Figured you guys might be interested in this.

WoW Radio has invited Nihilum, Death and Taxes, Forte and Method, names that should be familiar to most, to a 'summit' if you will, a one-time endgame debate show with a pre-arranged agenda. The event itself is planned to air on July the 1st at http://www.wcradio.com. More information regarding the specific show-time is forthcoming.

Elitist Jerks is widely considered and rightly so, to be the best source of constructive endgame discussion, and WoW Radio is hoping to help that cause by allowing these players to make their voices heard to a huge audience that they otherwise may not have been able to reach. We hope that this event will help to provide a positive roadmap to both the community and the developers, of whom we know listen to WoW Radio productions, as to future endgame content that is enjoyable and challenging for all.

As the best source of constructive endgame discussion, I'd like to invite Elitistjerks to contribute to this event by posting their preferred raid-related topics and issues in this thread, to be incorporated into the agenda for this show. The four guilds involved will also be contributing their own issues so hopefully we can prepare an agenda that is comprehensive, entertaining and informative.

To wet your appetite, here's a couple of promotional pieces.


The Four Horsemen MP3 trailer


Thanks for your time.

TB.

Will be interesting to hear from certain personalities, hopefully egos wont detract from the context of discussion.

This sounds really interesting!

You have to be kidding me right? I suspect ego will probably shape it more than anything else.

Regarding questions, opinions on the pacing of end game content in the context of difficulty of TK and Hyjal relitive to each other, considering unlike The Eye/SSC the content seems to have been beaten relitively quickly in comparison to The Eye/SSC being released.

I don't get it, people are just going to talk about the way they think the raiding game could be better? It kind of strikes me as a dev chat without....developers.

So not entirely dissimilar to what people are doing on this forum?

TB.

This sounds like it could turn out to be a really interesting show.

Well, players often have insight that the devs may not, and could benefit from, as these forums have I think exemplified at various points in the past. I do wonder what the primary constructive purpose of such a discussion is, aside from just listeners' curiosity regarding what people from these high-profile guilds are like.

As we've seen in the past, when you're talking about encounter tuning feedback, obviously one of the best places to look is the cutting-edge guilds that have tried the content extensively, whereas most players are nowhere near it. The top guilds are the only place such feedback can be found. But there are better avenues for suggesting tuning changes to specific encounters than a radio interview, I think.

So if the point, then, is to just "discuss" what TBC raiding has been like, I'm not sure it's as constructive a roundtable as it could be. I mean, sure, they're different personalities with their own quirks, but ultimately I'd be surprised if they have widely varying perspectives on this stuff. People are going to say BT is a lot of fun. People are going to say Hyjal trash is excessive and makes learning new fights painful. People are going to be split regarding whether the BT retuning was necessary. But I'd be surprised if it ends up being much other than a circle-jerk.

On the PvP side of the game, I think it's most appreciated by and centered around the true top teams. With the tournaments, netherdrakes, and other structures in place, Blizzard clearly intended to create a competitive hierarchy. And everyone's playing the same game, with the same people. Every 1800-rated team has, at least once when the queues were slow, been matched up against their battlegroup's 2400+ powerhouse and been destroyed. In that sense, a roundtable with people from various top-10 5v5 teams would offer very fruitful grounds for discussion regarding balance, map design, the group-composition metagame, which specs need the most help to be viable, etc. And I would care what they had to say on a substantive level, not just because "omg Power Trip they're so cool."

On the PvE front, however,the game that Nihilum/DnT/Forte/Method et al. play is quite a different one from most raiders, and it's not a game that most people can relate to beyond mere fanboyism. It's also not the game that Blizzard intends to design, as has been made clear by Tigole's comments recently. Of course there is stratification, and the best guilds are going to distinguish themselves, but the bulk of Blizzard's design is aimed at the current SSC/TK guilds, who will clearly now be in Hyjal/BT in a few months themselves. I think a more interesting discussion, albeit potentially more contentious, would be to take reps from two of the four named guilds, and sit them down with reps from two guilds (no idea how you'd choose them, but you could solicit interested participants easily enough) that are solidly middle-of-the-road. The "we killed Gruul and Mag and tried SSC a few times pre 2.1 but couldn't get people motivated to deal with all that trash, but since 2.1 we have 4 bosses down in SSC and 2 down in TK" sort of guilds. The contrast in their perspective on the content, on consumables, on raid composition, on the trials and tribulations of leadership and managing the necessary manpower when you aren't one of the top five guilds in the world, etc., would be fruitful ground for discussion.

Soooo... what was your point again? :P

The idea is quite simple. If you put experienced players into a room and feed them topics, they will come up with interesting answers. Naturally, a substantial chunk of the community cares about what these guilds have to say, they are seen as experienced and knowledgeable, and rightly so. It is exactly the same way every other expert debate works, and is valid and useful for the same reason.

TB.

That these forums do whatever you're trying to do in this panel better, simply because of the format. Look at how many people from those guilds already post on these boards. I guess if you don't read these forums and yet still possess an undying fanaticism for all things related to raiding, the discussion might hold some interest.

In response to your edit:

Obviously expert panels are useful, but I think in some respects the analogy does not quite hold in this case. For one, I daresay the subject-matter is somewhat less complicated than say, any topic in the academic realm. Secondly, since most people who read this board tend to play the game quite a bit, I'd argue that the general level of expertise is already much higher than it is in other situations where the curve of knowledge is also much steeper.

Would be alot more intestesting if you stuck Gurg in there with them

It would make me listen at least.

Like Gurg pointed out, the point of a debate is to sit down multiple people with different points of view around a certain subject or subjects and have them fight an argument battle, defending their opinions in an civilized and constructive manner...

Nevertheless, might be interesting for anyone that's not close to seeing Illidan and Archimonde to know what lies ahead, and how difficult it was for those "top guilds"...

Good initiative!

I'd like to ask the guilds in question what their thoughts are on voice comms. I'm specifically interested to hear Nihilums answer and the response this generates with the other guilds.

I think this thread could be used to help steer the WoW radio roundtable in the direction that would make it most useful. Theres some potential there.

I'd be interested in hearing these guys discuss their endgame experiences, especially in my position of ex-endgameguild hardcore turned semi-casual. I'd love to hear how their end game experiences in WoW differ from mine when I played a lot harder.

As a few posters already pointed out, it would be very easy for this discussion to end up being predictable, so it'd be great to get some real answers outta these guys and provide some questions that might yield that result.

Personally I'd rather avoid these questions:
"How did you find SSC when you first did it and do you agree with the nerfs in there?"
"Do you think you've progressed through BT too quickly?"

The only question that comes to mind that I'd be interested in hearing from high-end raid guild members is:

How much does class-related theorycrafting actually get used by members of the guilds? As I see it, there are the following four possibilities:

- Use of community: Rogues use the dps spreadsheets as found here, for example, and plan gear/cycles around it.

- Use of intuition: They go by feel, theorycrafting be damned.

- Use of internal calculations: Theorycraft is important, but it's done inhouse for competitive advantage reasons.

- "Other"

That advertisment needs a flexing tauren. Just sayin'.

Ehh, I think there's plenty to discuss meaningfully without having a specific point of debate. It'll probably end up being a discussion of the evolution of the raiding game from 2004 to today.

Has the raid game improved? How do you feel about how Blizzard has handled TBC? 2.0 vs 2.1: what improved and what didn't? What do you want to see done differently? Do you hunger for a new raid dungeon or do you want a vacation?

How much of an issue is burnout when you raid 6 times a week or so, and is member turnover a problem? Also how much of a community spirit is there at this level of raiding, wow is a social game by design, does it hold true for you as a guild?

Another question, do you tend to use more caster dps or physical dps in a given raid, or is it perfectly balanced with 3 classes of each? Do you see any advantages in stacking one of the other in general?

Also do you try to tackle most encounters with the same basic setup or do you heavily change it around to get more use out of the raid?

I'd like to hear how what lessons and tips these kind of top-end guilds can pass on to guilds lower on the progression tree.

I genuinely do not know what meaningful amount of information this will provide, and it seems it will lend itself to this perpetual sycophantic behavior that is seen regularly on other forums (though thankfully much less here). If the previous conversations are any indication at all of future events, I honestly do not know what worthwhile contributions can be acquired when you simply increase the number of participants. (Forgive me if I was not moved by the minutes on end of awkward explanations from Method regarding Lady Vashj; I don't expect these people to be orators, but I also don't hinge my interests on their personal perspectives about rumors and drama.) Perhaps this simply caters more to the European crowd (as three of the four guilds listed are European, and the interest in Death and Taxes has always been mixed at best), but I agree with previous posters that I think this "debate" as it is so described will lead to nothing more than a collective inflation of ego and the futile desire for others to leech off of that feeling. At the same time, asking for detailed descriptions of the operation of quality guilds will either be something unwillingly provided or poorly articulated, both of which are to be expected.

Alas, forgive my pessimism, but this is something to which I will not be listening. The Kungen parody was funny enough, which caused me to at least listen to another show, but after hearing the Method interview, I pretty much swore off listening to these types of things as an avenue of interest or even entertainment, and more as simply a staging grounds for the proliferation of people's electronic prowess. I suppose I should stop there.

I would agree with some of the points above, certainly members of these boards have prety much heard it all, we would be hard pressed to provide anything genuinely original.

A bit offtopic, but it's something I've had in my mind for quite some time, I would really really like to piece together the history and evolution of blizzard's internal raid testing team, as well as their public testing of raid instances. Obviously they've had their bad times and their better times, and we've occasionally been granted glimpses at what was happening behind the scenes, from our limited contact with developers and our very early passes at raid dungeons, on ptr's and/or live.

Back to the topic at hand, I would also agree that the guilds invited probably have a similar experience with raiding, since in terms of progression, they are in the same tier. Despite that, there must be at least a few differences, and personally I'm pretty curious as to what they are.

But what I can't really agree with is that the result will be poorly articulated views, especially on issues such as operating successful guilds, or even more general things such as the arena system, etc. I know English will probably not be the first language for any of those invited, but seriously, have a little faith.

I'd also like to know why they lost touch with the player base - and if/when they stopped testing trash. The sheer number of quits I've seen due to the latest cycle makes me think it is way too costly for them to be so foolish with their content again in the future.