Didn't the tooltip for mutating injection used to say that you would turn into an abomination after 10 seconds if it wasn't cleansed? Or am I thinking of something else?

We cleared Gluth before killing C'Thun. We had a few tards back then....

Wild speculation, but the growing town may just be a test for the destructible buildings in WotLK. For the most part anything in WoW that obstructs character movement is static, and the few exceptions are notoriously buggy (mobs getting feared through closed gates, the side entrance to Kara refusing to open, and so on). The growing town may just be a chance for Blizzard to find out if their new code reliably spawns buildings when it's supposed to and whether mobs actually interact with them right. If, say, there's a way to use destructible buildings to break a mob's pathing, some enterprising hunter will figure it out, and it's better they do it now before the destructible buildings are PvP objectives.

I can't provide any official numbers, but Stormrage (US) Tier 5 raiding is far stronger than ever -- save for the holiday hiccup. A couple guilds indeed have advanced past tier 5 content in the ZA window and rarely go back. But several more are downing bosses with regularity and Vashj kills are approaching the double-digit-guild levels. Our server has tons of ZA activity, but I'd not be speakin out of turn to say that everyone's goal remains Illidan pre-Lich King.

I'm intrigued by this approach, mostly due to what I perceive as a pacing mechanism. World firsts may well now be determined by the rate in which your server can do dailies which I don't think Blizzard will implement, as I feel they see the competition at that end being important to the ongoing success.

The Ogri'la, Netherwing and to a lesser extent Skyguard (which you could farm outside dailies if you wanted) provided a very interesting approach to limiting reputation gains on a per-person basis. Again, this provided the approach that as you gained in reputation, more quests were open to access.

The keying requirements for heroics was the next level, where access was barred based on reputation level, which is what I believe they will use, either via having internal "keys" within the instance, or wings (so 4 wings, Neutral, Friendly, Honored, Revered+) which limit access.

To prevent powerlevelling reputation, it can be limited by dailies as the only form, and use the Silithist approach for building up the town (hand-ins of that dust) where the more people who participate, the faster the town is created.

Like AQ40 opening, the townsfolk themselves can participate in "growing", but for arguments sake, they provide 10% of the reputation/dust each day, meaning the next level will be done in 10 days - if no players help at all, but accellerated as more players help. This alleviates the low-pop angst because it means that the town will be built, but maybe at a slightly slower rate.

Personally, I like the approach of capping reputation gains, but I'm also not at the top 1% for raiding for which I could see it would be very frustrating.

I don't know about on your server, but after dailies were added on mine, Ogri'la and Skettis were complete ghost towns for almost 3 weeks. Prolly take about as long for the casuals to figure out about Sunwell dailies since they don't read patch notes.

I'm not worried about people missing the new dailies - presumeably the aldor and scryer will send you there since the offensive is their project, which will send basically everyone who is 70 in the right direction. What I am curious about is .. the new 5 man. What are the awards from it like, how many bosses does it have, where is it tuned at?

I'm not a lore buff, but if you're going to speculate on the possibility of Kalecgos being a resistance fight it might be worth noting that the naming convention used for the badge off-hands links Sapphiron to frost damage and Kalecgos to arcane damage.

Perhaps this is reasonable if you do it in a log or diminished fashion. I'd expect having twice as many players is nowhere near twice as fast - and moreso as this increases, and PvE servers are likely to progress differently than PvP.
But as it were, world firsts will be less meaningful I suppose. But who cares if the content is good.

Honestly: So far this looks good - other than the fact it will be an island of 6 new bosses in a 1 year ocean of no content.

Definately agree. When you kill Vashj & Kael your guild just enters into a certain 'thinking' that in my opinion really helps for later bosses, thats why the 'candyland' bosses are referred to as that, they most certainly are easier than Vashj/Kael but I could bet a Lurker/Void Reaver guild would struggle for a long time on the dubbed 'candyland' if there was no attunment. You have 10mins to knock roughly 4 million hp off Void Reaver... It takes about 5-6mins or so to do the same amount of hp in damage to a Hyjal boss. It just shows how much you learn in that gap, pretty amazing numbers... it shows how far your guild has progressed from that period of then and this period of now.

In killing Vashj/Kael you gain your DPS accomplishments which is a certain must for killing the Mount Hyjal trash. Kill X number of mobs in Y number of ways before Z timer runs out and get over-run by next mobs. Also in killing these villians you get taught, yes I must look at my screen and focus for the next 'insert time here' to succeed. Roughly 10mins Vashj, 15mins Kael and trash + Hyjal boss = 25+?

I really really would complain if they removed the Hyjal attunement, they would just set themselves up for a greater fall. Sure more guilds will be in the T6 content but how many of them can bloody do the first 1-2 encounters without hitting some wall. Guilds who spent their weeks vialing or doing their monthly runs or whatever would certainly not be impressed, and from a lore point.... you just removing some lore from the game that surrounds TBC lore. They surely cannot replace these attunements.

As for my Sunwell predictions, well tuned, hopefully very-hard encounters (later T6+), nice ideas, some completely refreshing new boss mechanics that people have never seen (RoS), not over-exhaustive trash and a nice mix of trash. Hopefully no 1-day /few hours boss kills, more of a period to make the kill that more special.

Bosses: Brutalicus - probably a healing intense fight and high DPS fight, possible gear-check and opener to SP. Kalecgos - Thinking second in-line similar to BWL for Vael, most likely Arcane/Frost attacks and similar resistances needed, the badge item increases arcane spells, possibly 2 forms, 1 his human form and the other, his dragon self. Fel Dragon, depends on size, BWL drake size or a more of Nefarion/Onyxia size, possibly poision attacks/aoe attacks, nature resistance?? Twin Eredar - no idea.... new emperor fight? One fire attacks and one physical, hey the fire gear for badge rewards must be used for something right?

The Dark Naaru - maybe a shadow res AOE fight, guilds should have the BT shadow res for this, which actually would play nicely as an instance opener or first in the last 3 bosses, because guilds would of needed BT access for shadow res and lots and lots of farming for hearts/rep. If any of my above predictions are correct then there would be a hell of a lot of farming needed, thus slowing progress while the server gathers the required rep etc. Another thing for the raiders to work on while the casuals pitch in with the rep gaining? I know all these res collectings would keep me busy for ages lol

I think the easiest solution is to have bosses in Hyjal/BT just drop attunment scrolls again. However if 2-3 scrolls for BT attunement dropped of Illidari Council members I would be happy.

If your guilds killing Illidari Council, you really shouldnt be forced to go back to SSC/TK to attune members - you have already done your fair share of work playing the attunmenet game. Other guilds just entering BT/Hyjal still will have to, or if you want to - you could have an earlier boss (eg teron) drop just 1 attunement scroll. So everyone gets a helping hand, just that the latter progressed guilds a bigger one (to reward their efforts in progression). Theres so many ways they could implement it.

People should be able to get into whatever instance they want. If they are crushed, so be it. Honestly, it is their loss if they choose to skip content. That's all this game is: tackling content.

This pretty much sums up my feelings. If the options are between:

A) Going ahead with the plan but adding a 'proportional' aspect to it to better 'normalize' the race to world/regional firsts;

B) Going ahead with the plan sans normalization; and

C) Scrapping the plan and server progression aspect and just having some vanilla attunement to ensure normalization.

While A is preferable, B is a better option than C. As I said, I am not so naive as to think the 'races' at the top don't have an effect on sales and subscriptions, but honestly the 'legitimacy' of the race and whether or not it is truely normalized or equalized is fairly irrelevant in terms of generating publicity. WoW high end raiding is less Marquis of Queensbury Rules pugilism and more Vince McMahon WWE low brow entertainment. The overall 'fairness' or 'equality' of the competition is no where near as important as the 'color' and 'buzz' it generates.

Why would Najentus slow down a guild that can kill lurker? We dropped Naj'entus with potentially less gear than those guilds will have on our 2nd pull, knowing nothing about him. We spent a lot more time than that on lurker and Void reaver. You sit in one spot, play whack a mole, and click when you hear someone say "omg click now!" Tough fight. I mean you could get 5 priests to spam CoH on totem rotations if you were desperate, and considering the rewards... We had our priests wearing 10k hp in even some greens on our first kill as well (perhaps stupid, but it wasn't THAT taxing). We basically said "OK, so that 8500 damage thing sucks, wear doomwalker gear, reset, and loot."

Naj'entus "feels" like a hard fight, but it is just smoke and mirrors. Maybe I'm way off base, but Najentus, supremus, akama, would be loot parades - especially supremus and akama. The trash after Naj'entus is harder than the first three bosses.

If they want a blockade, they need a gatekeeper boss like bloodboil at the entrance. Gear-check and difficulty check. But obviously that isn't going to happen. I think you're grossly overestimating the difficulty of BT and Hyjal bosses - I said it before, Illidan will be farmed by many guilds per server, just like Nefarian. There isn't a hard boss in the zone - the hardest one is probably bloodboil, and the only hard boss was "fixed."

This is only going to be amplified by the nerfs on Kael'thas, which were the main road block to guilds anyway.

Archimonde is tough I suppose, but how long did he really take you to kill? 4 hours? 6 maybe? Even before nerfs. Even after buffs, etc etc.
It goes to what you were saying about sunwell - probably cleared on PTR. Lack of creativity? Or are we truly that much better at WoW now? I'm pretty sure its not the latter. I slammed my analog keyboard really hard in Naxx afterall, and I sundered like a pro.
I also wear my sunglasses at night. :p

Najentus is pretty much a soft gear check though, isn't he? Without the certain levels of stamina and healing, people really cannot kill him, and you probably can't stack healers on him and beat the enrage if your dps still wears karazhan gear. I'm pretty sure 5 priests in karazhan/low t5 gear can't sustain spaming CoH on him either (even if a lurker level guild could manage to get 5 priests).

PS: The same goes for aneth and even winterchill to be honest. Those fights are very easy if you poss the right gear but can suddently be extremly hard if your average player got 6-7k stamina buffed or doesn't know how to move/position etc. Hell even supremus can be hard if people can't take 1-2 volcano hits or don't know how to move. Bottomline is, the majority of t6 bosses feel easy because people go there after beating kael'thas and vashj. And really, aside from bosses like C'Thun or 4H, there wasn't really anything even close to the difficulty of vashj or kael in game yet in my opinion. Actually, even C'thun in 40 man setting was more forgiving than vashj.

Bloodboil is easily the hardest boss in BT (due to it being the only real gear check). If people cannot kill Kael/Vashj by now (Kael was nerfed into the ground) though, they probably will have a hard time with early BT/Hyjal.

Hopefully Blizzard is working on that extra content :p

Brutalicus could be another Patchwerk, lot of hp and lot of damage.
The other bosses have all potential to be resistance fights but i doubt blizz gonna put more than 1 res fight in that zone.
Bad thing is that 2.4 is most likely the last patch before woltk (i guess xmas 2008).

Problem, atleast for, was that we only had like 6-7 healers attuned after killing kael. So najentus was hard for us until the next week when we were able to bring more healers.
It was a challenging fight for me as healer and Council too.

When talking about gear checks, you're forgetting about arena gear which is now readily available and only slightly behind raid gear in terms of raiding-relevant stats.

The bosses in MH/BT that require a minimum hp pool to survive aren't very demanding otherwise as long as you can keep everyone alive.

TBC started out with very high DPS requirements (Gruul growths, Magtheridon timers, most bosses having tight enrages) and those requirements have all been nerfed over time, the culmination being the recent hp nerf to Kael's adds. I don't see them going back to such extremes for Sunwell.

Well what did I miss? You are talking about your own guild and I assume your average guildies were wearing T5 for the most part and have killed kael/vashj. That's what the entire argument is all about right?

I rather would like to ask you why a lurker guild that can kill najentus wouldn't just go on and kill leo, morogrim, Al'ar etc.? They are not really any harder than Najentus is and drop decent loot. Then again why a guild that can kill leo and al'ar doesn't go on and work on vashj and kael? Reality is that majority of the guilds at VR/Lurker level can't progress beyond that point. Those are generally the same guilds that never managed Magtheridon and were happy that T5 attunments were lifted.

There is still a certain level of organization and gear needed for a boss like najentus. I would argue that the majority of guilds that just go and kill VR and get stuck there lack those.


PS: Btw. I am not really for lifting MH attunement. That's a very bad idea in my opinion. I just believe that it won't help the lower level guilds and will only make things a bit too messy. Actually it would potentially make things a bit harder for those mid-t5 guilds because they would suddenly see their good players being hijacked by t6 guilds since the recruitment process for those t6 guilds will be way easier.

Blizzard completely failed when designing both MH and BT. Going from the pre-nerf(s) Kael'Thas into MH and BT, it really felt like a joke, as one was able to basically one-shot the first three bosses in both instances. Why spend so much time designing new tier-instances, and then make half the bosses utter jokes?

Considering raiding in SSC and TK before the nerfs, these instances really was challenging. SCC had a good strong trash and techincally challeging bosses, while TK had sick hard trash. Especially Vashj and Kael'Thas were about execution and dps, so downing them meant, that your raiding was strong and attuned to 25-man execution. It is therefor almost insulting to raiders to give them new instances, where half the bosses are weaker than the ones in the previous instances, and basically only Tank'n'Spank (with a twist); almost like in Karazhan.

As a raider, one would have hoped for challenge, to push one-self harder; both as player, but also as raiding guild. What Blizzard provided was - sadly - a very very poorly designed instance (MH) and a beautifully designed instance, which didn't provided any real challenge until Bloodboil and RoS.

Yes we are. Most of the HC-raiders had at least one year of raiding experience before TBC, and had experience from AQ and Naxx, which means they either sniffed or was solid experience in execution. While Blizzard mainly designs Tank'n'Spank bosses, leaving execution for the end-bosses, alot of strong players cut thru the TBC instances like a hot knife thru butter. They had the gaming experience, they could - due to the new 25-man raid setup vs the old 40-man - now have a smaller and better group, and they talked together (either on irc, msn or in-game).

And we have gotten better. Farming BT, especially Bloodboil-RoS and onward, really gives players alot of skill, and while they have nerfed Mother to a joke, Council and Illidan still keeps people on their toes. Good players now have gotten more skills and have become better in adjusting faster under pressure.

That is why I really hope that Sunwell will be tough as hell, because anything less would be a huge disappointment.

The first three bosses have to be harder than pre-nerf(s) Kael, Archi and Illidan combined basically. Players who will enter Sunwell with the intention of clearing it fast, will have so much skill and rutine with them, that anything less will be a disappointment. I really hope Blizzard has learned from the blunder with MH and BT, and are giving us entry bosses with will eat us alive and ask for seconds.

After almost 6 months of having nothing to do, we demand a serious challenge as raiders!

I find the unlocking of bosses and no attunement rather silly.

While it is nice that Blizz allows all players to experience a new instance, one must remember, that only 5% of guilds have made it past Vashj / Kael / Naj'entus and Rage, so why allow 95% of players, who have less chance than a snowball in hell to get past trash (most likely) to enter the instance, but not to enter BT or MH? I fail to see any logic in that, unless its out of indifference to TBC and out of respect to the raiding 5%.

Next is the unlocking of bosses, which is unfair towards (1) low pop realms (2) low raiding realms. A realm with alot of BT farming guilds will unlock the bosses very fast, while realms with lesser active raiders and BT farmers will have a slower progress.

Looking back at MC and BWL, i really don't get what has changed so much. We're clearing at really the same pace as MC guilds did, and yet compare the average TBC boss and the average MC boss. Lurker? Tank, adds, spout, knockback, random spit, cleave. Lucifron? Tank, decurse. Gehennas? Tank, raid heal, decurse. Sulfuron? Tank, raid heal, counterspell.

Or let's look at BWL, most guilds took 2-3 weeks learning razorgore. If an illidan killing guild with skilled players who had no idea what razorgore was or how it worked had to do it at level 70 equivalent, would it still take 2-3 weeks? What's the difference between broodlord and gurtogg? Why again did it take most guilds 2 weeks - month(s) to kill him?

Is that even slightly for real?

Maybe the typical EJ/DnT/Nihilum-class guild took 2-3 weeks. I doubt most guilds did it that quickly, unless they were much later to the parade. Showing up at Razorgore having done nothing other than Molten Core was like having your eyes opened in a Clockwork Orange kind of way. That fight -- given most people's gear at the time and the tank and spank nature of MC -- was a revelation in so many ways.