My point was that the number of guilds who have killed KJ is due more to turnover, burnout and boredom stretching back to the BT farming months than any inherent elite qualities of the guilds. Those who managed to maintain raiding through roster changes and burnout and etc are the ones who had a decent shot at killing KJ. Those who didn't, due to untimely quits or low server populations or what have you are the ones who were put at a larger disadvantage and then eventually broke up. I do not think the encounters themselves are tuned to such an extreme level that only the most hardcore and elite raiding guilds have a shot at it. Those guilds did get it down and quickly, both because they ARE that good and that guilds of that level have no issue with recruitment and can deal with turnover and have less attrition.
For the most part "inherent quality" and "managed to maintain raiding / have less attrition etc." go hand in hand though. Most raiders can be taught any encounter in this game - all of them basically come down to a pretty simple series of tasks or reactions - but better players learn faster and better guilds have more better players. Almost always, a guild that stalls for too long begins to slide backwards because those who learn faster get tired of waiting on those who learn slower and so they leave or stop signing up.
In a similar vein, all these issues, class stacking, respeccing, etc. can all be solved relatively simply, but for many guilds it just becomes too much work or effort, they stall, and then it becomes one step forward two steps backwards.
Basically, Sunwell was just too hard for most guilds.
From my pov, the effect of guild disbanding, loosing active raiders or what not isn't special to Sunwell, rather top tier raiding progression. There are some repetative factors tho that push it forth. Holidays, non-dropping loot, to name a few. This will remain the same in WotLK, like it has been in TBC and earlier WOW. Just the time gaps between the affect catching a guild are getting smaller and smaller ...
While every instance has killed guilds, Sunwell does look harsher than most. Glancing at Wowjutsu about a third of guilds that start the tier 5 or tier 6 instances reach the end; Sunwell is substantially lower at about 1/14th. Even the first is a scary number, I had no idea attrition was so high even in the earlier tiers (even though my own guild looks like becoming a BT casuality).
TLDR : Gearing rerolls helps with raid-stacking instances or huge loss of players. This is something we will try to implement in our guild for WOTLK : A concept we call "Double Main Character".
Gearing rerolls ( or "double main characters" ) will be a lot easier in wotlk. Remeber there will be a large spectrum of gear available through badge / heroic / 10 man dungeons.
Can you talk a bit more about this? (If there's anything more to say, that is.) We've made use of a few alts this way to fill vacancies, but it's always been on a kind of ad-hoc basis, and I'm looking into trying something more organized in WotLK.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
To be fair, pre-TBC raiders were asking for bigger roles for offspecs and hybrids. Druids wanted to try out Feral DPS, maybe some tanking, maybe the occasional Starfire instead of mindlessly spamming HT r4 to everything in range. Same deal for Shamans, same for Paladins, same for Priests.
T2.5 gear, at least for druids, seemed to aim to just that - create a hybrid role for druids by means of a gear set that had both DPS and Healing boni on it. It didn't last long, as we soon came to realise that hybrids, as such, can't survive in raids. You need specialists. That resto druid with feral gear on wasn't really that helpful for either task.
So, Blizzard introduced a much better way of using Hybrids. You were supposed to have a gear set for both roles - and you were supposed to be proficient at both (all three?) aspects of your class. The hybrid role that people asked for was finally intoduced, and in my opinion, it was a big success.
We killed Twins because our enhancement shamans and retri paladin respecced to healing roles. We're currently clearing Sunwell with a Holy Paladin speccing Prot for the fight, reverting to Holy for Twins, then back to Prot for Muru and KJ.
That, right there, is a true Hybrid. It's what people asked for. Sure, it costs money, but you get bosses killed and enjoy all aspects of your class.
I believe making hybrids viable wasn't the problem. The problem lied onto the huge amount of time guilds were given to either farm or clear BT and Hyjal before the next tier of raid content was introduced. Clearing both instances in 2 nights per week led to a VERY large number of guilds (and players) overestimating themselves. The long period of farming lulled them into a false sense of security - bad players didn't get weeded out, tactics weren't practiced, there was no progress as a team. It was a natural occurrence that when Sunwell was introduced, entire guilds of bad players were cockblocked because of the sheer difficulty they encountered.
Sure, raid stacking on certain encounters played a part too, but it wasn't the only problem. You didn't really need 4 shamans for Brutallus if the rest of your players knew how to DPS/Heal/Tank properly (you did need a certain amount of BT clears beforehand, yes, but that's the point of introducing a new tier of raids, harder content that requires a certain amount of gear from the tiers before it).
My point about overestimating your strength as a guild also applies to raid times. Because of the sheer number of guilds that killed Illidan before the Sunwell and the reduced amount of time invested in raiding during the farming period, guilds thought they could battle for world firsts vs the likes of Nihilum and SK. But it soon became apparent that those guilds were prepared to put in an obscene amount of raiding hours per day in order to down every boss first. Even on a Server first level, you just had those guilds that were raiding 7 days a week vs those that were raiding 4, causing even more burn-out since people were just trying to smash through really hard content by raiding a lot more than they were really prepared to. You can only kill bosses at your own pace, really - and it's just that guilds overestimated the 'pace' players were prepared to move at.
Can you talk a bit more about this? (If there's anything more to say, that is.) We've made use of a few alts this way to fill vacancies, but it's always been on a kind of ad-hoc basis, and I'm looking into trying something more organized in WotLK.
We're trying to figure the best way to do this :
The few things we're doing right now for this "Double Main Character" concept is recensing all our players who are willing to commit themselves in this. They must be aware that this requires much more play time / gold / minmaxing professions, especially during the first 6 month after the release of WOTLK. These players must also handle both class perfectly (what's the point of having your best rogue playing a healing priest badly ? ).
We're not planning anything special like "We need to pair exactly Main DPS a + healer reroll b vs main tank y + dps reroll w". It's just something to soften burnout and to give us more room in terms of group make-up.
We're right now focused on KJ. It's still a project we have in mind. Maybe after 3.0, we'll have a clearer view on this and a much organized structure for this new concept.
P.S : you also really need to have your guildmate understand that it's not a trip to Dysneyland. The goal is to have 2 main characters per players, min/maxed with skill involved. This is not a "Let's gear my reroll 'cause i want to pew pew with my hunter in Arathi Bassin during week ends and i want to look shiny in Dalaran".
They're not lame excuses, it's how the game is. Realize that most of the player base doesn't get off on raiding 100% for four hours strait. As such they don't design 100% of the game as SWP, since those 'lazy' people would leave and you'd be left with what EQ1 was when WoW shipped, a ghost town full of diehards that only have themselves to brag to.
They are lame excuses. The premise is that somehow Sunwell by being challenging destroyed guilds. And it's a nonsensical premise. The reality is that guilds were "destroyed" by having beaten Illidan and having nothing to do for extended periods of time; they were "destroyed" by failing to beat tier 5 end bosses when they were more difficult; they were "destroyed" by having an expansion looming at them. The notion that somehow the fact that Sunwell had a gear check at the beginning -- Brutallus -- and one at the end -- M'uru (fixed, btw, to the point that everyone who was beating their heads against it got through it that very week) was some sort of evil guild wrecker is silly. Many guilds wiped on Kael every bit as long as they wiped on M'uru -- in fact, longer in many cases (insert your own anecdote about how wrong you think this is, but it's not wrong, just because you don't remember that in fact it was indeed the case).
The whole point of Sunwell was that it was going to be challenging. And, yes, it was an entire level more difficult than anything in BT or Hyjal, which didn't have a single difficult encounter between them. All the crying about Archimonde -- a trivial encounter that requires neither any meaningful dps or healing throughput -- is because people actually spent time wiping on it, unlike virtually everything else in BT and Hyjal.
Did Sunwell destroy some guilds? Well, I'm sure it did. Did the expansion destroy more? Absolutely. Are the excuses among the people that quit and gave up equally lame? That's subjective, but I'd say yes. Hell, we had so many alts in Tier 6 equivalent gear that had we not failed to laziness, we could've stacked shaman, switched from 6 healers to 11, whatever -- and all those people would've been in Tier 6-equivalent gear. Surely any semi-committed guild could've achieved the same.
For all the complaints about Sunwell, once people had the Twins down, they were clearing the first 4 bosses in less than 1 night. I mean, how easy did you want it to be, exactly? Muru was slightly overtuned. OK, we get it.
Your guild -- destroyer of your guild. Look in the mirror.
They are lame excuses. The premise is that somehow Sunwell by being challenging destroyed guilds. And it's a nonsensical premise. The reality is that guilds were "destroyed" by having beaten Illidan and having nothing to do for extended periods of time; they were "destroyed" by failing to beat tier 5 end bosses when they were more difficult; they were "destroyed" by having an expansion looming at them......
Did Sunwell destroy some guilds? Well, I'm sure it did. Did the expansion destroy more? Absolutely. Are the excuses among the people that quit and gave up equally lame? That's subjective, but I'd say yes. Hell, we had so many alts in Tier 6 equivalent gear that had we not failed to laziness, we could've stacked shaman, switched from 6 healers to 11, whatever -- and all those people would've been in Tier 6-equivalent gear. Surely any semi-committed guild could've achieved the same.
For all the complaints about Sunwell, once people had the Twins down, they were clearing the first 4 bosses in less than 1 night. I mean, how easy did you want it to be, exactly? Muru was slightly overtuned. OK, we get it.
Your guild -- destroyer of your guild. Look in the mirror.
I think that people on forums such as these often forget that they represent a SMALL percentage of the overall population. I don't disagree with your points, because ultimately every guild is limited by the dedication of it's members. Strats can be learned.... new people can be taught... but in the end all 25 people must WANT to do it. If just one piece of the chain breaks, then often the whole team fails.
SWP just demonstrated that there is a CLEAR difference between the top teir guilds and the rest of the public. Lets also keep in mind why it was released... at the time of release you had hundreds of guilds effectually stonewalled at Vashj and Kael. SWP was released to give those people done or almost done T6 content something to hold them over while they removed the attunements so the 2nd teir guilds could see T6. If those guilds were stuck at Vashj/Kael, then logic would only indicate they would stumble again when they meet equal or greater challenges. The fact that T6 content didn't yeild many of those fights might have been a design issue, but that's just the way it was. Saying any "semi-commited guild" could have achieved the same is really stretching the truth. Perhaps you haven't PUG'd anything in the last couple years, but I can assure you that a vast number of people still don't grasp "get out of the fire" mechanics.
They are lame excuses. The premise is that somehow Sunwell by being challenging destroyed guilds. And it's a nonsensical premise. The reality is that guilds were "destroyed" by having beaten Illidan and having nothing to do for extended periods of time; they were "destroyed" by failing to beat tier 5 end bosses when they were more difficult; they were "destroyed" by having an expansion looming at them. The notion that somehow the fact that Sunwell had a gear check at the beginning -- Brutallus -- and one at the end -- M'uru (fixed, btw, to the point that everyone who was beating their heads against it got through it that very week) was some sort of evil guild wrecker is silly. Many guilds wiped on Kael every bit as long as they wiped on M'uru -- in fact, longer in many cases (insert your own anecdote about how wrong you think this is, but it's not wrong, just because you don't remember that in fact it was indeed the case).
The whole point of Sunwell was that it was going to be challenging. And, yes, it was an entire level more difficult than anything in BT or Hyjal, which didn't have a single difficult encounter between them. All the crying about Archimonde -- a trivial encounter that requires neither any meaningful dps or healing throughput -- is because people actually spent time wiping on it, unlike virtually everything else in BT and Hyjal.
Did Sunwell destroy some guilds? Well, I'm sure it did. Did the expansion destroy more? Absolutely. Are the excuses among the people that quit and gave up equally lame? That's subjective, but I'd say yes. Hell, we had so many alts in Tier 6 equivalent gear that had we not failed to laziness, we could've stacked shaman, switched from 6 healers to 11, whatever -- and all those people would've been in Tier 6-equivalent gear. Surely any semi-committed guild could've achieved the same.
For all the complaints about Sunwell, once people had the Twins down, they were clearing the first 4 bosses in less than 1 night. I mean, how easy did you want it to be, exactly? Muru was slightly overtuned. OK, we get it.
Your guild -- destroyer of your guild. Look in the mirror.
This is really not constructive. Throwing around "lame" as a descriptor is unnecessarily direspectful and simply begging for a casual v. hardcore war. We're all very happy that your guild waltzed through Sunwell (okay, given your tone, no we're not).
Saying that clearing 4 bosses in one night when it's on farm means it's easy is a false argument. It doesn't matter how hard the encounters are, when they're executed cleanly they're not going to take very long.
Challenging content combined with the knowledge of a looming expansion. These threads commonly crop up under similar circumstances. These factors cause attrition to rise even for the best guilds. The best guilds generally have an easier time retaining and replacing people, so they tend to survive unless their leadership gets sick of all the work involved.
I like challenging content but I think an encounter like M'uru is probably bad for the game. Even in its nerfed state. The Twins are also not good for the game, although much easier than M'uru. The other encounters in the zone are A-Okay, though.
My guild is one of those on Tichondrius that bit the bullet after raiding SWP for awhile. IMO, it's the pre-expansion blues that killed us more than anything else. While the majority of our guild did continue to show up for a week or two of called raids, it eventually became clear that we would be unable to consistently field 25 people (much less 25 with a good comp) to raid SWP. The fact that WDK was an oceanic guild on a US East (I think) server did not help at all when it came to recruitment. At the end of the day, our small (30 people max on a raid day) roster came and bit us in our bums... and our guild finally stuttered to a stop after many near death experiences. I guess it's sad in some ways considering we were one of the day 1 Tichondrius guilds.
With regard to the cockblock bosses of SWP, truth is (assuming we hadn't fallen apart), we would probably have eventually ground our way through them as we did with the majority of other bosses of the sort. Our strategy of "keep flinging shit, eventually some will stick" has worked up till now. Pre-nerf Magtheridon, Morogrim, and especially Kael didn't stop us... and after seeing all bosses in SWP (with another guild before they too died), I doubt that anything short of Mu'ru/KJ are bigger cockblocks than the original Kael.
Challenging content combined with the knowledge of a looming expansion. These threads commonly crop up under similar circumstances. These factors cause attrition to rise even for the best guilds. The best guilds generally have an easier time retaining and replacing people, so they tend to survive unless their leadership gets sick of all the work involved.
I like challenging content but I think an encounter like M'uru is probably bad for the game. Even in its nerfed state. The Twins are also not good for the game, although much easier than M'uru. The other encounters in the zone are A-Okay, though.
I love Twins, and I love M'uru (even though we've not beaten it yet).
The one thing I hate about Twins is being RNG'd. Some of our kills have been so easy, as the conflag goes on the rogues and melee, and others are horrible, like the confounding/conflag making it all sorts of horrible. Not impossible, but the difference level is night and day.
More than anything I believe it's these parts of encounters in such a tightly tuned Sunwell that lead to the lack of fun, than the level of difficulty of the encounters.
Pewsey has heard about tact and discretion, but tends to regard them much as children view vegetables.
There are only two kinds of MMOs: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody plays. (inspired by Bjarne Stroustrup)
This is really not constructive. Throwing around "lame" as a descriptor is unnecessarily direspectful and simply begging for a casual v. hardcore war. We're all very happy that your guild waltzed through Sunwell (okay, given your tone, no we're not).
Saying that clearing 4 bosses in one night when it's on farm means it's easy is a false argument. It doesn't matter how hard the encounters are, when they're executed cleanly they're not going to take very long.
You're missing my point -- and or not reading. My guild didn't waltz through Sunwell. It bailed on Sunwell. It sucked on Kalecgos despite killing him a bunch of times. It had plenty of dps to kill Brutallus and simply couldn't put together to raid comp to even seriously try more than once. About 15-18 of us were willing/ready, the rest just didn't bother. Chalk it up to real life, indifference, what have you. But the guilds on Stormrage (US) that did finish Sunwell -- and the one that's still trying -- all had absolutely no trouble putting the first 4 bosses on farm once they got them down.
Were the encounters more challenging than Tier 6? Yes, of course, they were. But the notion that having challenging content is a guild destroyer, well, that's not constructive. And, I'm sorry if you don't like the word lame; I honestly don't know of a good euphemism that well conveys the point. Uglesh says it more eloquently than I did:
"I don't disagree with your points, because ultimately every guild is limited by the dedication of it's members. Strats can be learned.... new people can be taught... but in the end all 25 people must WANT to do it. If just one piece of the chain breaks, then often the whole team fails."
If your guild didn't want to dedicate time and effort on Sunwell, you probably failed. Like we did. Look, Kalecgos is not Shade of Akama, Brutallus is not Teron Gorefiend. The fact is that Blizzard had probably 4 broken encounters in TBC...
(1) Original Gruul on live. Without consumable mania and very well coordinated guilds, it was nigh impossible. Once nerfed and after the alchemy patch, all was fine.
(2) Original Mag. A perfectly reasonable coordination test, but for where it stood in the content chain, obviously too difficult. Hell, the trash alone was brutal for casual guilds.
(3) Original Kael. Beatable, yes. But not by too many guilds. A small nerf and suddenly many that weren't beating it did.
(4) Original M'uru. Beatable, yes. But not by too many guilds. A small nerf and suddenly many that weren't beating it did.
Now you can add to this list, and might, but really, if anything most of the game has been undertuned. The fact that nothing in Tier 6 approached Vashj/Kael difficulty says much and explains a lot of the bitching and moaning about Sunwell. People forgot how to work for something in WoW. They flat out did.
Uglesh also wrote: "Perhaps you haven't PUG'd anything in the last couple years, but I can assure you that a vast number of people still don't grasp "get out of the fire" mechanics." Oh, but I have... I run with my guild, in semi-PUGs with better guilds and in terribad PUGs with terribad players. I play the full spectrum. The fact that people that can't get out of the Sunwell couldn't kill Kalecgos at 80 is surely not the discussion of this thread. The original point was that, wow, Sunwell was just too hard and required too much raid stacking and therefore was some kind of inherent evil that decimated guilds.
Fundamentally, I'm arguing that what damaged those guilds wasn't really Sunwell at all in most cases. And it wasn't. People want to lay the blame on some external factor and it's an easy target. It's much harder to look within.
I love Twins, and I love M'uru (even though we've not beaten it yet).
More than anything I believe it's these parts of encounters in such a tightly tuned Sunwell that lead to the lack of fun, than the level of difficulty of the encounters.
I enjoy them too, but the Twins are a terribly designed encounter. You can do the rest of the zone with a raid composition that is pretty consistent between encounters. Only the Twins require "stacking" the raid in an unusual way. M'uru was tuned too tightly and has been bad for the game. Pre-nerf M'uru was significantly more difficult than any other encounter, including all of the "greats." Current M'uru is probably still more difficult than pre-nerf Kael'thas.
Current M'uru is probably still more difficult than pre-nerf Kael'thas
Do you mean the 10% nerf to the hitpoints ont he advisors and weapons, or the original change to the fight where Thaddius could spawn with Shadowstep, etc?
Anyway, I would definitely agree that the current M'uru remains the hardest fight in the game by far. Kael'thas before the 10% nerf was difficult - but killed by a much larger number of guilds than have killed M'uru. I would also garee that the problem with SWP is the Twins and M'uru. The Twins require far too much class stacking, and overall are a very "unfun" fight - the concept is decent, but the implementation has sucked. M'uru is simply too hard overall for the health of the game. Maybe as an optional boss he could work well for the guilds that want that challenge, but the number of guilds that have hit a wall on him is too high to be healthy.
The fact is that Blizzard had probably 4 broken encounters in TBC...
(1) Original Gruul on live. Without consumable mania and very well coordinated guilds, it was nigh impossible. Once nerfed and after the alchemy patch, all was fine.
(2) Original Mag. A perfectly reasonable coordination test, but for where it stood in the content chain, obviously too difficult. Hell, the trash alone was brutal for casual guilds.
(3) Original Kael. Beatable, yes. But not by too many guilds. A small nerf and suddenly many that weren't beating it did.
(4) Original M'uru. Beatable, yes. But not by too many guilds. A small nerf and suddenly many that weren't beating it did.
Fair summary. I'd also add Brutallus after the first month the instance was open. That's an artifact of the long wait before Sunwell, which let the top guilds farm perfect gearsets. Those guilds of course pass Brutallus in the first wave. However, any guild that was just coming up to Illidan at that point then runs into a comprehensive block, and is forced to keep farming for months even when the new content is visibly there and being defeated. If you think it's morale-destroying to farm Hyjal and BT until Sunwell opened, let me assure you it's twice as depressing to farm them over and over when Kil'Jaeden's already been killed by some other group.
The same comment applies to the requirements for changes in raid compositions in terms of healer/tank/DPS numbers. Yes, you play classes, not specs - but you cannot do that in a guild that hasn't had the farm time to get good offspec sets for people.
The final comment is the raid buff / synergy system, which means you have to roll into Sunwell with optimised groups. This is hell for any group with lower attendance requirements. Take a top end group with ~90% attendance across the board. If you are missing your enhancement shaman, you have to call the raid. So that's a 1:10 chance of raid failure. Now, in a more casual group, you don't have a 90% enhancement shaman - what you have is two shamans with 60% attendance each. Even though on average you have more coverage for the slot, you still have a 16% chance of having to call the raid due to no enhancement shaman. Rinse and repeat for all the "essential" buff slots, and you're in real trouble. Of course, you don't call the raids - you just end up going in there with half-arsed group compositions and no real chance of getting anywhere. Which hurts.
Funny, I hear a lot of sad stories, and yet ours is almost entirely positive.
From Illidan to Kil'jaeden, we moved up about 200 ranks in the world. Each boss saw a fairly sizable jump -- 50 places or so.
What shocked us most was that even over 'The Summer of M'uru', where we spent 10 weeks killing him, we still moved up the world rankings.
So, obviously while we were having a good time, other guilds were failing all over the place.
As someone else said, I think being top of the progression curve for the server played a huge part in our success. We controlled the market, and we had a lot of money left from our BT progression. Consumables and repair money provided for every raid obviously helped with the hard grind on bosses like M'uru and Kil'jaeden. Someone mentioned the Destro Pot/Haste Pot/Demonslaying Elixir thing... sweet jesus. I know they were still fairly cheap on our server, but on some of the end-game servers the ghost mushrooms were hundreds of gold per stack? Felt a BIT like the Nature Res insanity for Huhuran... Low-level shit for end-game, not cool.
Anyway, our only real trouble was shaman. That's a mix of poor shaman leadership in my guild, and just the sheer number of them required to 'brute force' the instance. We now clear the instance with 2 or 3 shaman, so the pressure is off. But those early Twins wipes, or bloodlusts on Brutallus, DPS on M'uru... They really forced inhumane numbers of shaman in each raid. When you consider it's the least-played class in the game, it's no wonder some guilds felt the pinch.
Luckily we went the respec-3-people-every-fight route, rather than having people sit out. I am sure that helped with overall morale a lot. We kept a fairly small raid group -- about 35 active raiders I think. So about 28 online at any time, the perfect number! Towards the end of our progress we would normally just see the protadin sitting in and out, and some shaman/paladin/warrior respecs.
I'm rambling now. But basically -- yes, top of the progression curve through SWP = very easy time. Very easy to pick up recruits.
The few guilds that were 1 or 2 bosses behind us are still having a hard time, cockblocking on M'uru and losing people due to the WOTLK announcement.
I hope 3.0 will result in some guilds finally clearing SWP, but I think it's also too late for many guilds... I think we are one of the few guilds that are still raiding at the moment. The number of guilds that my friends are in, who are at, or have just killed M'uru, and are no longer raiding... well, it's a large number!
Do you mean the 10% nerf to the hitpoints ont he advisors and weapons, or the original change to the fight where Thaddius could spawn with Shadowstep, etc?
Anyway, I would definitely agree that the current M'uru remains the hardest fight in the game by far. Kael'thas before the 10% nerf was difficult - but killed by a much larger number of guilds than have killed M'uru. I would also garee that the problem with SWP is the Twins and M'uru. The Twins require far too much class stacking, and overall are a very "unfun" fight - the concept is decent, but the implementation has sucked. M'uru is simply too hard overall for the health of the game. Maybe as an optional boss he could work well for the guilds that want that challenge, but the number of guilds that have hit a wall on him is too high to be healthy.
The version of Kael'thas after the version with Shadowstepping Thaladred but before the version with the 10% nerf to advisor/weapon health.
Anyway, I don't know about other guilds, but I remember using a silly amount of Rebirths, Reincarnates, and Soul Stones when we killed the other truly "difficult" encounters. Four Horsemen, Sapphiron, Kel'thuzad, C'thun, etc. A lot of mistakes were made on our winning attempts for these bosses. M'uru does not provide anywhere near the same level of leeway, even nerfed. I think designing content to be that difficult and unforgiving is simply bad for the game. Part of the fun of an encounter like Four Horsemen was figuring out how to fix rotations that were breaking down mid-attempt as people died. Being able to make a "comeback" is fun.
Well I think you are just seeing the 'flip side' of 25-man raids.
They have to be tuned even tighter, now that we have less 'hangers on' in each raid, but as a result we have less soulstones, less rebirths, and much less leeway on some of the encounters.
Some people find it fun I guess, and some people just find it terribly punishing.
I agree, I much prefer bosses where you can 'recover'. That feeling on M'uru where it all falls apart after 5 minutes of focusing 100% on phase 1... or the skull that explodes at 10% in p2 because someone lagged...
Well, apparently we, as a community, asked for a hard instance. We asked for the DPS check on Brutallus.
Just think of it as a modern-day Kel'thuzad I guess, another boss that maybe only 100 guilds killed back in the day. Although that progression felt slightly more smooth, ramping up from Gothik. The gradient between Twins and M'uru is ... shocking!
I'm sure there was another thread called 'C'thun the destroyer of guilds' back in the day...
Well I think you are just seeing the 'flip side' of 25-man raids.
They have to be tuned even tighter, now that we have less 'hangers on' in each raid, but as a result we have less soulstones, less rebirths, and much less leeway on some of the encounters.
Some people find it fun I guess, and some people just find it terribly punishing.
I agree, I much prefer bosses where you can 'recover'. That feeling on M'uru where it all falls apart after 5 minutes of focusing 100% on phase 1... or the skull that explodes at 10% in p2 because someone lagged...
Well, apparently we, as a community, asked for a hard instance. We asked for the DPS check on Brutallus.
Just think of it as a modern-day Kel'thuzad I guess, another boss that maybe only 100 guilds killed back in the day. Although that progression felt slightly more smooth, ramping up from Gothik. The gradient between Twins and M'uru is ... shocking!
I'm sure there was another thread called 'C'thun the destroyer of guilds' back in the day...
Saying Kel'thuzad is the "block" in Naxx is like suggesting Kil'jaeden hasn't been killed by a lot of guilds thanks solely to his own difficulty. The reason so few guilds killed Kel'thuzad is because so few guilds even got to Frostwyrm lair, there is a similar effect in Sunwell. Picture if they put 6 M'urus in a row; how many people do you think would kill the 6th one? How hyped would the difficulty of the 6th one be compared to the others?
Well I think you are just seeing the 'flip side' of 25-man raids.
They have to be tuned even tighter, now that we have less 'hangers on' in each raid, but as a result we have less soulstones, less rebirths, and much less leeway on some of the encounters.
My point was to illustrate that M'uru actually is much more difficult than the other "difficult" encounters. People don't wipe to M'uru because they ran out of Rebirths. Someone simply makes one mistake and the whole raid wipes. Although it's occasionally possible to recover from one death with a Rebirth, it's still tuned far more tightly than any other encounter ever has been. I mean, we had winning attempts on some of these other "super hard" encounters in which 10+ people died to various things throughout the fight, and these encounters were hard. What does that make M'uru?
I'm not saying content in general is too difficult in Sunwell -- the dps check on Brutallus is not the equivalent to the challenge of M'uru -- I'm saying M'uru, specifically, is too hard and generally bad for the game. The other encounters in Sunwell are fine, difficulty-wise.
Sorry, I guess I wasn't very clear, and I think I even confused myself.
I was drawing parallels between Kil'jaeden and Kel'thuzad, and then their underbosses -- M'uru and Gothik/4HM.
Naxx was a totally different monster to anything else we've ever seen in WoW. Gothik and 4HM were definitely similar to the leap up in difficulty from Twins -> M'uru.
Kael'thas and C'thun were totally the opposite -- easy instances, with monumentally hard end bosses.
I think SWP was just so short that the curve was so much more exaggerated. People cleared 9 in Naxxramas and they were quite happy with that. Thaddius/Loatheb were pretty juicy and satisfactory.
Gothik was considered a 'bonus' boss that only the top guilds could even dream of doing -- and with 4HM you were right at the end of the bell-curve of guilds able to kill him.
Thank God we don't have 6 M'urus in a row, but considering they tend to prefer short instances now of 4-6 bosses, I wouldn't be surprised to see more M'uru-like cockblocks. I doubt we will see another cockblock end-boss like C'thun... here's hoping.
(Edit follows)
Originally Posted by Sebudai
My point was to illustrate that M'uru actually is much more difficult than the other "difficult" encounters. People don't wipe to M'uru because they ran out of Rebirths. Someone simply makes one mistake and the whole raid wipes. Although it's occasionally possible to recover from one death with a Rebirth, it's still tuned far more tightly than any other encounter ever has been.
I'm not saying content in general is too difficult in Sunwell -- the dps check on Brutallus is not the equivalent to the challenge of M'uru -- I'm saying M'uru, specifically, is too hard and generally bad for the game. The other encounters in Sunwell are fine, difficulty-wise.
Well, how else would you have had it? If M'uru wasn't hard, the instance would've been very, very easy to clear. I think many top guilds will agree that M'uru was the only challenge in the instance. I agree, it was very hard, and totally unforgiving... but if you take away the unforgiving aspect of it, you basically have... quite an easy boss.
I guess I am just used to 'hard' bosses actually taking more than 1 or 2 raid sessions. I don't see how they can make bosses hard/rewarding without making them horribly punishing. End-game MMOs are about repeating a process until everyone understands their role. M'uru was so hard because everyone had a role, and any single mistake caused a wipe. Many of the other end-bosses were hard for similar reasons, but they didn't require all 25 people to play 100%.
The sentiment that you can't have 'any hangers on' in 25-man raids is most apparent on M'uru, basically. At Magtheridon we learnt that 5 people had to l2p. At Vashj we learnt that about 10 people had to play well, and communicate very well. At Kael'thas we had our first 'Omg, everyone has to be awake and kite/move out of flamestrike' moment (and many people compare M'uru to Kael'thas, last summer.), but at least you could res someone and carry on!
Well I guess I've just argued that hard bosses should be more like Kael'thas, than M'uru...
But I think there's enough people out there that dislike 15-20 minute boss fights, but that's probably another argument
(Wasn't there a 'Kael'thas, the guild destroyer' thread last summer?)
I guess I am just used to 'hard' bosses actually taking more than 1 or 2 raid sessions. I don't see how they can make bosses hard/rewarding without making them horribly punishing. End-game MMOs are about repeating a process until everyone understands their role. M'uru was so hard because everyone had a role, and any single mistake caused a wipe. Many of the other end-bosses were hard for similar reasons, but they didn't require all 25 people to play 100%.
I realize this is somewhat of a side topic, however...
Hard bosses are possible. Muru would of been just fine if one thing existed; Gear progression. Did we get upgrades in Sunwell? Yes - but they were marginal. The entire expansion was *marginal*. Yea, after going from T4 to T6.5 you seen a substantial increase, but let's get a little crazy for a sec here. From T4 entry to full Sunwell gear, I gained about 7k hp as a tank (Basically quest blues to full sunwell epics). Some other stats increase as well, but 7k hp literally less than one hit in sunwell from most of the bosses.
DPS numbers worked similar it seems. Each zone providing 200-300 dps worth of upgrades, but not leaps and bounds.
They can still tune encounters to be difficult, but target it at the right level of gear progression. For me, it seems like this is one of the large areas of fail for TBC.
WTOLK does look a little more promising. Obviously we haven't seen anything beyond the first tier of content, but already the jump in gear from quest blues to Naxx 25 epics is amazing. I gained more HP gearing up in Naxx than I did the entire TBC expansion. It will be interesting to see if they continue the gear curve.
Well, how else would you have had it? If M'uru wasn't hard, the instance would've been very, very easy to clear. I think many top guilds will agree that M'uru was the only challenge in the instance. I agree, it was very hard, and totally unforgiving... but if you take away the unforgiving aspect of it, you basically have... quite an easy boss.
Yeah, I don't care if they had to completely re-design the entire encounter. M'uru's existence is unhealthy for the game.
Well I guess I've just argued that hard bosses should be more like Kael'thas, than M'uru...
Exactly. Kil'jaeden is the right kind of hard. C'thun was the right kind of hard. M'uru is the wrong kind of hard.
I'm under the impression that there's going to be 13 ilvl jumps between tiers. That's 13% increase per tier, the exact same as T4->T5->T6. (120->133->146)
10/10/08, 5:12 PM
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