evenly between the trash and the boss. So the four bosses are all on the easier side of things, because the trash is actually difficult.

 

Lenaldo

I don't like having so many raid instances available at release. Call me crazy, but I didn't like killing Vashj 2-3 times then never going back to SSC. TK/SSC really felt more like stepping stones than raid instances. t4 and t5 never really felt "desirable"; instead I was always waiting for t6 tokens.

I think a lot of the problem with raid loot was created because of tailoring. None of the casters in our guild wanted anything to do with t4/t5 because of tailoring. Then, when t6 hit everyone was fighting over the loot like it should have been from day-1.

 

Vhad

Anub Raz Fear still presented new things to do in the raiding game, it wasn't some rehased encounter we had seen before. Anub was close to Twin Emps in difficulty and was really well made. Noth was alot of old factors put together - decurse, mass tanking and soft enrage to kill him before you got overrun ala Nef and Razorgore. They may have been easy but they were still miles above the average BT and Hyjal fight - ignoring the silly 'gauntlet' type encounters that MH presented.

What!?

 

Metrosexuelf

Agreed. Preparation aside, there is very little that goes in PvE raiding other than reading the situation and reacting through pressing buttons. The global cooldown plays a large part in that. Maximizing damage through keystrokes is not very difficult when you are limited with a 1.5 second timer on most abilities. The same goes for tanking and generating threat. Healing is roughly the same but a bit more mental as you estimate incoming damage and other heals.

World of Warcraft PvE will never require -- or yield benefits at the high end raiding level from -- the same level of (gaming) skill you find in Warcraft III or even Arena for that matter. I say never because I find it unlikely you would see an encounter where... oh... I don't know... the floor collapses beneath you and you have to hop from platform to platform while fireballs shoot out of the walls from random directions while the boss puts some stacking debuff on everyone, etc. etc.

The success of raiding guilds has little to do with skill and more to do with player attitudes, preparation, common sense intellgence, time commitment, and a proactive stance to maximizing your character's potential... which is eventually limited to a few cookie cutter builds, rotations, etc.

Sure, Blizzard is capable of designing encounters that require ten times the amount of reaction and movement as the ones currently in the game but I really doubt you will see a Mario Brothers disappearing floor act boss anytime soon.

 

Mideci

So I'd argue that Naxx was broken in three very specific ways:

(1) Most guilds lacked the geared warrior headcount for 4HM. They were poaching geared warriors from other reasonably progressed guiilds to get passed the horsemen. Really nothing should ever happen again that requires reasonably composed guilds to find people.

(2) The consumables requirement was particularly backbreaking on some classes for whom that was a new and decidely unpleasant experience. My guild -- which ended up with 7 dead Naxx bosses by Thanksgiving before dying in the PVP/TBC malaise -- had a lot of healers who found themselves having to farm flasks or equivalent gold that they felt unqualified to farm for while people like us rogues were like "OK, we have mongoose pots and firewater like always." I'd argue that Naxx led to the consumable mania that was early BC that led to the alchemy nerf.

(3) Loatheb was particularly stupid. The specific combination of required consumables to survive Inevitable Doom (correct me if I have the effect name wrong) was both a gear check (do I have enough dps?) a warlock shard check (can I make enough healthstones?) a grave moss check (can I make enough shadow pots?) etc. Perhaps a mechanism somewhat more sophisticated than Patchwerk -- just hit mob -- but somewhat less convoluted than what was in place would've been a better compromised. I laughed a lot when the 5 shadow priests beat Loatheb when it was still a 40-man encounter.

 

Pyros

While partly true, I always thought a fight like Chtun, where so many random events happen during phase2, even when you have addons giving you timers, required a solid dose of "skill". Being able to keep an eye on what you're doing, the status of people around you and where the tentacles were popping, making quick decisions between what had to be killed or interupted or whatever, you don't really learn that from reading boards.

Even in naxx there wasn't any fight that looked so "random" and "uncontrolled", at least when you were at the normal gear level(I remember doing chtun at T3 level, it wasn't all that fun anymore ^^). Well maybe there was but it doesn't come to my mind right now, loatheb and 4horses were hard but for different reasons, same for thaddius and gothik... Maybe gothik is somewhat close, the pace was pretty crazy.

To me, besides the fact I loved nef since it was the first "real" boss I got to tank when I rerolled warrior, chtun still is the best last boss in any instance. Twin emps were fun, but chtun, that was on a whole another level. Phase1 was fun, phase2 was just crazy, so much stuff going on everywhere, stomach, eyes, claws, spread out, kill mindflays, ZOMG DPS THE SHIELD IS DOWN, resume. Vashj in comparison felt like razorgore, with orb throwing instead of orb mind controlling. Didn't really feel epic at all, at least to me. And Kael, well haven't done first version kael or prenerf kael, but the current version is pretty damn boring.

 

Alhena

I have to agree as well. The Kara/Gruul transition was a huge pain for my raid group, and talking to RL friends and others who play, it seems like more guilds fall apart at that point that anywhere else.

I think Arena has something to do with it too, although this might not be a bad thing. Some RL friends of mine went through about 3 "raiding guilds", all of which killed Maulgar, got smacked down by Gruul once or twice, and then split apart as people stopped showing up for Gruul. In a lot of cases, they said, people were saying they'd rather just Arena for gear.

A new raid, in my opinion, needs to get a few notches under its belt; once it does that, people are much more willing to commit, farm the consumables, spec for raiding, and otherwise do the things you have to do to succeed in the 25-mans. It's much harder to get that commitment from people when you have at best one boss down, and no previous content to farm -as a raid-. Again, just my experience raiding as a fairly casual player, but the lack of a 25-man equivalent to MC hurt the raid game in TBC, in my opinion. I'm not saying we should go back to tank and spanks with maybe one randomly targeted nuke thrown around, but just an introductory 25-man to ease people into the raid game would have helped, imo.

 

berg

They have stated specifically that Naxx 2.0 will be tuned to fill that void. Here is a quote about the recycled Naxx
It is a good idea really. They get to largely reuse content and do something good for the game at the same time. I think the people here hoping that it will be interesting to them, again, are in for disappointment though.