The nerfs to raids and buffs to acquiring gear already implements the casual side of things. It's tough to come up with something for the extreme other end of raiders though. Alternative loot for better/harder clears would be cool, but I think part of the glory of those early kills is that people haven't had as much time to gear up (going through some raids on my alt a year later, it's so much easier to be geared). AQ40-style mounts are good for glory, but it's a one-per-server thing so it doesn't mean quite as much.

Anyway, I was thinking it'd be cool to allow one person in the first couple world kills to design an item for the next tier of instances. Of course limit them by item level like all design and limit the number of sockets, but let them play around within that and let them name it. Then make up some flavor text that includes their name and guild's name.

There are more problems for casuals than the ones you've outlined, one of the key ones being loot dilution. While a top-end guild probably has a roster of no more than 30 people with average ~90% attendance, a semi-casual group will have a roster of ~50 people with average 50% attendance. A very casual group will have a roster of 75 people with average 33% attendance.

Thus, even if they perform just as a highly as a hardcore guild relative to their gear level, they still have to farm content for three times as long just to gear everyone up. My own group is just now moving into T6 content - did our last attunement run this week (hopefully). We killed Kael half a dozen times, same as many of the guilds above us. Half their members have T5 chests. About a quarter of our members have T5 chests.

Thus, in order to open up the instances to casual groups, as well as lifting the social barriers that hinder progress (read: attunements), Blizzard needs to make good-quality gear accessible for less effort. Even when they do make the gear more accessible, do not think that every Tom, Dick and Harry will suddenly be sporting full Tier armor sets. No more than half a dozen people in my group will ever have a full set of Tier armor, at any Tier of progression. We just don't have the farm time available to collect the full set.

One thing I think does Blizzard no favours is the secrecy they maintain about their future plans for raiders of differing standards/commitment levels. One of the reasons the attunement change has been so acrimonious is the fact that it was unexpected: people didn't have time to adjust their expectations.

I would like to have them lay out the competition much more explicitly, as follows.

1) The top two instances of PvE content are the "contest ground". There are attunements, high resist fights, gear checks etc., and it is explicitly acknowledged that these are a challenge that is set for the top end guilds to overcome.

2) Previous Tiers of PvE content are the "open content". Attunements are lifted, and gear of equivalent quality is made more widely available through badge systems, to help the more casual people into and through the instances. In some circumstances, resist requirements could be lowered, if gathering resist gear is a particular "hurdle".

3) Opening of the lower Tiers is explicitly tied to the world competition among the top guilds. When Vashj is defeated for the first time, Karazhan attunement is lifted worldwide. When Kael is defeated, Gruul/Magtheridon attunements are lifted. When Archimonde is defeated, SSC attunement is lifted. When Illidan is downed, TK attunement is lifted. And so on and so forth. As the attunements for each instance are lifted, badge loot of matching quality becomes available to aid gearing up.


This has two major advantages:
A) It sets the parameters for the contest between the best of the best, so they can adjust their expectations to the fact that no, T5-quality loot isn't always going to be a marker of high-quality raiding.

B) It explicitly gives the more casual groups hope. I know so many people who quit raiding after the mess that was pre-2.1 raiding, or quit over Vashj/Kael vial requirements. If they had had an indication ahead of time that they weren't going to get left further and further behind the bleeding edge, I think many would still be playing today.



This model for PvE competition is obviously modelled quite closely on the Arena seasons, which have been wildly successful in terms of encouraging participation without destroying the sense of competition among the top end. When you're duking it out on the leaderboard for Season 4 titles, please don't tell me you'll give a toss that S2 gear is now available for honor, or that the winners of Season 2 will feel their achievement is somehow "devalued" !


And, as with the Arena, there needs to be something more than just the top season's gear available for the best of the best of the best. Arena has titles and mounts - the same could be done for PvE. Have the Kael phoenix mount be a guaranteed drop for all 25 people present at the server first kill. Have titles available for the fastest end-to-end clear of each instance, or for clearing an entire instance with zero deaths, or similar. Cosmetic, sure, but they'll be lasting. "Scarab Lord McPvE-King" will be wowing people long after even T6 gear is made obsolete.

Heroic 25 mans with timed rewards and better loot? That way they could take out instance requirements (attunements can go to hell) and let everyone in on the content who wants in.

It's not as simple as 'raider' and 'casual'. Some people raid on very limited playtimes without knowing much about the game - I wouldn't call it being carried by the rest of the guild since they do have the reaction times and situational awareness to do their job, but they're not interested in or capable of solving the puzzle each new boss presents and they follow theorycrafted rotations instead of contributing to their creation. I'd call such a person a casual player even if they're doing high end raid content.
Others play extensively, know enough that they're the first person any guildies asks for advice whatever the class or instance, have 70's of several classes and know every pull in every instance... but don't raid, whether through distaste or scheduling difficulties. I'd call such a player hardcore even if they've never run anything above a heroic.

The issue is that "casual" vs. "hardcore" is an idiotic distinction that fails to account for reality.

The ability to easily attain the PvE titles and bear mount at level 80 is going to be interesting. If only I could bring my s3 geared alt back in time to s1, I'd easily get the gladiator mount/title.
They will eventually have to limit access to old PvE rewards like that, and at the same time adding new rewards on a limited time basis for guilds to strive towards would be fairly convenient.

Why? Things like the bear mount, or titles give incentive for people to go back and revisit old content for fun. It's no different then people soloing strath for the Baron mount at level 70.

But on the other hand, it would allow them to blitz through the older content and catch up to the high end.

For example, if we use Easy, Normal, Hard, we could have it set to:

T4 - Easy
T5 - Normal
T6 - Hard

A good limited-playtime guild would rip through T4 and most of T5 content, and be able to see T6 content on hard. If instances stayed the same, they might not even get to T6 because of their limited playtime. Obviously, best is to do T4/T5/T6 on Hard, but is it better to do: a) only T4/T5 on Hard; or b) T4/T5 on Easy/Normal and T6 on Hard.

Then when Sunwell comes out:

T4 - Easy
T5 - Easy
T6 - Normal
Sunwell - Hard

Meh

Make your bear the "armored" variety. When the expansion comes out, you change the drop in the ZA chest to the "Unarmored" variety.

I'd like a Bear eventually, but it'll be a long time before my group is up to it. It may be that WOTLK comes out before then, just due to only raiding 1-2 days a week for a few hours when all of our schedules line up. I'm happy you guys got something cool, that's awesome. You get to be the first to ride around on a bear, that's great. But don't take away my goal of doing so, that's just bad business.

Easy and Hard Mode
I don't think that the easy/hard mode is such a good idea. It takes away a lot of the direct competition among raiders. There should be an official ranking, like arena ratings, that show how good certain guilds are and most importantly - which are the best.

Competition
I think rewarding these early kills would be a great incentive. There should be a winner and their should be very small group of raiders that can claim to be the best. These advantages/ranks should only last for a certain amount of time - best would be until the next raidinstance comes out.

Another reward idea would be making respecs costing only 25 Gold each etc.

Gear difference
The guilds that are perhabs among the first hundert or two-hundret will still have their gear first. They will still be able to beat the bosses on the hard mode, but they won't get these special titles and rewards. They will kill 4/6 by the time top end guilds are able to down the endbosses. Then some IDs later bring the first nerf.

Soft gear reset:
There should be no difference in gear that drops from bosses. Once the next instance hits the one before should be nerfed substantially by removing respawn mechanics, Boss HP etc. so that the gear can be acquired much more easy. Perhabs even the amount of items that drop should be increased.


All just some ideas...

I don't understand the reasoning behind removing respawns and boss hp. Adding badge rewards, arena weapons, stuff like that makes things a bit easier for later groups anyways. Removing respawns and boss hp is insulting the guilds that aren't in the top 100-200 in my opinion.(especially since this screws them over on things like trash drops and rep)

Except the baron mount is a 1 in 10,000 chance of dropping where as the bear is 100%. They may as well put them on vendors in Northrend. I don't think it's their intention to have something that cool and character defining be so easily accessible, and that's why I think it will be changed somehow later on. Maybe not, but there isn't a whole lot of ways to customize the look of your character outside of rare mounts and tabards.

You mean 'the nerfed instance is at that point a good piece older' for those top 100 guilds or so. What about the fact that 100 guilds is ~1% of raiders(not an accurate stat by any means, just used for the sake of an example), and that there are many, many raiders to come through that instance who want the full experience, not a watered down version?

Edit: As an aside, why should there be content put in the game and then taken away? No offense, but your character is not a unique one. There are 10 million people playing, you aren't going to be that unique and other people will want to experience the same thing even if that makes the first raiders feel less 'special'. Really, that seems to be some of what you're asking for is for those people to be put on a pedestal and everyone else to be told 'those people are better than you'. I don't think the game needs that, and for those who do need that they have sites like mmo-champion, world of raids, wowjutsu, bosskillers, etc. that track that stuff.

Actually you are experiencing a watered down version right now. The first version should be tuned harder than Mount Hyial or the Black Temple were at the beginning/after the first buff. Think more off something like SSC/TK before the nerfs but with every boss killable. The scond version should be tuned like Hyial/Temple after the first buff.

Are you serious? Most bosses in SSC/TK are on their second or third iterations, some are on their fourth and fifth.
MH/BT has been untouched for the most part since the bosses were already rather trivial for the top end, but the ones that WERE difficult are completely different in difficulty than their original forms. Maybe most guilds are too far removed to remember, but Archimonde, Shahraz, ROS, Hyjal Trash - Wave 11... Gurtog is the only exception, having been nerfed accidentally, and subsequently rebuffed.

In addition to that, continual heavy stamina and Ilvl gear upgrades soft nerf all content simultaneously for people below the gear peak, with the addition of "gear up" zones like Karazhan and heroics getting similar dumb down treatment.

Sorry, but this topic is still beating a dead horse, and still voicing complaints which are basically unfounded or just plain unfixable/do not need addressing.

I'm not against content being made easier for guilds that raid less, players that raid less, "Casuals" if you will, but what you are asking for is just ridiculous.

There are probably a lot of nerfs I'm not aware of. I wasn't aware that RoS and Archimonde have been altered significantly, at the least I don't think these things have been in the patchnotes. I wish someone would post these details on wowwiki or something, as it kinda sucks if the only way to know these things is to have either personally been there or possibly have paid very very close attention to all the threads around here.

But when I think of a decent model for "progressive nerfs", something like early Gruul or Mag comes to mind... bosses which took a while for most guilds to get for the first time but were nerfed into accessibility for most. otoh, even if SSC/TK bosses were significantly different than they are now, most of them apparently didn't take very long to kill for the first guilds that saw them. iirc, 5/6 SSC, 1/4 TK was cleared pretty quickly.


Don't know if this was aimed at me or what, since I didn't really ask for anything.

I wouldn't be so quick to discount the possibility of different 'levels' of difficulty for the same instance. Bear in mind that the raiders who are interested in competing in the first place are going to want to take on the challenges of raiding in their most difficult form, and adding prestige or vanity items to encounters completed on 'Normal' or 'Hard' mode would be an effective way of delineating between the 'casual' and 'hardcore'. The items the boss drops need not be changed in any significant way; a slight increase in item budget, as well as some additional flavour text, weapon effects, titles, or simply increased gold or Illidari drops would be pretty significant motivation to try and take on the harder incarnations of a boss.

For the average guild breaking in to 25 mans, being able to complete instances on 'Easy' would give them a chance to experience content that they would otherwise only see in videos. While it should still provide a challenge to that kind of guild, and require a certain degree of individual performance and raid cohesion, it should be forgiving of mistakes and educate the raid on how to learn boss abilities and adapt to dynamic encounters. Low numbers of trash, long respawn timers, reduced damage from abilities, longer enrage timers, lower hp pools. An easy level Mag would have no Mind Exhaustion Debuff, easy Leo would have a leash on his whirlwind, easy Archimonde wouldn't Air Burst. Across the board, a guild would be able to experience all of the game's raiding content at a level that is challenging for them, as a raid, to complete.

You could tie these Easy-level raids in with the lore, thanks to the timeless nature of WoW. In Easy incarnations, the forces of Shattrath have finally managed to penetrate into the heart of these evil lairs, and assist the raid in the form of buffs, debuffing and damaging bosses, and generally making up for what the raid lacks in skill, execution or gear. Serpentshrine Cavern has been assaulted by the Cenarion Expedition, and as such most of the trash is locked up fighting druids and trees: Doomwalker has breached the Black Temple and engages in an epic battle with the Illidari Council, diverting attention from the raid group. In Normal level raids, such NPC assistance would be absent, and in Hard incarnations the opposite will have occured: dead Draenei and Blood Elves litter the corridors of Hard level raids, with their weapons and energy being used against the raid group.

The beauty of Hard incarnations is that they could be tuned for the absolute bleeding edge, and then some. Got all of your shiny Sunwell epics from Normal raiding? Why not go back to Gruul, who Grows ten times faster and at each Grow, reduces incoming damage by 2%. Try out a Void Reaver who's Orbs have a 40 yard radius and hit for 15k. Make the trash hit impossibly hard, and make the bosses hit harder. Make the content virtually impossible to clear, and give all of the raiders who cry out at the lack of content something to really bang their heads against. And if they manage to defeat these super-incarnations of BC bosses, reward them accordingly; unique buffs, unique pets and tabards and mounts and whatever other crazy indications of power and glory the itemisation team can come up with.

Hardcore guilds could use Normal raids to hone their skills and Hard raids to execute them. Casual guilds could use Easy raids to whet their appetite for content, before going back to struggle through Normal T4. And since Blizzard's inclination as of late has been to let every man and his donkey have access to the ultimate in epic gear, the loot tables need not be altered in any significant way: maybe take the Warglaives off Easy Illidan, and give it to the Normal incarnation, while an Illidan killed on Hard has a chance to drop the 'Infused' Warglaives, with even more demon-killing goodness. Nerf the best items so that guilds can't farm their 'best in slot' gear from Easy raids alone: while they won't be replacing their T6 Easy epics with T4 Normal ones, there would be a stigma attached to an 'Easy' Bulwark, which has reduced armour compared to the 'Normal' version.

I guess that I see the introduction of different 'modes' in a raid as an elegant solution to the topic at hand: 'suiting' instances to different, competing groups. As long as there is always a wall for hardcore raiders, there will always be competition, and having Hard raids brings up a whole range of possible rewards for who kills the bosses first, who kills them fastest, who kills more and who wipes the least. You could incorporate that into the 'week by week' standing that we are familiar with in Arena; register a raid group of 40 people, and track your progress against that of the rest of the world.

And all the while, the casuals get to play in their kiddie-pool raids, wetting their feet in watered down boss fights and playing with their epics, oblivious to the fierce competition at the pinnacle of the raiding game.


Edit: Sorry about the wall of text

I have to wonder whether leaving in near-impossible encounters would have a severe downside, though, in the fact that most guilds would probably try to tackle them and fail, and they would become guild-killers. Is it worse to farm Illidan for 6 months and have nothing to do, or to farm Illidan for 6 months while banging your head against Epic Gruul endlessly? Very arguably the latter.

What Blizzard could do is just keep the gear curve going through normal/heroic/epic 25-mans so that guilds would be able to eventually gear up and brute force bosses, but that would of course create huge PvE gear gap issues. This issue in particular makes it infeasible that such a system be implemented pre-WotLK.

Character-defining? The bear mount is character defining? Give me a break, I know people who have alts with a bear mount.

Very well geared alts with a skilled group then.

Bear mount is my eyes the hardest PvE accomplishment in the game currently, so yeah, calling it 'character-defining' is legit.

The problem with this sort of thing is that the type of changes that Blizzard has made to content has not always been nerfing for the sake of accessibility. While its true that more and more content becomes accessible as new pvp, badge, and other sources of gear have come out, the tuning of the actual encounters has generally been minimal with minor exceptions. While it definitely applies to many of the end bosses, was Prince not buffed by making the infernals drop faster the entirety of Phase 3 as opposed to the last 10%? The only bosses that were stupidly hard were the progression ones, and here the point is to artificially impose a block on progression rather than slowly make them more accessible. One can argue that it works both ways, and that Vashj and Kael have been steadily made easier, but what about Illidan? Is he not the exact same fight as he initially was? At very least, he did to my memory not have any insanely stupid abilities like Vashj's cock-blocking Mind Control that subsequently were completely removed, nor were his DPS checks made lighter throughout patches.

In order for something like this to work, the content will need a ton of testing by top-level guilds in order to ascertain what exactly is borderline impossible and what is just really hard. That BT was blown through very quickly shows that they can release an instance that is extremely easy for the top guilds, making the above scheme relatively ineffective. Part of this might have been overtesting, as exemplified by the Chinese guild clearing all of TBC content in like 8 weeks. Once everyone in your raid knows the strats, bosses aren't particularly hard. The only way around that is to make them tuned impossiblly hard to start, then each week progressively make the bosses weaker. This soft nerfing is nothing that Blizzard has done much of, or at least admitted to doing much of, preferring to wield a very large nerf stick.

Still, that doesn't account for possibilities of the Devs deciding to remove a certain aspect of the encounter, like the Mind Control. Or finally getting the coding right on C'thun so you don't have spawns in the stomach, or optimizing code so you don't have massive lag on charge changes on Thaddius, etc. PTR testing today is likely aimed towards preventing those latter sorts of things from happening, but it would require a massive increase in stats to counter-balance something like the Mind Control and the changes in the air phase on Nightbane. Nevertheless, if the developers were able to finalize what the encounter should be like, tweaking stats downward each Tuesday (or whatever) instead of each content patch would provide real competition. They could test bosses on the PTR while maintaining impossibility once they go live, with guilds that had perfected the strategy on the PTR the best being able to defeat them the soonest, if not immediately. The guilds that defeat the boss in the first week it goes down the first time would get a title, server first guilds likewise, and continual slow nerfs would make the boss possible for later, lesser-skilled, guilds.

One might even imagine lore explaining why the bosses keep coming back, but their reincarnation sickness, the constant dealing with Horde and Alliance incursions, etc, have left them at lesser effectiveness than when they were first attempted.

It defines your character from the point of view of other people, which is really all mounts, titles, and so on do. The only competition in PVE is what order you get kills in or what gear you get from it, which is made as much by players as it is blizzard.

Im not sure I see a problem with a 'hard mode'. It may not have to be such a separation as normal and heroic, but relaxed trash respawns, enrages, ect. could help guilds not fall so far behind the front runner that they dont feel they wont ever see stuff. There are different types of players that are labeled as casual, skill but no time, time but no skill, both or neither but play with the others.