• Snowy

Ya'll need to stop worrying what Nihilum (in this case SK/Nihilum) thinks. Judging your game off the top 0.01% is never a wise idea. Just because they're the top guild in the world doesn't make their viewpoints automatically right. Yeah, they grinded like crazy to 80, and beat raid content that they beat at 60 (Naxx) and content that was tested heavily and pugged often on the beta. (Sarth/Malygos) I don't see how that's impressive at all outside of the time expenditure they put in.

Personally I think they nailed the entry level stuff pretty good. No, it certainly isn't going to be a challenge for any guild that cleared pre-nerf Sunwell. I'd certainly hope not, because that would be a major problem for 90-95% of the guilds that never got far into Sunwell, or even got there. Understand that Nihilum would have made the same easy statement even if it was the original Gruul/Mag tuning. They're always going to claim content is easy. In this case it is, but for the reasons stated about, it's a good thing. We also don't want all the content released at once like in TBC, because then it would lead to a long stretch of boredom. If you had Ulduar out right now, I'm sure SK/Nihilum would have the zone cleared in the matter of a week or two, barring any pacing mechanisms, due to putting in insane amount of hours. Then you're back to the TBC mistake of having an eternity between content levels (BT-->Sunwell.)

No, I'm not really seeing a problem here. Please keep in mind this game has a much much bigger base than people who visit these forums. Millions of people are going to want to run Naxx, and it makes very good business sense for Blizzard to keep them engaged.

 

Akka

I'm not very concerned by the fact that 25thnovember has cleared the actual content. Blizzard specifically said it was supposed to be easy, and these guys are the best of the best in the world. They could 15-man Gruul at a time where most casual guilds weren't able to down him with 25 people.

What I'm more concerned about is that the relative easiness of Naxx could make all the 5-men instances obsolete right off the bat. An easy-level entry raid is good, but not if it makes all the previous content irrelevant. Would be a shame to see all this art go to waste without having even a noticeable length of life.

For now, it seems that Blizzard is simply going back to vanilla in more than one way - more lore, more Azeroth, and two easy raids from the start, one "long" and one "short".

If violence doesn't solve your problem...
... you simply haven't been violent enough !

 

◊ Praetorian

For what it's worth, there have been changes made to Naxx tuning (25, at least) since the last-seen beta versions, without a doubt. Patchwerk, for example, used to be a cakewalk for healers on 25, with priests smiting the whole time. Anyone who's done him in Sunwell gear or equivalent in the last couple of days on live can attest that he's still a highly nerve-wracking experience for the healers and tanks.

 

Tupu

I see the real challenge in PvE-content in form of Achievements now. Maybe we see race for "World 1st Heroic: Glory of the Raider" instead of "World 1st Kel'Thuzad". Same content for everyone, for less hardcore people or the most hard core: you just choose how you want to do it. If you want to be "the number uno" and show it to the rest of the world, do the Archievements then. As I see it: it is totally different difficulty level when you try to accomplish "Heroic: Glory of the Raider" instead just killing the bosses.

 

Vuldoo

I played beta. I am a very casual player.

It took me far longer to level to 80 than to beat Naxxramax with people from my guild who have not been further than Zul'Aman. I am not surprised.

I personally find these dungeons "easy" in exactly the right way. They teach new raiders how to deal with a Maulgar encounter. In Burning Crusade, it was extremely stressful to run Maulgar with people who needed to learn the basics of positioning and transitions. It was too, for lack of a better word, difficult for many new groups at the beginning of an expansion. Nevertheless, was it difficult for the top guilds? Not at all! Only Gruul was difficult, and he went from extremely annoying to joke status very quickly.

 

Achillius

The point I was trying to make was simply that this is another example of how much (it seems) Blizzard did their homework when it comes to this xpac. Everyone I've spoken to has said how much better this expansion is compared to BC.

What I will be interested to see is if the progression-tracking sites will start measuring raiding guilds in terms of achievements, not just that the boss was downed. Some of those achievements are very challenging and, as most people in this thread have said, those seem to be the stick against which raids will be measured.

 

Prinsesa

If you can clear Naxx/Sarth/Malygos in ~3 days or something similarly quick, then that leaves the rest of your week for Heroics, which should still offer some legitimate upgrades even disregarding the Badge-bought loot.

Seriously, if you genuinely like playing the game, then you'll play it regardless of how much this so-called gear obsolescence exists. I've had people decked out in T6 bug me for Karazhan runs right up to the Wednesday before WOTLK's release.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

akse

I think I'd pick number 2. This would delay the straight rush to the raid instances, which could be good or bad. You might be able to put down a few of the easier bosses at first, then crafting/heroics/badges/raid loots would improve your gear so much to get down the rest of the instance.

 

zork

This topic is very subjective and everybody has his on opinion on this I guess. The topic could also be called: "Should we care about 25 players running through the game as quickly as possible?". In my opinion Blizzard did an awesome job on WotLK. If you take your time to do all the quests and to explore the beautiful new landscapes there will be a lot of "wow"-moments. But you must be willing to get involved. If your goal is to end this as quickly as possible you are going to miss alot of work the designers put into it, but thats a personal choice. Wrath of the Lich King is more open and I think it is a good thing.

BLOG [ZIB] _ GUILD [TDMOG] _ INTERFACE [ROTHUI] _ CHAR [ROTHAR]

 

Mem

We did Naxx10 yesterday and while we had some people with beta clear experience the instance was as a whole ok in my book when considering that it was indeed an instance designed as an entry level raid. Except for one everybody had Naxx 60 experience which meant we all knew the general mechanics of the encounters. Yet with SWP gear cluttered with some few heroic items our healers were running low in terms of mana in some fights. Furthermore fights like Gluth, Horseman, Saph but also Patch won't be killed by PuGs wearing WoltK blues and greens anytime soon.

While Sartherion easy mode seems to be freeloot, Malygos again is not a complete pushover either. Can't comment on 25 mans yet due not having enough guys and gals on 80 yet.

What I consider much more unfortunate is the aspect that quite a lot of people aren't doing the 5 man normal mode farming but right jumping to heroic mode. This might be due to the fact that quite a lot of them are wearing pretty high quality BC epics right now. But they seem to be a little bit undertuned.

 

KraxisSingular

Indeed... Wrath appears to have a lot more... feel to it. I just feel more involved this time around. The quests are more fun, mostly through interesting surroundings (who can't love the Vrykul villages and Gjalarbron?) but a lot of interesting commentaries, whispers and jokes make it a blast to quest. Top raiders will never see this, they are not interested in this. They have decided to cut themselves off from it. Is that Blizzard's fault?

The only thing I see lacking right now (more might come later of course), is a sort of daily 10-man instance. Kara was a success later on, Zul'aman as well. Problem was that they were too long. It would be great if there had been 10-man Ramparts or Slave Pens. You get my idea. 3-5 bosses with somewhat easy and short trash. Instances doable each day. Mini-raiding of a sorts. As most of us can agree the heroics were almost a joke in the end, some actually were. This would keep a sort of challenge in. And instead of the last boss being the only 'epic' boss all could drop a piece. But this is getting too far beyond the topic.

I hope for the top raiders that they find something else to spend their time on right now. Heroics for instance, perhaps less than 16 hours of WoW a day? I can't imagine it is good to spend three days and nights playing. This might become a little bit of a reality check. Maybe they can now spend a little less time ingame, and still experience as much as the rest of us?

 

Amorpheus

It's kinda ridiculous that a group of people who have been practising these entry-level encounters since the beta and have 40+ people leveling madly are in any way implying that it's Blizzard's fault. I'm sure content difficulty will scale upwards again with Ulduar, after this it might even become harder than Blizzard originally planned it.

"You are better than I am," Inigo admitted.
"So it seems. But if that is true, then why are you smiling?"
"Because," Inigo answered, "I know something you don't know."
"And what is that?" asked the man in black.
"I'm not left-handed."

 

PsiVen

I see a lot of people pointing to the achievement system and ZA-like challenges as the answer to the situation where raid content is hilariously easy, but I think we need to be careful how readily we accept this. Bear runs were fun, but if every instance had them it would be horrible! I don't want to be stuffed into a high-stress environment every minute of every raid, rushing against the clock to rez that guy that died and get the next pull going, staring at a timer or focusing on some arbitrary aspect of the fight that isn't really relevant to beating the encounter. As we've seen in many raid encounters, unforgiving might be difficult but it's not always fun.

Fortunately, Blizzard knows this. I don't think they intend to fill every raid with bonus loot awarded for accomplishing an arbitrary timer -- as evidenced by the total lack of such rewards. Naxxramas is an introductory raid for those who need introducing to raids, and for the rest of us, it's a playground. Here's to hoping that Ulduar is well-tuned without the need for three months of spoiling on a PTR.

If there's one thing I'm worried about, it's that the expansion cycle might be getting shorter. Icecrown is slated to be the final raid at all costs, which means either there will be quite a lot of content in the intervening instances or the raiding scene will be similar to TBC if Sunwell never existed. If it's the latter, do we really want Blizzard to live up to the one-expansion-per-year principle?


For the record, I don't think TBC's release problem was the intended tuning of the instances. SSC/TK were as hard at release as they should have been. Trash and consumables were the problems, the players spoke, and they were corrected. TBC lacked introductory raids on purpose, and it shouldn't surprise anyone if Ulduar follows up an easy boss or two with a pre-nerf Hydross.

 

Mman

We won't know whether or not Naxx is properly tuned until the players the content was designed for enter. If the place is instantly puggable, well then they have made it too easy. If it is a major cockblock then obviously it is too hard. But until the majority of players reach level 80 it is really too hard to comment on the content.

But it will be interesting to see how Naxx turns out in terms of balancing future content. If Naxx is farely easy for the majority of WoW players, how can Blizzard ramp up the challenge to meet the higher end raiders? If they are allready so far above the curve it seems impossible that it will ever reach them. If it does then you have the problem of difficulty being increased too much. If 50% of raiders can clear Naxx on their first night but only 5% can do the same with the next tier, well that is a prety huge ramp up.

 

Volrath50

This is a Good Thing in my view. It means that most players will be able to clear Tier 7, at least, and probably make at least a decent dent in Tier 8. Don't forget that even for an instance often called "easy", and cleared in something like a week by Nihilum, the vast, vast majority of players never saw the inside of Black Temple, let alone cleared it. Heck, most people I meet in person, who happen to play WoW haven't, for whatever reason, made it into, or very far into, SSC/TK. With Naxx, Malygos and the Black Dragon guy being this accessible, just about everyone will have 10 or 25 man content for them, including (thankfully this time) a full length entry-level 25-man.

"As surely as I live forever, when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgement, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me."

 

Dynalisia

I think that most achievements will be purely about bragging rights and at best award a visual token of this accomplishment as opposed to loot. Nevertheless, just looking at the current 3.03 raid achievement list it still seems like there are quite a few of them, although some are obviously harder than others. If your guild considers itself the variant that 'should' be accomplishing this stuff then you will likely see quite a bit of extra tension on raids until they have been accomplished, even if there is no real loot involved.

Don't forget however that mudflation will take care of softening up any of the extra-loot awarding achievements over time just as it does any kind of raid encounter. The ZA bear run hasn't required me to use more than two braincells for quite a while now.

 

François

I think in WotLK Blizzard has moved part of the difficulty from the encounter itself to the hard-mode achievement system. Like BC had moved the pvp from BG to arena. SK/Nihilum's claim that they have completed the PvE game is incredibly short-minded. It's as though they would claim to have seen all of pvp after a few won arena games when the achievement is to have Gladiator title...

You don't need to try to complete the achievement every time you raid. For most of those achievements, when you succeed, everybody in raid succeeds. This is an improvement to the ZA bear model.

I really hope T8 level will be accessible to the player base and Blizzard will provide some hard achievements, and Nihilum/SK like guilds will recognize the achievements as interesting world first targets. 21 man Naxx, 0 dead full Naxx run, and so on, are challenges for HCG, and what the pve race should be about.

 

Pheus

Easy mode and hard mode (through acheivements or whatever blizzard decides to go with) is probably one of the oldest and most thoroughly proven methods of aiming a single piece of content at many audiences. Since the days of Duke 3D and Doom, and even earlier, varied difficulty levels have allowed people to play games beginning to end at a level that they personally find challenging and fun. One difficulty for all players is a bad business design and honestly, if you are playing this game to be better than other people at pve, to access content that they cannot access, then I feel you are playing for the wrong reasons.

 

Bellise

Yes, I can definitely confirm this. Some of the bosses recieved tuning since the last beta build and are definitely harder. Doable, but harder. Naxxramas is tuned for the people it is aimed at. Also most 10 man bosses in pre-wotlk gear were harder than their 25 man versions.

According to the post on 25th Novemeber site. I don't really know what to think about it, it seems they are either really trying to send Blizzard a message or just trying to sound interesting or maybe a bit from both. But every realistic person has realized by now, that this is how raids are going to look like. So, do not expect original Naxxramas or Sunwell Plateau tuned raids anytime soon. If you want to avoid disapointment completely, do not expect such raids at all.

Who we are is but a stepping stone to what we can become.

 

Lupison

Now I'm not defending 25th here, but the fact is it's human nature to WANT to be better then the guy next to you. It's a very basic instinct, from a breeding standpoint, to want to be better then the next guy so you get your pick of the herd to breed with. So to say you only play the game to feel better then the next guy that you're playing the game for all the wrong reasons pretty much defeats the purpose of playing a game.

The need to be the best at video games and the need to be the best hunter in the tribe come from the same basic emotion. That emotion has to be quench otherwise you become stressed out.

Let's face it, we're all jealous of the fact that 25th gets to be paid to do this. Most of us think we could easily do what they do. But at the same time we don't think what they did we couldn't do given the same amount of time and lack of children/real jobs.

I do admit that when the top guilds killed Muru/KJ pre-nerf that did impress me and I thought they were better then me. I think that's the source of things here, 25th wants us to be impressed but we're not.

 

Nicki

In my opinion wotlk content currently is just a gear reset of sorts.

 

Gunn

Anyone know how much they get paid to play?

 

songster

Why don't you look at the list of achievements that are there? It's not all timers. At present there are three main types of Achievement to go for.

1) Timers
Pure and simple - kill X boss in under Y minutes, clear a given gauntlet of trash in under Z minutes, etc.

2) Perfection of execution
Kill bosses with nobody dying, nobody crossing the charges, nobody messing up the Heigan dance, etc.

3) Do it "the hard way"
Kill the four horsemen simultaneously, kill Sartharion with one or more of the drakes still alive, kill Sapphiron without any frost resistance, etc.

A mixture of all the above looks to me exactly the right way to keep the game alive for people who care about being the best.

 

• Vykromond

Not correct at all. If Naxx is easy then most guilds will be able to gear up in it and Ulduar can check for that level of gear as a minimum and ramp up in execution difficulty through the instance. The guilds that can't hack it by the end of Ulduar can then do what the hardcore have been doing in the intervening time: achievement farming. Or doing Ulduar-10; I really doubt Blizzard is going to try and push 10-mans to Sunwell difficulty (they'd actually have to be much harder than the difficulty of Sunwell per person, even, due to the decreased size).

What about Jersey? Mafioso, murderers, addicts, juvenile vagrants, Bon Jovi. Here they praise these felonious people. Blighted little Jersey: guns, hookers, Goombas, Atlantic City. "Come home, criminal miscreants" reads the tourism website. And here come the hucksters, racketeers, trannies, and every korrupt-cop. Jersey, news flash: Criminals rarely benefit children, businesses, or organizations.

 

Woozle

I think hardmode achievements will change the norm about what being "finished' with the games means. The ZA bear and the new achievements added for the existing WOTLK raid content are just the beginning, and blizzard (I think) can and should make this scheme more complicated and provide more tiers to achieve with the same content. This would extend the shelf life of content considerably, and give us new incentives to reclear farm content which, lets face it, we're going to be reclearing week after week anyway. This would hopefully allow them to properly space out raid content releases (such as Ulduar) without running into the t5/t6 problem of TBC. Hopefully it also has the beneficial effect of refocusing progression around skill rather than the speed of a clear of new content.