I'd rather have a really interactive setting, like random attacks from varying Burning Crusade troops on certain outposts/towns, some of which can be fought back, if enough players are present (say, just a large amount of non-elite mobs) and the occasional undefeatable superboss, which claims the town for a while and then leaves, with just normal mobs defending, so you can re-conquer it. Holding and defending various points may have influences on the zone and the dungeons, maybe not buffs as huge as the +5% dmg from the Outland pvp nodes, but still desireable. A near graveyard like the Zangar one would be a simple yet nice idea.

Vael gave you the questline for the UBRS key, but you didn't need the key to enter UBRS and hence BWL (if only just for the orb quest), if someone else had the ring. Though, you didn't have to kill Vael or put him into Nefarian's hands.

I do wonder if people are drawing some hasty conclusions about the nature of unlocking. The camp expansion seems to be what is tied into daily questing. The reference to AQ is probably about how new units / warmachines were added as the grind progressed, so similar to the town expanding. But as for the 3 bosses themselves, this is all we have to go on so far (eagerly awaiting more information from the actual interview):

But there is nothing said about what kind of questing we are talking about. Obviously, the quest(s) could only become available once the town grows large enough, but it could also be something along the lines of the Broodlord Head => Scepter quest line. Personally, I'd be looking forward to the latter, rather than dreading the former But in the end, this is just a lot of speculations. I'm sure we'll know more about this soon enough.

I'm quite curious to see what they've learned about designing heroics and whether it'll just be beefing up the trash or if there will be some extra complexity apart from that.

From a RP server perspective, I know guys in my guild (which includes a wide range from true casuals to people who have alts/mains in BT guilds) are hyped about being able to see more of the storyline and feel part of it even without being in an endgame raid group.

I'm surprised you would mention Magtheridon in the same context as the other two bosses. For me, it was the encounter that defined TBC raiding as I had hoped it would be: epic, challenging and unforgiving, while still doable by skilled guilds (that had enough warlocks on their roster). You needed 25 people on their toes the entire fight, everyone executing their tasks efficiently. One second too slow on banish? Dead healer. Not enough dps? Wipe. Fail to click a cube? Wipe. Mess up interrupts? Likely wipe. All execution, no luck involved.

Add to that the "build-up" to the fight: Magtheridon shouting and taunting throughout the 5-man dungeon, until you were finally ready to face him in his lair that you could earlier see from a balcony, all made for that epic feeling that, aside from Kael, I haven't experienced in the rest of TBC raiding, not even in MH/BT.

If anything, I would hope for more encounters like that in Sunwell. It would be a worthy conclusion for this chapter of raiding.

You look at it the wrong way. Content added to the game is a storyline. There is X time (a few years maybe) between your lvl 1 charachter in Azeroth in-game and the Outland in-game, except the BE/Dranei zones of course, which cant really be explained, arriving in the present, but lvling through the past (/game-mechanism).

When you enter TK you will be a few months in the past, compared to when you enter the 5 man Sunwell instance.
Which also makes it weird and inconsistent why Blizz says they will remove the Dalaran Bubble in Wotlk ("because it cant be both places"). Unless they actually want a dynamic world in WoW (which they dont...) 2 Dalaran bubbles would make perfect sense, just as 2 Kaels could. The moment you enter TK, you are brought back to past events, that has already happened.
The weird thing about 2 Kaels is ofc, that lots of players will kill him in a 5 man, without ever seeing him in the past. Guess you story-wise could say someone else did the hard work for you


For the new content, I hope they are able to make the new 5 man heroic more difficult, as an experiment for Wotlk, even though I dont care much about heroics myself, I bet more tiers of heroic instances, with tiered gear from it, could be a major thing for the casual/non-raiders. One of the errors in TBC was having an endless amount of Heroics going from Easy to Slightly Less Easy (after the various nerfs at least).

Im definatly also pro-world events. Thought it was quite interesting to see all the stuff people did to try encouraging the AQ40 farm, giving out Raid runs, items, gold etc, to people who contributed most and stuff like that. Server forum posts trying to encourage others to farm etc. From a "social sandbox" point of view, which MMO's is also about imo, I like those events.
Yes, it does screw over some servers (Personally I had a free server transfer 1 week into the AQ world event, from a very high pop server to a very low one, thus making all our hard work at the first server irrelevant for the thousands of players who transfered), and it certainly screws over the progression race, but in the end the progression race is a minor thing.
While Praet is right that people are very interested in the race, I dont think its about who kills the boss first, more about the boss being killed at all. Most players will be just as interested reading/watching about Kiljaeden dying, even if all servers didnt start the race at the same time. It will mostly be the few guilds actually participating in the progression race that will be harmed by this.

It would have been appropriately balanced if it wasn't the gate keeper for TK. It was an "entry level" raid boss that was out of whack for new people.

Practically every attunement that has ever existed in this game was lessened/removed over time. I think it is safe to assume that the trend will continue with Hyjal and Black Temple.

..Or you could just fly to the Dark Portal, exit to Blasted Lands and ride to Karazhan.

What attunements have they significantly changed except for SSC and TK? And those weren't removed so much because they were too hard, but because the requirements were a logistical nightmare that had nothing at all to do with your ability to kill raid bosses.

That's the problem. Neither I, nor anyone in DnT can do shit about it with these world event casual cockblocks. Even if I could motivate all six thousand people on Korgath to do 25 daily quests by going to their house and sucking them off, it still doesn't change the fact that 100% of Korgath is less than 25% of Mal'Ganis, etc. There's no way to normalize that.

Sure there is. They could make the number of quests required be based on average server population at peak times. That way Korgath would require 25% less turn-ins than Mal'Ganis. Whether they will bother to is another issue...

Or, you could stick it in between the Exodar and Silvermoon portals, too. There's space.

The problem being I suspect just like every other PTR attunements will be waived. We had a big problem attuning people to BT the first week because we didn't know how to do the quest, and then the server crashed on us and despawned the SSC NPC. So we won't get to test the event or its progress until it's released to live.

If they do this like AQ - if the relative timeframes involved are remotely similar - then guilds on low population servers are going to be completely noncompetitive in the race to finish Sunwell. Raiders on those servers have enough of a disadvantage as it is, what with the limited talent pool, underdeveloped economy, etc. There's no reason to burden them further, unless the goal is to encourage additional flight to the larger servers.

So are we of the opinion that Sunwell will not cause an AQ40 like phenomenon when Naxx came out? ie, every guild in AQ40 dropped their plans for C'thun and just skipped the zone in favor of Naxx, guilds that were barely done with BWL were clearing 2-3 of Naxx. Is there still going to be a reason that people need to advance into BT/Hjal before the next expansion? The elitist in me thinks that you shouldn't be able to go from Void Reaver farming to jumping into Sunwell, the cynic in me thinks that this may be the case.

I would imagine that unlocking the last three bosses via quests would likely involve a progression check in BT/Hyjal. We still don't know exactly what these quests involve.

Well sure for the last 3 ok. The elitist jerk in me (haha I made a funny Gurg) wants to say that even the *first* boss should be a decent progression check. Guys on Void Reaver and Lurker in SSC/TK probably shouldn't just jump into "tier 7" content in my mind.

Except that without the "gear gap" theres no progression to check? The difference between teir 5 and teir 6 gear really isn't all that much and can be made up for easily with a well balanced raid team.

The only real gear check that can have is a Naj'entus style you must have 9k hp to survive this bubble. Come back later without it.

Have they explicitly said anything about the attunement or lack thereof? You could need Archimonde/Illidan's Vial Remnant for all we know. Even if there is no attunement, I can't imagine a guild jumping from Gruul to Sunwell. If this zone is supposed to be more difficult than T6 (I'm assuming they mean end-zone bosses, not Rage/Supremus), I'm fairly confident there will be a gear check boss very early on, and T5 shoulders plus some season 2 gear won't cut it.

It's in the post, No attunement for the first 3 bosses, rep checks for the last 3.

There have been gear checks, but they've generally been tuned so as to not be overly demanding given their progression point.

Naj'entus requires high raidwide hp and healing longevity. He's actually pretty much a textbook gear check, I'd say. It's a very simple fight that's all about the numbers: Can you survive this burst AoE? Can you heal X damage every Y seconds? Can your DPS kill him before your healers run OOM and you all die?

The "problem" is that you don't get to see Naj'entus until you've killed Vashj and killed Kael and done Hyjal at least once assuming everyone got their vials right away. By the time any guild kills Kael, especially with the increased loot per boss from most of the t5 content, they'll have enough gear to pass that check.

But if BT attunement didn't exist, Naj'entus would be an absolute brick wall to every Lurker/Void Reaver guild out there, don't you think?

Right thats exactly what got me thinking that people would just totally skip T6 content.