TBC killed casual raiding. (We'll, Karazhan is valid content, but it's 10man, hardly a raid)

Only 25man boss a casual can ever (ever means before next expansion) hope to kill is Maulgar, unless they nerf things considerably, or significantly buff items from heroic content and Karazhan, which imo would be a valid option.

Even end of the Karazhan is very difficult for casual guilds. Maulgar hits like a truck, especially after they nerfed pre-kara tanking items and druid-tanking. Gruul is downright impossible for 97.5% of the guilds without spending ridigulous amounts of consumables... And even those 2.5% of guild killing him use maximum potions, because they are almost needed. Tempest keep entry requirements are horrible for casuals. I don't expect my guild to be able to enter there before end of the May or maybe in June, as 90% of my guild has not even entered a single heroic or is even is keyd for them. FYI, we had Twim Emps on farm and managed to down Ouro, got to c'thun phase2, killed Razuvious, and Anub multiple times, so I don't think we were "bad", we just raided ~10-14 hours a week and it didn't allow faster progression.

Solution to raiding dilemma:
Buff 5man heroic loot a bit to make farming them justified. Buff Karazhan gear even more to let casuals outgear Gruul by farming Karazhan long enough to gear their raidgroups. Buff Tier4 so that we'll get to enter Serpentis Lair and Tempest keep knowing that if the bosses are too hard, we can just keep gearing in lower instances for few more resets and then challenge T5 instances. Changes don't need to big, just little itemisation changes here and there and we should be ok. High end guilds who want to get to the top faster can challenge T5 instances in Heroic / Karazhan gear and "skip" content by using consumables.

By buffing gear, you make gear matter more and potions matter less. I doubt no-one would disagree on this one?

And imagine it for a guild whose highest raiding was Chromaggus in BWL.

I'm seeing a startling disconnect between what people think most guilds raided and what the reality is. The reality is that if you made it past Razorgore you were more hardcore than 90% of the WoW population. I know that puts me at the bottom of the totem pole here but "here" is in a bubble.

Casual guilds, the guilds made of people who never saw 60 the first six months or who were honestly content farming UBRS forever, are just fine in TBC because the dynamic hasn't changed one iota for them. They'll farm Shadow Lab or Halls for a year and be quite happy doing so.

Then the 2% of guilds, the guilds who had Cthun down (much less made any progress in Naxx) will plug right along like they were. And I know AQ40 hasn't been bleeding edge for a long time but that's where the disconnect is. On Kul Tiras ONE guild had Cthun down. Back on Lothar (my original server) it was something like three or MAYBE four. That's not remotely sginificant if you're talking about a group of people to cater the entire endgame to.

So that leaves this one in ten, give or take, people who were in the casual raiding guilds. Just hardcore enough to do some BWL which was good but not impressive in the grand scheme of things. Right now we're fucked. We're not going to be unfucked. This is the game.

And it may be a game that I'm running out of steam on. I was immensely hopeful that there would be a variety of raiding content when I was in beta or reading press releases. There are alot of raids in the game and suddenly, instead of having a choice as to where I go, I go to Karazhan. And... well, Karazhan. Maybe Maulgar. MAYBE. The other stuff is completely out of reach right now and I don't anticipate it changing. It would be like me knowing for a fact that I was never going to see beyond MC... I don't have it in me to farm one dungeon or do heroics ad nauseum. If I get the shammy to 70, play a bit and discover nothing's changed... well it's probably time for me to move on.

I'm part of your defined group, and still worry about the state of raiding in TBC. We killed C'Thun - once - and had our fun with Spider Wing and Razuvious. It took practically everything we had, and burnout towards the end was running fairly high.

So you're feeling me here. MC may have been ass boring and BWL may have been old hat for most everyone but at least I had SOMETHING to do raidwise on weekends. Now? I don't like feeling as though I'm about to top out soon after only a month and a half. It's a bit demoralizing.

That's it precisely. Before TBC I knew I was never, ever going to see AQ40 or Naxx. BWL would have been a stretch too - I probably could have done it, IF I changed guilds and upped my playing time more than I wanted to. That still left me with 4 raid instances that were actually manageable. And I thought Blizzard had actually done a pretty good job (by that point, I know not all the instances had always been available) of getting that spread of raids for everyone from me to the hardcore KT-killing guilds. I'm still hoping they can get level 70 raiding into that state.

Let me put it this way folks.

My guild has been top guild for progression on my server since early 2006. (The initial competition dissolved before getting down Emps) We had a 3-4 boss lead on the next closest in Naxx until one guild pushed hard to close the gap down to one boss ahead in November.

We never got KT. We were working on Gothik (other 3 wings cleared) when the expansion dropped and by "working on" I mean we had two nights of attempts. We started Naxx seriously about 2 weeks after it dropped and we remain the only guild on server with a C'Thun kill. We killed every end boss *except* C'Thun at least a week before the next instance dropped and got him a week after Naxx.

Naxx to Gothik took us 6 months. We could have spent another 3 months in there and have finished the zone. When we go recruiting on our server most folks laugh because we're considered insanely hardcore. 5-6 nights a week? Yep. Consumables? Yep. Raiding progression or bust? Yep. Blizz hit the mark in terms of time to progress for Naxx. If they could bottle up the time it takes guilds to get from Razuvious to KT- they could give us two raid instances for this year and the vast majority of people could be happy for the entire year. You'd still have people who never catch up, and folks twiddling their thumbs- but if you couldmake the middle of the road guilds take 6 months in an instance and have steady measurable progress, it'd be excellent.

I really think if you'd given those middle of the road guilds gear enough to simply start in Naxx (rather than having to work through everything else), most could have worked their way through it in 8-10 months. That's what I think most of the top tier of raiders are saying about having hit the mark in Naxx. The main thing keeping tons of guilds out of Naxx was the gear. The skill could be learned with a simple application of time time and more time with some consumables thrown in. I'm not saying my guild is the best guild in the world- the fastest learners, the most skilled in the world, but we've got a great group of very skilled people who are willing to spend the time it takes to learn an encounter by rote if necessary. I'm afraid Blizz may have jumped the shark.

We prepped for TBC by making sure we had a very healthy raid base of about 45 players because we thought that we'd jump into the 25 mans and we could run a 10 man (or heroics) along side as well- but we'd spend the majority of our time in 25 man raiding and we'd get to Kara as we had time. That's what we DO. We do big group raiding.

We've got 3 Kara groups now, and all the drama to go along with running multiple groups. OMG Ateam Bteam Cteam, you stole our tank, you have a better raid leader, you didn't invite me, I never get invited etc ad infinitum. We never INTENDED to run multiple Karazhans for more than a week or two, so we didn't even have a system set up for it- and the officers are severely undermanned to start up a multi raid system at this point (4 officers, all of us with real life commitments). It's playing hell with our guild- especially having high numbers of tanks (something we were always short on in Naxx so always recruiting and too many people rerolled... ) and low numbers of healers wanting to play healers.

This is NOT where we should be- by the same token we can't spend 20-25 hours a week working on Gruul/Mag without crippling our raiders ability to finish upgrades. Even in Naxx we had some farm encounters so raiding was self sufficient for upgrading, and a big portion of our guild only HAS enough hours a week to show up for Sun-Thu raids and farm consumables... expecting raiding to be self sufficient enough in either gearing or consumables. If they're out there running heroics or getting rep, they're NOT farming their consumables. If they're not repping up or gearing up (and instead oare focusing on consumables)- they're getting passed over for invites because they're still in crappy leveling gear or haven't finished reps or attunements.

So we're 25 man raiding 2 days a week and running 3 Karazhans (that at least get people 70 man or heroic level upgrades and they can farm consumables outside of raid time)... and honestly it's a major let down.

Sure we're still top in progression. Our longest running Kara group (they were staggered by 1-2 weeks inbetween) has the instance cleared and we've got the only server kill of Maulgar. But I'm not seeing Gruul or Mag being any easier or any closer to farmable content that gives reliable upgrades- so we're still stuck with Kara and multiple raid group hell. I'd be fine with difficult if I could promise my raiders reliable upgrades. If we're not getting upgrades, at least give me reliable PROGRESS.

Give me one or the other please. Easy progress with crappy upgrades, or hard progress with excellent upgrades. Either give us back the ability to say "look we've got lots of kills and we're way ahead in progression" or the ability to show off marvelous bling afk in Shattrath.

" Basically, you'll start at one point (the entrance) and the dungeon will branch off to various bosses. These branches will then reconverge at the end, where the final battle takes place. This will allow players who've already cleared or defeated all of the bosses to choose a path to get to the end, without having to clear each and every encounter. Or for players who are still progressing through it to change up the plan by choosing different encounters, rather than singularly measuring progress, one boss at a time."

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...79158911&sid=1

Sounds like Black Temple gets a nice change - no more having to reclear every early boss late in a zones life cycle when all you really want is loot off the end boss(es).

Im assuming this means BT is more like an Aeon of Strife (War3/SC term) method of start here, you have 3 paths to the enemy base, doesnt matter which you choose, instead of something more like Naxxramas.

Not quite sure what to think of this as while initially it sounds good, theres bound to be conflict over which path people take eventually as im sure one 'path' will go by a boss which drops some uber caster weapon, another path will drop the best paladin healing shield, the last dropping some retarded item like the corrupted ashbringer that people want for the sake of having it.

Although im guessing that raid balance may help choose which path you take, perhaps one path requires more healing, others more dps checks, the last add control/co-ordination or something.

However a dungeon following the Bug Trio style of play still feels abit shakey to me.

Looks like Nihilum killed Mags and the loot is... underwhelming. Certainly nothing that's going to make Gruul "entry level" difficulty.

It seems like Blizzard was so terrified of the gear gap that existed between MC epics and old Dungeon 1 that they were overly cautious and went to the opposite extreme.

Umm dunno, the loot looks pretty on-point for me as far as a tier1 level 70 raid boss is concerned, that will be farmed on a weekly basis by everyone in a few months.

That polearm is certainly underwhelming. Nice max damage, really, but no stats, 3 normal red sockets and a life drain proc? Hopefully it looks good so it has at least a redeeming quality, as it will need some heavy gemming to become slightly worthwhile.

I'm smirking at the trinket too. Every caster and his mother by now is focusing heavily on spell penetration and they introduce a trinket that emphasizes the by now extremely low chance of a resisted spell? I'm not a caster, but I'm pretty sure some extra spelldamage is not what I'd be looking for in cases where my spells would get resisted.

Nice screen of the first boss of TK25 however. The rumours of a Phoenix flying mount drop might become real after all

Anyone know what Blizzard's expectation is for percentage of people to be raiding per server? Just curious if they have set expectations and how things will shake out.

My personal expectation going into TBC, similar to Bekah's was that the first month of TBC would be running 5 mans, heroics, and karazhan to gear up. Then running Serpentshrine/TK 3-4 nights a week with Karazhan and heroics on optional nights (like Ony/ZG before). Clearing Gruul/Mag as a guild for a few weeks, then doing it as PUGs once it reached the Onyxia stage.

The reality is far, far, far different. We have 6-7 people who run heroics regularly and rotate in some people, but usually class issues come up. We run 2 karazhans but its beset by drama post Curator. Much of the guild still isn't fully heroic keyed or even run a single heroic instance, we are at least 3 months away from Serpentshrine with TK nowhere in sight. Gruuls Lair will be the only guild weekly 25 man for months. I expect some Karazhan pugs on the server but no Gruul/Mag pugs anytime soon.

The optomist in me at this point expects us to get into a better guild heroic cycle soon, and perhaps 1 karazhan run per week. Without a very, very focused and organized guild leadership however I just don't see how guilds are going to progress in TBC. The Eye/TK/Hyjal keying process is amazing and beautiful in concept, but I think Blizzard seriously over-estimated how organized the average raiding guild is.

I think this is probably right. If Blizzard is still sticking to their 1-expansion a year goal, then 2.1.0 will likely be the last or next to last major content patch for TBC. Zul'Aman will presumably be patched in at some point.

Oh, and I have no doubt work on the next WoW expansion has been well underway for a few months at least.

The trinket is good, it's better than Nelth Tear, which up to now was the best pure +dmg caster trinket.

I've heard alot of good things about http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27683 from casters in the guild who have it and the combination of that with the Icon of the Silver Crescent seems to be the new ZHC/Nelth's Tear combo in their eyes.

Well let me put it another way to mesh more obviously into the current conversation: do you see a drop which will make killing Magtheridon or Gruul easier?

Considering we've seen T5 and dont consider that to do what you say either, you need to wonder what will make killing them easier?
Perhaps a new "Onyxia Scale Cloak" which could be attained by a mixture of crafting + Heroic Reward.

Perhaps something like:
Ethereal Talisman [Trinket]
+28 Stamina
"Equip: Provides the user with resistance to damage recieved from Shatter."

Created by the player getting:
"Netherspite Scale" (Skinning - ala Scale of Onyxia)
"Nether Accelerator" (20 Heroic Badges)
"Pulsing Ethereal Shard" (Honored Consortium Purchasable - on use combines all 3 items to create the Talisman)

The effect reducing the damage by perhaps half of what Shatter currently deals, then tada - HC guilds can power through without the need for them, 'lesser guilds' can get some of their group equiped with them, and casual guilds will slowly gather the mats over time and one day have a fairly 'easy' time on fighting Gruul.

Same thing happened back in normal WoW, you only really needed Onyxia Scale Cloaks on the tanks and once you learned the tricks of the encounters no one else needed them, however most guilds waited and saved up untill everyone had them to attempt the boss.

The polearm's a bit of a joke - better suited to be on Kazzak's or Doomwalker's loot table if you ask me - still what boggles me is that a weekly reset 25-man raidboss does apparently not drop two T4 tokens. I can get that the Karazhan encounters drops one token as "most" guilds serious about 25-man raiding would be running two groups to the best of their effort each week anyway. But only one token in 25-mans? Seems like an oversight to me.

Rumour? http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=32345

I'd like to agree witht he organization expectations being increased with TBC. Previously we had 1 40 man raid that we ran with. We could recruit based on it.

Now I'm in the position of being forced to look at recruitment from multiple Karazhan groups (and not everyone in guild is getting Kara groups right NOW) and from 25 man raiding. Basically raiding demands more X (usually healers), but we can't even fit all the people we have into the Kara raids we've got. And the flip of that, multiple Kara raids demand more of Y (usually dps now that we've gotten our 3 groups settled), but you can't put all of Y into the damn 25 mans. If you cut out one Kara group entirely (and run 5 less people through that than through the 25 mans rather than 5 more), you wind up with bored and very cranky people because you HAVE to have a little bit of slack in your numbers. There HAS to be more than 1 or 2 people who can sub in to a group in an emergency.

Top that off with a massive increase in cliques. When everyone's in the same 40 man raid every single night and 20 hours a week, the only cliques you get are the folks who do things together occasionally in their off time or 2 and 3 person "I know this dude IRL" things. You've got some people who prefer alts, and some who prefer pvp.... and for a long time those two even worked together in our guild (alts PvPd for gear!). Now we've got 3 distinct Kara groups that run together 3-5 nights a week and a separation between the alt people, and the people who are focusing more on rep and main progression...

Separate but Equal... makes em feel bad for some (not all) of the politicians. Factions within a whole are a nightmare to coordinate.

I helped drag this guild out of 5 mans and into raiding back in June of 05. I'm not sure I have it in me to dedicate my life to months of this void without even the promise that we'll be back to "normal" soon. I dread logging on as an officer. Every day there's some new crisis. The only joy left in the game atm is in showing up for my Karazhan raid and playing with my husband. I guess I'm just tired. WTB a return to normal raiding.

Two points:

The reason I believe that the entry level raid content is hard, or at least "harder" than entry level has been in the past, is largely due to the implementation of 25 player caps. Blizzard, in my opinion at least, believes that this has and will spawn many more "high-end" guilds than previously possible. I derive this thought from my experiences that most raiding guilds pre-bc were composed of 20-30 core, skilled, dedicated raiders, and the 20-10 that were carried through easy content, but wiped you on hard content (Hi C'Thun). Most guilds by now have cut down their raiding force to the skilled 30, allowing them access to higher content that would be near impossible, considering the amount of individual skill required on fights in BC, with the 10 deadweight in your raid. Therefore blizzard can make raid instances as they have and they will be accessable by a higher percentage of guilds than in retail raiding. I feel that the new cap is the reason for more than just this, thoughts?

Secondly, I don't really think that Magtheridon is entry-level. Look at where he is on the attunement tier. Just because you can walk into his instance with no key doesn't mean he is Maulgar.

Speaking of Tempest Keep, I just updated the news post with all the screenshots we have from the dungeon, plus a basic map.