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.

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.

Exactly

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.

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.

Well, I think it'll certainly have a lot of listeners -- WoW Radio seems more popular in Europe than here (just look at the Kungen meme it spawned), so that may be part of it. And many people did listen to their last interview with Awake and Ekke from Nihilum. My point, though, as stated above, is that this promises to really just be more of a "fan interest" piece than an actual substantive roundtable.

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.