I did find that a bit odd about the t5 > t6 conversion.

Ragnaros had ilvl ~75 items that were on par with BWL loot, and unreplacable t2 pants.
Nefarian had ilvl 81 items that were better than the first half of AQ40, and even comparable to Twin Emps loot.
C'thun had ilvl 88 stuff that was better than anything you got in Naxx until 4H.
Kael has ilvl 138 stuff that is inferior to Rage Winterchill.

To be fair, Vashj and Kael have some good items (ie [Belt of One-Hundred Deaths]) that are arguably better than anything in t6 content. But the difference is too small.

Why go after [Fang of Vashj] when you can just get [Boundless Agony]?

Perhaps they should have bumped Vashj/Kael items to ilvl 143 or so, and dropped the first bosses in BT/Hyjal to 138.

Removal of attunements and/or putting in gear check bosses is not the way to go. The gear progression in TBC is limited, and the gap between a tier4->tier6 player isn't such a huge difference that tier 4 gear is going to put you insanely far behind in MH/BT (proven by several guilds). Granted if Blizzard mudflated the gear more, and designed the raids around this kind of attuning, it could be possible, but that's not he hand that was dealt.

We're 4/5, 4/9 starting to work on Archimonde. While we don't have any burning need for a particular class, we still like to recruit to keep our ranks deep enough if some regular players can't make it or would like to sit or a combination of both. This puts us at the cross roads of: progress in tier 6 and gamble on attrition, or recruit people we don't need right now (but might!), and key them. I don't want the attunement removed, Killing Kael and earning that attunement was one of our greatest raiding achievements as a guild. However, once you achieve something, you should not have to continuously repeat old content to keep being successful in the new stuff.

Backflagging via a scroll midway through (just a Hyjal attunement scroll on Azgalor, for example, would make me beyond happy), or percentage keyed in raid is the way to go. It allows guilds to earn their place in the next tier, and then keep moving forward instead of having to backtrack. We will continue to do what we must, since that is the price for being a progressed guild, but it is certainly not nearly the best situation. Of course, pacing the raid content would help with this, but there's a very long thread on that topic already.

Why is the PVE endgame so tedious compared to the PVP endgame? Content aside, which is completely subjective, PVP is hands down better in every regard, this has to be intentional, but why?

PVE endgame requires bare minimum of 25 players, more like 35-40. PVP? 2. 5-8 if you are feeling crazy.

PVP endgame loot is 100% non-random. Set your sights on a reward and proceed to earning it, making measurable progress each week. PVE loot, 100% random ie. terrible. Set your sights on a drop and hope it drops. And hope no one else wants it. And keep hoping. We are to the point where we can clear Hyjal and BT in about 7 hours combined, easily over the course of two nights, and there are drops we have never seen. Drops people want. Drops multiple people want.

PVE endgame requires jumping through flagging hoops. A guild that has Hyjal and BT on farm and is DEing 80% of the drops should *not* be forced into running TK/SSC to get new people onto the team. Why hasnt this been addressed? Why doesnt Archimonde drop something that flags people for Hyjal and Illidan something that flags people for BT?

I'm going to assume that he's not including raid content in that estimation, but rather just the level of completion where players start to feel "okay, I've got as far as I can go in this game". Participating in a BT/Hyjal guild is not remotely realistic for a majority of players, without enacting a complete lifestyle change, nor is raiding fun to people in the same way that solo and small group content is fun. Many players also don't enjoy PvP enough for it to make a game out of it, particularly considering the fairly limited selection of maps and game types. Unless significant changes are made to make raiding more accessible on a limited schedule, or make PvP more variable and interesting, then it seems likely that "the WoW experience" for most players will involve leveling to 70, running instances until they have all the loot they can get, getting a few badge items from heroics and a few items from Karazhan, and then starting again on an alt.

I agree with at least some of this and if true raiders should worry. I think this leads to raid content simply not being made at the same volume we expect. Why should Blizzard serve and audience of 20-30k players with expensive time consuming to craft content (i.e. BT, MH, Sunwell). For the vast majority of people it looks like SSC/TK is more than enough raid content. My gut feeling is that raiding in WTLK will be much more accessible (and easier) than TBC. Whether this is good or bad remains to be seen. I don't think there has yet been a game with relatively massively accessible raiding.

What would WoW look like if if as many people raided BT as had 1700+ rated arena teams (25-30% say)? Certainly the super high end guilds would be crazy unhappy as they blow through content like it was nothing. From Blizz's perspective would they care and how would it hit the long term financial health of the game?

It's probably not accurate to assume that widespread adoption would occur primarily by trivializing content. My oft-stated contention is that reducing the per-night time commitment, consumable farming expectations, and guild-based administrative overhead would result in a larger base of raiding players. Ultimately, more people capable of comfortably fitting raiding into their schedules would mean Blizzard would be free to stratify raiding more thoroughly based on skill of execution, such that new and/or casual raiders would be happy working on the more introductory content, while more experienced or devoted raiders would be happy working on challenging content at the high end.

Blizzard understands as well as anyone that players need something to aspire to in order to keep the game moving forward, and thus, retaining skilled players is critical to their success. If anything, it's quite a detriment to the game that such a large number of players are reaching the level cap, running some small group instances, and then looking at raiding and saying "wow, that sucks". Because they feel they can't participate even casually without swallowing their lives in the game, they can't aspire to what the upper echelon is doing.

Well, this was talked about pretty extensively in another thread: Options for reducing time investment in the raid game

My feeling is that some combination of rewarding players for fast clears (i.e. ZA) and reducing the average clear time of instances (i.e. smaller raids like Gruul, but not *as small* as Gruul) would assist in this problem without necessarily reducing trash clear time. Trash respawns are controversial, and the two hour respawn timer should probably be revised, but I don't think the existence of trash is really an debatable issue.

Isn't that obvious? PvE and PvP are very different worlds.

For PvE:
* Gear upgrades make old content irrelevant and booring, tending to pidgeon hole a player into doing only a few instances over and over again causing tedium. Eventually running one instance over and over again because thats the only place for upgrades gets old; if successful its possible to run out of challenging content and the natural response is to demand more instances.

Its in Blizzards best intresst to slow down gear progression. It keeps older instances relevant for a longer time. Also takes longer to run out of content.

* For a raid group it doesn't matter if there are other groups ahed in progression that has better gear. Since PvE isn't competative everyone can work on whatever content is suitable. If gettting boored of the grind you can still keep enjoying heroics and the occasional Karazhan run. The content isn't suddenly ruined for you because others get better gear in higher instances.

* PvE players seems to be used to the idea that RPGs are about wasting awsome amounts of time collecting gear and calling it character progression.

For PvP:
* While PvP might be about gear a fair bit its not about absolute levels. Just about how progressed you are in comparison to others. Its not fun if beeing so much behind that you lose because of gear alone. For PvP to be accessible and fun it has to be easy and fast to get gear close to top end.

Just consider the effect a new PvP season has? The Vindicators items are pretty much the same as the original Marshal's items. Just a few more points here and there. Sure its an upgrade but unless it comes with some extra bonus that change gameplay somehow its totally meaningless and just force a new honor grind. The game stays the same unlike PvE where progress = new bosses.

* If getting boored of spending time to upgrade the character and just wanting to play for fun then in PvP other peoples efforts to upgrade theirs will influence your enjoyment as well. Hence the PvP system pretty much have to be designed so that just fairly casual play lets you pick up the honor/arena gear resonably fast, regardless of how successful you are.

* Since the content is the same regardless of gear level there is no reason for Blizzard not to give out gear upgrades to PvP'ers. There is no risk of running out of content because of getting gear.


I suppose the real issue is with PvE. The idea that PvE has to be about character progression in terms of stats and gear. Not really all PvE but the raiding part of it. Not sure how Blizzard intends to 'fix' everything for the expansion but I think a fix is needed as well. As I see it currently:

* PvE raiding is a grind for gear that some people participate in. Not too many but enough to be a factor when balancing PvP.

* Easy PvP upgrades must be made available and kept on par with the best resonably common PvE raid items.

* While tweeked for PvP the high end PvP items still lets you outgear the 5-man heroics, and essentilly makes the intended end-game for non-raid players irrelevant. Leaving a fair number of players who don't want to raid, and haven't stepped into a single raid instance, outgerared for all non-raid content regardless. Thats not too fun and is killing intresst in even heroics now. Dire Maul and Upperblackrock Spire never got as booring as the easier heroics are now.

* Since the PvP gear has to be easy pretty much everyone will have it. Serious PvP'ers, casual PvP'ers and even players that mostly PvE but PvP a bit just for variation. So suddenly a significant precentage of the playerbase outgear all the content they are intressted in playing; and are demanding new content. That has to be a problem for Blizzard.

Guess the most resonable solution is to make raiding not about gear but about character progression through other means, like titles for killing bosses. Reputation in one instance to get quests for the next and such. If its item based character progression it should be for instance resistance items that doesn't force upgrades to PvP gear. The game as a whole would be much better if raiding, and raid gear, could kept irrelevant for the rest of the players. Not only the ones who PvP but the ones who only want to go as far as heroics and maybe Karazhan as well.

You can alternate attunments too, SSC one week, TK the other.

I agree with Nezralix's intepretation of that comment. There's a difference between EVERYONE experiencing MH/BT and *everyone within your target margins* experiencing MH/BT.

Naxxramas was touted as not being experienced by enough most likely due to how close it was to TBCs release, such that even the Nihilum's and DnT's of the WOW community never got Ner'Zhul on farm status as much as Illidan is.

I would definitely count myself as someone who has experienced most of the content. I've leveled to 70, done more than my share of Battlegrounds, Arena'd to Duelist, cleared Karazhan, run SSC/TK, leveled professions, dabbled in alts, grinded for primals, played the AH, gotten to Exalted with all the 5-man dungeon factions, bought more than a dozen Badge rewards via Heroics, etc., etc., etc.

I haven't been to MH/BT, but I don't really consider that as content I *didn't* get to experience because the time investment required to participate was never in my criteria anyway. If there was something like an overtuned boss like a Murmur with Death Touch, I'd consider that unexperienced content: It's completely within my expectations and capabilities to want to do, but something that's totally not my fault is keeping me away from it.

In short, I (and many others) willingly choose to not get into MH/BT. It's simply not in the cards, and we don't fault Blizzard for that.

His comment may have meant breadth of content (pvp AND 5mans AND raiding AND tradeskills) rather than depth of content (gladiator, MH/BT raiding, an alt with every tradeskill and all world-drop recipes.)

If Blizz were to do it I think they would continue with what they approved of before, putting the scrolls on the end bosses. Not sure how moving a scroll from Archimonde to Azgalor makes much difference. I think we killed Archimonde on the 3rd night of attempts and probably should have downed him on the second, he is really not that much harder and no trash means tons of attempts. If there was an attunement scroll on Archimonde more raids would probably choose to finish Hyjal before pushing past the free loot bosses of BT.

This is somewhat related to the backflagging scenario so please forgive me for being off-topic (I don't feel my insignificant circumstance warrants a new topic), as well a cross post but during our first Kael kill last evening we encountered a situation that was described as working as intended.

Circumstances: Going link dead during phase 5 of Kael at 10% health. I had to reset my modem and log back in. The result: I could loot Kael and see all the items, scrolled down to see nethers et cetera, but alas, there was no vial.

Naturally I opened a ticket and the GM responded with the obligatory 'working as intended' (screenshot of conversation in the aforementioned link on WoW forums). Has anyone else experienced this? What's the point of being allowed to receive normal loot, but not being able to access the vial unless you were online for the kill. It seems to be an artificial and inconsistent mechanic.

I weren't raiding back when t5 instances required attunement, or even playing regularly. Could someone please explain to me what was wrong with the tk/ssc attunements? Sure, getting keys for all the heroics in Trials of the Naaru on an alt or re-roll would make me want to cut my wrists with a blunt object - but it's much milder now with the rep required reduced, which seems like the proper solution tbh. Neither Gruul nor Magtheridon take much time, and Karazhan runs for alts are popular in many guilds (not to mention pugs and the fact you can clear just Moroes-Opera-Nightbane for attunement). Is it that letting the t5 attunements stay would result in cascading keying from BT at the top to Karazhan at the bottom, which does seem too strict?

About BT/MH, I'm sure I'd feel not having any vial severely limiting my guild choices if other factors weren't limiting them more... But still simply lifting the attunement, especially something as long as the Akama chain, seems like a cheap way out. I've handed in my Magtheridon trial long after it was no longer needed, and it seemed I was deprived of some joy. All the work for a <to-be-implemented> reward, which turned out to be a title. Meh.

I like the proposed EQ solutions with 85% of people needing to be attuned, I also like something along the lines of Nightbane signet for SSC - 1 or more people put effort in completing a longer quest chain so others can get attuned.