• Anarkii

Pretty keen to see the proc rate of Righteous Weapon Coating. Even though it won't be better than Windfury, it might open up some options in setting up melee groups.

 

Dryssa

Know Your Ley Lines is one of the best quests I've seen in a while. Really sums up how we mages feel sometimes

Good luck getting the quests from the Badge vendor though, especially on the PvP server. Shift-V and right-clicking the nameplate is practically required due to the mobs of people eager to see the new gear.

 

eoy

Just thought I would share something that we translated from a hungarian site (http://blackravens.net/):
http://www.brandfilt.com/eoy/sunwell2.htm

It was mainly intended for inside guild use, but I think some of you might find it interesting.

 

◊ Praetorian

Ah but I think you're overlooking one element of the "race" to open the gates that might prove interesting. Guilds that are 3/6 Sunwell have every incentive to turn in Essences. T5 guilds that are just starting BT and Hyjal and perhaps still clearing SSC or TK for loot have great incentives to turn them in for gems, patterns, etc. Guilds that are 5/5 Hyjal and still clearing BT will turn in one Essence a week.

But guilds that are actively working on Sunwell but aren't yet 3/6 actually have incentives, if they care about server firsts and server competition, NOT to turn in any Essences, and surely not to spend time farming other content. If we're stuck on Felmyst, and 3 other guilds on the server have Felmyst down, let's say, am I going to schedule raids to kill Vashj and Kael to help the guilds who are ahead of us get further ahead of us? Nope. I'm going to schedule more Felmyst raids. And I might even hoard our Kalecgos and Brutallus Essences until we reach the gate, then turn them in all at once when they'll let us advance.

Just something to consider.

 

SanSul

I am really sure guild members would be more then willing to have gems, flasks and new gear recipes withheld from them just for the sake of some "server" first. "Sorry Joe, you can't have that new engineering helm this month because Guild Y over there is handing in essences and we don't want to help anyone else on the server experience content"

A guild should be concerned about its members first and foremost. Essences are meant to be turned in, because when you do, you advance your guild by means of gems and new gear. Also by not turning in essences, you are also directly depriving your guild of 3 additional bosses.

Does not make any logical sense to me.

 

Emeraude

Why o why did you say this outloud.

You do indeed know so many people think about things such as this.

 

• Sebudai

I think there's a very good chance that Sunwell Plateau will contain the least meaningful server/world firsts of any WoW content to date. On many servers attaining a Sunwell first will likely just come down to starting your raid earlier than the other guys, while world firsts will likely just come down to realm population.

 

heel

I have already submitted feedback on this - it's an obvious problem, and I hope behavior like this is taken into account. The immediate solution would be to further increase cache rewards while giving them a 24 hour duration.

 

eoy

Many valid points, but won't you still agree with that the race will be non-existant for low populated realms? What about new servers with only one guild that have killed Illidan, and the other guilds stuck on Kael / Vashj? It will take them close to half a year to unlock Kil'jaden. What about guilds that raid for the sole reason to participate in the race and competition for world firsts, and doing encounters before there are movies and strategieguides out?

If it stays like this we're seriously considering quiting the game, at least temporariy, as transfering to a more populated server is simply out of question since we have recruits on cooldown. It's not motivating to farm Vashj, Kael'thas, Archimonde and Illidan for a minimum of 6 weeks only to turn out top100, when you know you could do a lot better on another server or with another system.

 

◊ Praetorian

You're completely missing my point. Nothing in the Essence reward caches is remotely interesting to an Illidan-farming guild. Yes, mid-tier t5/t6 guilds for whom meaningful Sunwell progress is pretty far off are going to turn in Essences ASAP and enjoy the rewards. My point is limited to guilds that ARE in Sunwell and ARE progressing. The incentives work perfectly for any 3/6 guilds who can kill Kalec/Brut/Felmyst on Tuesday night and then have 6 days free to farm Essences to speed unlock the next gate. But a guild that is 2/6 Sunwell has no reason to want the gate open.

 

Anedris

Guys, it's not going to take anyone 6 months to unlock Kil'Jaeden. Blizzard isn't stupid (though they may not understand some class mechanics very well). It will auto-complete at a certain rate, auto-complete at a certain date, or the requirements will scale based on server population (or server population at 70).

 

◊ Praetorian

I believe a reliable source has stated that a dev told them while testing on the PTR that the number of Essences required will be tied to realm population, and is not a fixed amount, for what it's worth.

 

◊ Viper

Having an "expiration time" on the essences is a pretty clever idea, actually. I hope they listen to it.

 

dakalro

Ouch that list shows a huge disparity if Blizzard doesn't work hard on balancing the % right (my own realm is somewhere midway with luckilly very few guilds that are just in the start of BT atm, 50-60 or so essences/week isn't too bad).
Also having turn in % tied to realm population really sounds like they totally missed the point Imo if first server opens up midreset all others should auto-open at next reset if they really cba to actually calculate via data easilly available to them.

In the end I think the people that are that interested in competition won't have a problem passing first 3 bosses in time while those that aren't would rather care more for rewards, unless you really did something to piss them off.

 

Prinsesa

The caster weapon coating is quite disappointing. Whatever happened to spell damage vs. AP? This is just like early classic WoW itemization, with casters getting INT while melee classes get STR/AGI. The two just do not compare.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....63815BffMm.png

 

Kissmyaxe

Seeing as opening the gates only affects raiders, maybe they should have some kind of system to tie it to those raider numbers.
I mean one "Medium" server might have 1 guild farming Illidan and another one might have 3-4...

Although even with an effort to balance the requirements, guilds like Last Resort or Forte are pretty much screwed as they would go for top 5 so even a delay of 1-2 weeks will affect their performance.

Edit: On another note, maybe we will have another C'Thun and a lot of people will be leveled before he becomes killable...

 

◊ Vaccine

I'd thought about that too. It is similar to the AQ40 gate event. We were working on Nef during the war effort as the second most progressed horde guild, number 1 having killed him the week before the war effort started. As a result we'd had some private guild commincations not to actively participate in the war effort in an attempt to postpone the opening whilst we worked on killing Nefarian and farmed him for as long as possible to try to narrow the advantage the other horde guild had. Might seem petty but back then competition was very fierce and there was much bad blood between guilds. Kind of miss that in TBC which seems much less competitive on an individual server.

For the Sunwell gates I've thought about situations similar to Gurg in that theres no incentive for a guild who hasn't not only downed but mastered the first 3 bosses, to actually hand any essences in if they are in Sunwell anyway. Handing them in before your guild is ready simply means that you are giving your opposistion more of a chance to get further ahead. We've been the dominant guild on our very small server (Vashj) for so long now that guild mates expect us to get all the server firsts. But for the last 4 months or so as we've been farming Illidan, other guilds have been getting up to that level and now theres four or five combined on Horde and Alliance. As someone said the server firsts could be down to as little as who starts their raid earliest.

But on the timing issue theres another point that hasn't been considered here. Hoarding can be used by people who are even 3/6 SP and waiting on the gate. Lets say we have a guild called Alpha and a guild called Beta. Alpha beats Beta slightly on each boss downed up to the first gate, although only by the odd hour or day or so, no huge advantage. Alpha and Beta both farm the essences from all the bosses that drop them and hand them in. But Beta decides to stockpile theirs when the gate is at around 80%. Alpha continues handing in and doesn't really notice the slow down in the gate opening %. At 90% Beta still has say 10 stockpiled whereas Alpha's are all handed in. Even though these guilds are both strong raiding guilds and almost identical progress, Beta is in the strong posistion because they can now choose to open the gate. They wait for Alphas raid to start breaking up that night after they have killed Felmyst and then hand their essences in, opening the gate. It is now highly unlikely that Alpha will be able to muster a raid that night whilst Beta can have a good few hours attempting the next boss before the raid ends. Might not seem a huge advantage but if you are competitive for server firsts still, which many of us are (including myself), it is something to be considered.

A timer on the essences would prevent any 'dirty' tactics like this but I'm not sure whether thats a good thing or not. I like this sort of drama, its what gives each server their character. You remember those guilds who announced they would open the AQ40 gates on say the Sunday morning, and then snuck on Friday night at 2am to open it and get the vent to themselves lag free? Nasty underhanded tactic that it was, it was still interesting and a good example of guild politics. A lot earlier in this thread we discussed something similar in EQ, that was guilds farming lower attunement bosses they no longer needed for the simple reason of delaying trailing guilds and preventing them getting any further.

Whilst this is kind of the inverse of that, there is really no motivation for guilds that are 0-2/6 in sunwell from turning in their essences.

 

Fleebenworth

How is it any different than AQ40 up to twin emps?

 

Ghando

It's not. But AQ40 had impossible Ouro and impossible C'Thun, so at least those final bosses held out (everyone cares much more about final bosses...we'll ignore the fact that Europe had that extra day or whatever). Kil'jaeden will likely die before many raiders have a chance to make much progress in the zone (2-3 weeks), assuming the instance is appropriately tuned.

But this is really how things are now; I don't think OMG WORLD FIRST is as big a deal as it was. When Nihilum shredded the original T6 content in a couple of weeks, I think it was made obvious that in these days of PTR testing and pretty dynamic tuning getting a WORLD FIRST isn't the same triumph as it was. Competition is just different. I remember people blacking out their Firemaw killshots to hide what positioning they used; now we can watch an online stream of a high-end guild raiding the PTR in real time. In this context I don't think muddying the world-first waters is a real problem.

 

Enova

It depends on how high the bar for Essences is set. Sure, it got opened in what? a week on the PTR, but then again they wanted those gates to be opened rather fast for testing. There's no stopping them from simply tuning the live gates to take more resets, even assuming 100% instant turn in rates.

 

mclem

Depends how you regard meaningful. The first Kil'jaeden kill may come about because the killing guild has done a phenomenal amount of diplomacy and negotiation. Sure, that's a *different* sort of 'meaningful', but it's a guild-level test of the social metagame in WoW, and to call performance in that game meaningless is demeaning.

Or, of course, they could fluke it. We don't know yet.

 

Brunkor

That list seems a bit off.
I think we have 12 or 13 Illidan-killing guilds on Frostmane, and 15-20 Archi-farmers, and as far as I know, Ravencrest is quite far along as well.

Anyways, speaking of Essence of the Immortals...
Just to make sure I've gotten it right, you hand the Essence in to xyz quest giver, which progresses the gate opening a wee bit, as well as giving you the Cache as a reward.
So, how do guilds plan to handle this in terms of distribution amongst members?
Just /roll it and some lucky guy gets a bunch of stuff?
Have some officer pick it up and bunker up on flasks and stuff for the gbank?

Figuring maybe I'm missing something obvious since I haven't seen this discussed before...