Reset all transfer cooldowns when 2.4 arrives. Problem solved.
Make one of the barriers drop every 2 weeks. Problem solved.
I really dont get why fixing something on the PTR that has 0 impact on those who say they dont care or we should care more is a bad thing or unnecessary.
They fix stuff that doesnt affect me as a single player all the time, i still wont tell them to not fix it and fix stuff that i would like to see changed. I havent heard a single player telling "Yeah, an absolute number of handins is a good thing for the raiding community.", the most positive opinion was not caring.
Indeed it's not any better, and not any worse, for that matter. However, the problem is more obvious for PVE, because progression is spread around a lot more time, and is still based around those individual achievements i was talking about. If I understand arena mechanics right, any PVPer who's going through enough trouble to transfer for competition, though, is at the top of the PVP progression ladder on his realm, rather than unable to progress further in locked content... And unless they're rerolls, I would assume (but then again, I'm not keen on PVPing, so I may be wrong) good PVPers can make good progress in one reset on new realms. Good PVEers undergo larger organizational problems when transferring.
Aside from getting everyone on the right time table, and making sure the guild bank is transferred correctly, I don't see what other types of issues there are. You don't lose attunements or items when you transfer servers. The only thing you potentially lose is gold (typically spent buying guild bank tabs), but that's not a problem the most successful guilds usually have.
I'm not saying it is a seamless process. I am saying that, for any guild who is really that serious about worldwide competition, it is not a difficult task compared to the other challenges they choose to take on. It is merely another administrational task that happens to cost some real life cash.
...Going back to 2.4 in general, I think it's sad that the first bosses of SW25 have gone down so fast...
Those bosses have died to a few of the best guilds in the world. Even in its current incarnation, Kalecgos isn't "easy" - it's a fight which requires coordination and execution, and simply having a bunch of T6-level gear does not allow anyone to blow past the fight.
Not to mention that the gear check fight (Brutallus) is undergoing rapid tuning changes.
The PTR's function is to provide testing, tuning, and feedback about the available encounters. Yes, bosses have been killed, but if anyone thinks they're "too easy" I encourage those people to copy a character over and try it!
It's no more flawed than feeling you are "forced" to transfer battlegroups for competition. If you only want progress, you'll get it on your server. Your server will still have their server firsts, and you won't have to do anything special about it. It's only the inter-server competition that will be affected, just like it is only the inter-battlegroup competition that is affected. Your server will eventually open those gates, and you'll still have whatever competition on your server to be the first to kill Kil'Jaeden.
2 big reasons why your analogy fails in my opinion. First there is the issue of scale pointed out before. Transferring a 40 person guild is in no way comparable to transferring a 5 man arena team.
The second reason is the source of the problem. The Arena competition problem has it's source in the players that play arena. Blizzard has a very limited control over where the good PvPers are and where they choose to transfer. The source of the PvE disparity is a switch that blizzard could flip at any time. Essentially Blizzard can't really fix the Battlegroup problem without resorting to draconian controls that would likely cause even more problems. Blizzard can very easily tear down the wall.
No we dont, if we can change something about the unfairness.
You mean to say, overturn a design idea that's already implemented and where probably 100 man hours have already been spent creating a nice shiny "Sunwell Progress Race" Website for WoW which shows progress details (remember AQ40, we had that too there, just not so much working) alongside with fancy Flash Graphics etc. just waiting to be released ?
Well yeah, it might happen that they scrap all that if enough guilds complain. I wouldn't exactly bet everything I have on it though.
And don't forget, you don't have necessarily those on your side in the complaint that think they will get the better end of the stick.
The only thing that would be acceptable, in my opinion, without scrapping the idea, is that it requires extreme amounts of EoI's and *all* realms worldwide simply are linked, turn-in and gates. The moment one player on any realm turns in the last 0.001% token the gates open on all realms world wide. Everything else and someone is disadvantaged. People will *still* cry unfair if it doesn't happen in a good timezone, but well, can't make all happy.
Seriously why are people arguing against improving the game with some of these arguments?
Sillia, no matter what you say, relying on transfers is NEVER a better idea than doing the system right. If you've got a problem with PVPers needing to transfer for competition, start a thread somewhere and come up with ideas that work and maybe they can fix that. Just because there's a little hassle in terms of having to have 5 people pay to transfer to get harder competition does not mean it should be the same hassle but on a bigger scale (whole guilds) for Raid progression when there is nothing inherently requiring this, it's just a design decision that could be changed.
Cadfael, just because they put in work doesn't mean we shouldn't complain if it's done wrong. If Blizzard decides to put it through like this yes raiders will deal with it, but world firsts are pretty much going to be meaningless and people know it. But we can still request that it be changed as to not further damage the race. Yeah people will still remember who gets the first Kil'jaeden kill, but it'll have an asterisk by it, and it's something that is within Blizzard's power to change, versus server stability there are no guarantees, that's why people deal with it, nothing can be done about it.
Ungeir, it's cool if you still know about raiding, but if you're not competing for world firsts, just don't say anything about how people shouldn't care, or how it's not a big deal, because it's an entirely opinion and not from someone who is in it, that's all.
Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but I scrolled through the thread and didn't spot it:
The lacerate changes appear to be that it gains 5% of your attack power in damage per application, from what I can tell, which would mean that a 5-stack does 155 per tick with 0 AP and 205 per tick with 1000 AP. The Idol of Ursoc's damage has been increased to +8 damage per tick per stack, up from 3. The abysmal Nordrassil 4-piece bonus appears to have remained 3 per tick per stack.
The Idol of the White Stag increases attack power by 94 for 20 seconds now, up from 12.
The Idol of Feral Shadows increases periodic damage dealt by Rip by 7 now, up from 4 (godawful).
At the risk of repeating myself...
Why don't those guilds who really care about the competition just transfer to higher population servers like the pvpers do with battlegroups? If your goal is really to be the world first, or the north american first, or whatever, wouldn't a small thing like server population just be remedied the same way?
This notion is silly. It is not in any way desirable to concentrate all top-of-the-range raiding guilds on one server. Firstly, realm population is subject to technical limitations. Many, if not all, the realms with the greatest progression are technically full, and encouraging a great influx of highly active new members to those would be folly. High-end guilds have transferred to servers with low population precisely to avoid the negative effects of a high population environment. And it simply doesn't make sense to encourage overuse of some servers over others by any conceivable game mechanic.
Secondly, a transfer of guilds away from "backwater" realms would also have a drastic effect on the overall environment there. Servers are to an extent driven by their top guilds, and having one, maybe the only Illidan-killing one, migrate off may have a devastating effect on a realm's overall environment. This is a bad thing.
Character transfer should remain the exception, and ideally should occur in a direction which is desirable for reasons of realm development and overall player convenience, i.e. from the more to the less populated servers. Having all top guilds with thousands of very active players transfer to a handful of privileged servers is not something Blizzard will want to encourage, and that may well be a reason to implement some kind of balancing mechanism - I agree that the developers won't have "world firsts" and the like on the top of their minds. Nor should they.
As an aside - grouping the gate-opening process by battle groups was mentioned. At least in the European domain, that would make little sense, as the size of the battlegroups is drastically different. Compare 18 realms in the Blackout battlegroup to 4 in Ruin. Also, all the realms released with the launch of TBC, like my own, were gathered in one battlegroup, with much lower overall progression than on more established servers. Granted, at least the latter shouldn't pose a vast problem as I don't think there would be many contestants for prestigious first kills there, but it would still be very disheartening for players on those realms, and the raiding guilds there might have to wait even longer for the last few bosses to become available.
Seriously why are people arguing against improving the game with some of these arguments?
Because I think this method of opening the gates is a cool design. I don't think a simultaneous opening of all content always to appease those who want a perfectly fair "race" is worth giving up on what looks to be an epic kind of server-unifying event - as I said before, the AQ gates done right. The AQ scepter questline was awesome - I had a chance to be a part of it on Ner'zhul, and that part of the gate event was some of the most fun I had in WoW.
I've been in the race for World Firsts before, with top 10-25 kills of pretty much every pre-TBC boss, so please don't resort to telling me I'm not in a position to comment. I am, or at least I have been in the past, and I can sympathize with your position. But I think perceived "fairness" of a race for bragging rights among maybe a thousand players worldwide isn't nearly as important as the ability for the WoW design team to create new and exciting content for a far wider audience. This method is cool, it's exciting, and it's epic, and that's more important than a race to kill virtual dragons being fair.
Because I think this method of opening the gates is a cool design. I don't think a simultaneous opening of all content always to appease those who want a perfectly fair "race" is worth giving up on what looks to be an epic kind of server-unifying event - as I said before, the AQ gates done right. The AQ scepter questline was awesome - I had a chance to be a part of it on Ner'zhul, and that part of the gate event was some of the most fun I had in WoW.
See, you said the scepter quest line was awesome, but was the item turn in part awesome? For most people that did the scepter quests, yea, awesome stuff, but then when you waited another 2 months for the item turn ins to finish, that wasn't so hot.
Why don't those guilds who really care about the competition just transfer to higher population servers like the pvpers do with battlegroups? If your goal is really to be the world first, or the north american first, or whatever, wouldn't a small thing like server population just be remedied the same way?
PvPers/Arena players transfer for better competition and more enjoyment playing, not for a limitation of what they can do like the PvEers would do. If they(arena players) couldn't go above 2200 on some realm but could go to 2400 on another then it would make sense, but thats not the case. There is nothing stopping the arena players from doing their arenas and getting number one of the battlegroup at any time of the season. Where as in PvE, at least in this case, no matter how good you and your guild are, you can not go any more in progression based on the rest of the server.
Also like others have said, with the amount of people that would xfer with a raiding guild, you would have a lot of people on cooldowns or others just not wanting to leave and pay 25$ because blizzard has a retarded mechanic for pacing.
Because I think this method of opening the gates is a cool design. I don't think a simultaneous opening of all content always to appease those who want a perfectly fair "race" is worth giving up on what looks to be an epic kind of server-unifying event - as I said before, the AQ gates done right. The AQ scepter questline was awesome - I had a chance to be a part of it on Ner'zhul, and that part of the gate event was some of the most fun I had in WoW.
I've been in the race for World Firsts before, with top 10-25 kills of pretty much every pre-TBC boss, so please don't resort to telling me I'm not in a position to comment. I am, or at least I have been in the past, and I can sympathize with your position. But I think perceived "fairness" of a race for bragging rights among maybe a thousand players worldwide isn't nearly as important as the ability for the WoW design team to create new and exciting content for a far wider audience. This method is cool, it's exciting, and it's epic, and that's more important than a race to kill virtual dragons being fair.
Yes, completing the Scepter was awesome, the entire questline for it was very well done, difficult, and rewarding/fun, any guild could complete the scepter questline in 2 weeks.
The AQ War Effort sucked, we all agree on this.
This time, however. We have an entire war going on with the Shattered Sun Offensive trying to reclaim the Isle, that's very cool in my opinion, from the moment you land on the island, there is battle going on all around you. I think it's fun, and I think it's epic.
However, the raiding side of things got the shaft this time, it's a block, and it really serves no purpose. When the Shattered Sun take the Armory for instance, their troops rush into the building and kill off all the enemy NPCs in there, and claim it as their own, it's announced they're taking the armory in World chat(Similar to when you kill Maws), and it's progressive.
When the gate comes down, there's no event....umm...it just starts to work on the next part, there's no feeling of accomplishment, there's no new NPCs added to the instance, dialog, lore, feedback, or anything. It's just...there, for no reason other then to block progression. That's not good design, that's design just to annoy people, and that's what people are annoyed about.
Ungeir, it's cool if you still know about raiding, but if you're not competing for world firsts, just don't say anything about how people shouldn't care, or how it's not a big deal, because it's an entirely opinion and not from someone who is in it, that's all.
I'm not saying people shouldn't care. I actually wrote that I understand why they care. I remember the rush of server firsts, so yeah I can imagine world firsts are entirely awesome. But just because I am not chasing world first, or ever was, doesn't mean I can't state the obvious: It is unlikely that Blizzard will ever do much to support this style of play.
As for the War Effort - there's a difference between farming 400000 Red Snappah and Linen, and turning in drops from Kael, Vashj, Illidan and SW bosses. Like I said before I find this event pretty epic, and I think it can lead to some interesting server dynamics. I actually like that it's server specific. Where it a world pool of turnins it would take away some of that. I am aware that it's an issue for the world first crowd, but I am just saying don't expect Blizzard to make allowances for you. I don't think they will, and like Eledril I actually don't think they should (in this specific case), apart from possibly making number of turnins needed scale with server population.
I am amused. Players asked to have more "effect" on the world, Blizzard gave us that (twice). Players bitch.
You know, there are more ways to measure "world firsts". Anyone ever seen a track race? Or as my guild leader would say "It's NASCAR". Going to re-state the obvious here: those in the inside of the track have to do more revolutions to travel the same distance as those on the outside of the track.
Does this stop NASCAR/racing/track from being competitive? No. We could always measure World firsts in the "Time needed to kill the boss from when the gate opened". Additionally, maybe this might quell some of the bitching about European and Americans related to server resets/maintenance days.
Why don't those guilds who really care about the competition just transfer to higher population servers like the pvpers do with battlegroups? If your goal is really to be the world first, or the north american first, or whatever, wouldn't a small thing like server population just be remedied the same way?
Like oh so many have already stated you can’t compare the logistics involved in moving 40 people compared to 5 and what kind of affect it has on a guild. You also have to factor in that guilds have a constant stream of recruitment, very often from other servers, which makes it a lot harder. Ironically both Forte and Last Resort moved away from the biggest server (at the time) in Europe (Kazzak) to Boulderfist for the sake of PvE progression. We had constant queues during prime time and well over 10 guilds farming Illidan several months ago so we decided to move to have a better shot in Sunwell…if only we knew! It’s not right that PvPers have to move either, Im all for it being addressed if possible, but you can’t argue that just because PvPers have it bad so should PvErs … even though some of us gladly bend over for the sake of progression.
To Cadfael, Elendril and others,
No one is trying to rob you of the epic feeling of the event, the man-hours Blizzard has put into a cool progression page or other things of that nature. We’re simply asking for the effort involved to scale at the very least, like someone mentioned the actual block to the raid bosses isn’t even part of the major event going on, it’s just a damn NPC you hand in essences to. Pleasing the high-end guilds doesn’t have to come at the cost of the casuals and wise-versa, it’s a thin line Blizzard has been trying to walk for a long time now and it’s clear they think they’re ready for more by throwing e-sport level arenas into the mix as well. In this case removing the doors altogether wouldn’t have any damn negative effect at all; it would just even the playing field and make Blizzard trash / edit some site to remove the part of a major event that serves no purpose at all in the grand scheme of things.
One could argue for ever about how the actual scaling should be done but I’m sure Blizzard can make it quite accurate with little effort based on the amount of statistics they seem to gather. Complaining about the results of such a balance when compared to a flat amount is like whining about a scratch compared to having someone hit you with a baseball bat. Worst case scenario we’ll see weeks in difference between the best and the worst case in comparison to months if it’s static.
For those of you claiming that the event in itself adds to server dynamics and sense of community you have somewhat of a point. You have to recognize though that no form of cooperation at all will be able to stand a chance if the numbers don’t scale. Guilds, like my own, will just not bother at all because for us finishing in two or three months makes little difference when other servers got it all opened in a week. If the amount scales I can assure you that we will be doing all we can to squeeze out as many essences per reset as possible to remain competitive because then actually doing something matters…
Yes, completing the Scepter was awesome, the entire questline for it was very well done, difficult, and rewarding/fun, any guild could complete the scepter questline in 2 weeks.
The AQ War Effort sucked, we all agree on this.
This time, however. We have an entire war going on with the Shattered Sun Offensive trying to reclaim the Isle, that's very cool in my opinion, from the moment you land on the island, there is battle going on all around you. I think it's fun, and I think it's epic.
However, the raiding side of things got the shaft this time, it's a block, and it really serves no purpose. When the Shattered Sun take the Armory for instance, their troops rush into the building and kill off all the enemy NPCs in there, and claim it as their own, it's announced they're taking the armory in World chat(Similar to when you kill Maws), and it's progressive.
When the gate comes down, there's no event....umm...it just starts to work on the next part, there's no feeling of accomplishment, there's no new NPCs added to the instance, dialog, lore, feedback, or anything. It's just...there, for no reason other then to block progression. That's not good design, that's design just to annoy people, and that's what people are annoyed about.
There should of been some sort of "Onyxia Head" event with Twin Emperors and C'thun.
That is the one thing I miss in TBC. Yes, there is the Magtheridon Head, but that feels so... blah compared to the epic feel of Onyxia or Nefarian in Stormwind.
It is a complete disappointment there is absolutely nothing for Illidan. I don't care -how- much development time it would of taken to add a "turn-in" quest to Darnassus (and either Thunderbluff or Ogremart), I think it would of been completely worth it.
P.S. I do think the Kael'thas turn in was well-done, but its disappointing there is/was nothing for AQ40/BT/Hyjal. The Aq20 one was mediocre too.
P.P.S. Know what would be cool? If there is a Kil'Jaeden turn in that gives a TITLE!
Risking some flames and noob flinging, why aren't kills just tracked along with how much time has passed since the final gate opened on that realm?
Sure, some people might say that encounter spoilers skew this metric by making it easier for later guilds to tackle a certain boss. But the thing is, these days, encounters hit the Live realms about as spoiled has they will get.
So, how about just asking the wowjutsu guys to track SP score in relation to the opening of the gate date?
I imagine you guys can find a number of faults in this system, I myself didn't spend too much time considering all the angles.
But even if it's flawed is it not better than simply looking at the kill date by itself?
This approach has been exhaustively discussed on the benefactor forum. It boils down to simply: later kills are vastly easier because they benefit from strategy discussions, optimizations and extensive video coverage. A kill that takes 20 hours without any of this information is vastly more impressive than a 2 hour kill 2 months later.
Video footage and strategy discussion are released as a way of making a name for your guild. Guilds live and die by how well they can recruit - simply saying 'stop releasing those vids' is like holding up your hands to stop a tidal wave...
This approach has been exhaustively discussed on the benefactor forum. It boils down to simply: later kills are vastly easier because they benefit from strategy discussions, optimizations and extensive video coverage. A kill that takes 20 hours without any of this information is vastly more impressive than a 2 hour kill 2 months later.
Isn't this completely thrown out the window with the fact that all the bosses are fought (and often beaten) on the PTR?
Never truer than this time around I guess. As other folk have pointed out, naxx had a real race for world firsts - this time round folk are pretty resigned to most of the 'firsts' being determined by external factors - such as what timezone you raid in - considering most top guilds will go in and 1shot the first 3 as soon as they can field a raid.
A lot of top guilds are pretty melancholy about this. But what can you really do? We've already seen a solid feedback-retune cycle for some of the raid encounters. It seems pretty clear that the PTR testing is helping tune the content.
To Cadfael, Elendril and others,
No one is trying to rob you of the epic feeling of the event, the man-hours Blizzard has put into a cool progression page or other things of that nature. We’re simply asking for the effort involved to scale at the very least, like someone mentioned the actual block to the raid bosses isn’t even part of the major event going on, it’s just a damn NPC you hand in essences to. Pleasing the high-end guilds doesn’t have to come at the cost of the casuals and wise-versa, it’s a thin line Blizzard has been trying to walk for a long time now and it’s clear they think they’re ready for more by throwing e-sport level arenas into the mix as well. In this case removing the doors altogether wouldn’t have any damn negative effect at all; it would just even the playing field and make Blizzard trash / edit some site to remove the part of a major event that serves no purpose at all in the grand scheme of things.
This has nothing to do with casual vs. raider, as far as I'm concerned. This has to do with design, and the cost to design of considering the "race" for world firsts as sacrosanct. I feel - as a high-end raider who has many times competed for high world-rank kills - that it is more important that the Blizzard design team has the freedom to construct events like this and like the AQ gate opening than it is to maintain a level playing field for everyone who wants to compete for world firsts. You say it wouldn't matter if the raid portion weren't included in the event, and maybe it wouldn't matter to you, but there are a lot of people who it would matter for. There are lots of people who appreciate the feeling that your character's actions in the world can have meaning - this is one of the opportunities for that to exist on a grander scale.
Consider the implications of the essence "race". Sunwell guilds will have legitimate incentive to try to help along less progressed guilds to kill Kael and Vashj, to the point of helping them by sending members with them. Like the AQ War Effort contests that resulted in Medivh opening the gates first, this is an opportunity for motivated raiders to work with the community for the benefit of all involved. At this point in the TBC raid game, helping those guild get over the hump could be a big deal for them. That's very cool, in my mind. That's not to say I don't agree with the idea of scaling - I do think the requirements should scale based on some kind of criteria, but that criteria clearly won't be entirely fair either.
World events are something lots of players have been clamoring to see more of for a long time, especially world events that really matter. This is one of them that impacts everyone, from the casuals farming SSO rep to the T5 raiders getting their badge gear to the Sunwell raiders fighting to open the gates. It's something that can foster a sense of purpose and community, and that's more important for the game in the "grand scheme of things" than the world first race being entirely fair - which it never is anyway.
02/19/08, 7:02 PM
Similar Threads
