Do you miss doing dungeon / raid attunements?

[Deleted]

They will never fit a game where you have several alts. And yes, I did craft UBRS key on several characters. I would not do that again.

[Avaddon]

They will never fit a game where you have several alts. And yes, I did craft UBRS key on several characters. I would not do that again.

I think you need to look at this from a perspective of now rather than back then. Blizzard has learned a lot since then. UBRS was an absolute pain in the ass attunement or not. But these days there is a lot better technologies available and much more in depth stories to tell. I'm not trying to convince you otherwise but it's just some food for thought.

[Relapses]

How were Wrath "churn rates" the lowest they've been in Wrath when that was the first expansion to not see growth in specific quarters?

For the entirety of WotLK, WoW's subscriber numbers were steadily above 10M. While every expansion prior had seen growth, I believe WoW reached market saturation in WotLK (ie, the theoretical maximum number of players who'd be interested in playing) and the fact that the number of consistently subscribed players remained at such a high level indicates that even though people were assuredly quitting it was offset by the number of people who were still subscribed/returning to the game. In every expansion since WotLK, WoW has lost more subs than its retained.

[Pundit]

I don't miss doing them. Of course I still have fond memories of earning access to this content with my guilds years back. I think it's that fondness that most people miss, not doing the actual content.

Attunements just don't work in the current environment. I'd rather have the high end content be significantly difficult and have that be the barrier to entry. As Fatboss put it, Mythic raid fights are harder than ever.

[Schizoide]

Attunements completely blocking access to zones are obsolete at this point.

That doesn't mean attunements have no place in the game, though-- imagine an attunement allowing you to bypass/insta-kill trash, or to open hidden treasure in a dungeon for artifact power, or to summon a cool pet in a specific dungeon for extra damage, or to give your group access to an extra boss. That would all be pretty cool and worth doing.

[Detheavn]

I like attunements because they gave you a why. Now you don't even have to learn anything about who you are fighting or why because you can just walk right in with no previous knowledge. Anything is better than that.

This. It wasn't about attunements being a wall, but a way to tell the story. This is something I felt missing from the last couple of x-pacs. I would have loved these to still be in there, even if account-wide. Could have been an extra part of the pathfinder achiev

[Highwhale]

BTW remember those garrison's campaign quests in Tanaan? They tell stories about Iskar and others? Its reminds me of attunements quests.

[Stormspark]

Attunements the way they used to be in WOW suck. The only MMO I've played that actually does attunements well is FFXIV. Most everything is only gated behind the main story quest. And then beyond that, item level.

[brunnor]

For the entirety of WotLK, WoW's subscriber numbers were steadily above 10M. While every expansion prior had seen growth, I believe WoW reached market saturation in WotLK (ie, the theoretical maximum number of players who'd be interested in playing) and the fact that the number of consistently subscribed players remained at such a high level indicates that even though people were assuredly quitting it was offset by the number of people who were still subscribed/returning to the game. In every expansion since WotLK, WoW has lost more subs than its retained.

I agree that Wrath was good, but saying that it was the market saturation point is just a made up idea. Could it be the case? Sure, but we don't know that. All we know is Wrath is the first time in the games history that the people quitting equaled the people joining. Which leads me to believe that the churn rate was much higher than it was in vanilla and TBC. The reasons for that are all over the map, but saying that the rate was lowest during Wrath is a bit of an overstatement.

[Relapses]

I agree that Wrath was good, but saying that it was the market saturation point is just a made up idea. Could it be the case? Sure, but we don't know that. All we know is Wrath is the first time in the games history that the people quitting equaled the people joining. Which leads me to believe that the churn rate was much higher than it was in vanilla and TBC. The reasons for that are all over the map, but saying that the rate was lowest during Wrath is a bit of an overstatement.

In any market, there's a point where it's impossible to gain any more customers because you have the highest number of people willing to pay for the particular service you're providing. With WoW's twelve year history, it's then pretty easy to see that WotLK was the period of the game's life cycle which had both the highest number of players and lowest number of people leaving. When I mentioned WotLK's churn rate being the lowest in the game's history, I'm excluding its periods of growth which lead up to its point of market saturation from this statement. (We can argue about whether WotLK would have been the ceiling had they made other choices but I sincerely doubt attunements would have been a huge mitigating factor in this so that's really a debate for another thread.)

Basically, the fact that WoW had the highest number of subscribers while simultaneously losing the fewest leads me to believe there were many choices in WotLK's design philosophy which resonated well with players. One of the key philosophies was a shift away from the gated attunement structures which had been prevalant in Vanilla/TBC. Again, I'm not saying their removal was the only reason for its success but merely that it was something which I think a lot of players responded to favorably.

[brunnor]

In any market, there's a point where it's impossible to gain any more customers because you have the highest number of people willing to pay for the particular service you're providing. With WoW's twelve year history, it's then pretty easy to see that WotLK was the period of the game's life cycle which had both the highest number of players and lowest number of people leaving. When I mentioned WotLK's churn rate being the lowest in the game's history, I'm excluding its periods of growth which lead up to its point of market saturation from this statement. (We can argue about whether WotLK would have been the ceiling had they made other choices but I sincerely doubt attunements would have been a huge mitigating factor in this so that's really a debate for another thread.)

Basically, the fact that WoW had the highest number of subscribers while simultaneously losing the fewest leads me to believe there were many choices in WotLK's design philosophy which resonated well with players. One of the key philosophies was a shift away from the gated attunement structures which had been prevalant in Vanilla/TBC. Again, I'm not saying their removal was the only reason for its success but merely that it was something which I think a lot of players responded to favorably.

Growing for years then INSTANTLY stopping growth at the release of an expansion make it seem much more like something got screwed up and people left over it more than anything else. Saying Wrath was a success is even a bit of a stretch. Is wrath a success compared to current expansions/content, of course, but it is the point when the game stopped growing. Reasons for it are all over the board, but the fact remains that Wrath is where WoW stopped growing.

[Pundit]

Growing for years then INSTANTLY stopping growth at the release of an expansion make it seem much more like something got screwed up and people left over it more than anything else. Saying Wrath was a success is even a bit of a stretch. Is wrath a success compared to current expansions/content, of course, but it is the point when the game stopped growing. Reasons for it are all over the board, but the fact remains that Wrath is where WoW stopped growing.

I actually think it's something as simple as people were waiting to see Arthas die. He was at the time the most well developed character with the strongest story who was still alive. It was finally the closure to the story that started with WCIII: TFT years prior. After that, some people may have simply lost interest. It was 2008-2009 and the game was still in a technical sense superior and impressive over the competition in a lot of ways.

Making the LK kind of hard to get to might have started frustrating people by the end. Yes there were 10m and 25 man variants but by the 4th raid tier of the xpac I think there was a bit of fatigue. Limited heroic attempts and the awkwardness of the different raid sizes probably didn't help.

[Relapses]

Growing for years then INSTANTLY stopping growth at the release of an expansion make it seem much more like something got screwed up and people left over it more than anything else. Saying Wrath was a success is even a bit of a stretch. Is wrath a success compared to current expansions/content, of course, but it is the point when the game stopped growing. Reasons for it are all over the board, but the fact remains that Wrath is where WoW stopped growing.

Do you honestly believe WoW could have continued at the pace it was growing from Vanilla/TBC? Do you really think there are that many people in the world who'd want to pay to play a MMO? There's a ceiling for the number of people willing to pay for a subscription MMO and looking at WoW's 12 year history, it's incredibly easy to point out that it probably hit that ceiling in WotLK. That's market saturation. The fact that the subscriber levels stayed as high as they were for the entirety of WotLK while at market saturation is indicative of the expansion's success. WoW made more money from subscriptions in WotLK than it did at any other point in its existence. The reason? It had the lowest subscriber churn rate after WoW hit market saturation. Ergo, if simply judging an expansion by the amount of money it made the company through cyclical monthly subscriptions alone, WotLK was the most successful ever developed.

But if you want to live in this fantasy world where you actually think it would have been possible for WoW to keep growing at the same rates it did during Vanilla/TBC, go for it. And if you want to think that attunements -- of all the fucking things in the world -- is what would have kept the game successful, have at it. It's not worth arguing this with somebody as delusional as you.

[brunnor]

Do you honestly believe WoW could have continued at the pace it was growing from Vanilla/TBC? Do you really think there are that many people in the world who'd want to pay to play a MMO? There's a ceiling for the number of people willing to pay for a subscription MMO and looking at WoW's 12 year history, it's incredibly easy to point out that it probably hit that ceiling in WotLK. That's market saturation. The fact that the subscriber levels stayed as high as they were for the entirety of WotLK while at market saturation is indicative of the expansion's success. WoW made more money from subscriptions in WotLK than it did at any other point in its existence. The reason? It had the lowest subscriber churn rate after WoW hit market saturation. Ergo, if simply judging an expansion by the amount of money it made the company through cyclical monthly subscriptions alone, WotLK was the most successful ever developed.

But if you want to live in this fantasy world where you actually think it would have been possible for WoW to keep growing at the same rates it did during Vanilla/TBC, go for it. And if you want to think that attunements -- of all the fucking things in the world -- is what would have kept the game successful, have at it. It's not worth arguing this with somebody as delusional as you.

I know there is a ceiling to people wanting to play WoW and other MMORPGs. I'm not saying there isn't one. I'm just saying that you saying the ceiling magically hit right at the start of Wrath is far fetched. Could Wrath have kept growing like TBC/Vanilla if it stuck to the same idea? Who knows, but we won't ever know, but to say that it 100% wouldn't is just out right lying.

If you want to look only at the short sighted answer, then yes, Wrath was the most successful expansion ever. That is a VERY short sighted view of it though, not a view that makes money in the long run.

I'm delusional because I make your argument fail? Good to know.

[elmoe420]

Attunements as they were implemented in Vanilla and BC were a huge headache. I view this as much the same as when we needed resistance sets for various encounters/bosses. Grinding out a fire resist set for our main tank only to have them get poached by another guild 1.5 months into Ragnaros progress was a massive set back for our guild. Not because this particular tank was critical from a player skill or leadership perspective, but simply because the grind for the fire resist set took so much time. Similar with farming Onyxia scale cloaks or having to continue to clear SSK and TK just to get the vials needed for the T6 attunement. This is just my personal opinion as a casual raider but I think you would be hard pressed to find someone in a position of raid leadership that enjoyed having to deal with this aspect of the game over and over again. Consistently fielding a 40 person raid team was hard enough without these extra hurdles in the way.

That being said, attunements did bring with them some really positive qualities to the game. The quest lines were long and (at least to me) engaging, giving Blizzard a great opportunity to build up the storyline and lore around the upcoming raid encounters. It gave the raid encounters and the subsequent defeat of the bosses more meaning because you could grow to know them and either love or hate them along the way. In my opinion WoW greatly suffers at this point in time from a lack of continuity in the storylines. The game has used up much of residual lore coming out of the single player RTS campaigns which were a much more effective medium for storytelling. Things like class quests and attunement quest chains can really help with this. It is interesting to me that in the beginning of the game when they were arguably least needed is when they were most employed by Blizzard as a mechanism for driving the story.

I thought that the garrison campaign was a good attempt to bring back a lot of the value we got from attunement quest lines but in a way that didn't have the downsides outlined above. Unfortunately there just wasn't enough of this type of storytelling and it was artificially gated which further emphasized this dearth. I'm interested to see what Blizzard does along similar lines in Legion. I'd love to see more class quests (a la Benediction or Warlock Green Fire) and attunement style quest lines (a la Hand of Adal) but without the hard requirement to continuously grind them out for new raiders. It seems like Blizzard could strike a middle ground that gives us the rich immersion and storytelling attunements brought but without all of the accompanying frustration.

[Ciddy]

I'm kind of torn on this one. I thought attunements were a fun way to gate content, especially when you could get through the attunement quest chains without too much hassle (Karazhan, for example).

But it did kinda suck when your guild either had to have a "YOU MUST BE ATTUNED TO ______________ BEFORE YOU CAN APPLY" requirement, or drag new recruits through old content to get them attuned.

[Kanogan]

I'd like attunements to become account-wide. Like getting an achievement for unlocking a dungeon/raid, and your other character will be able to get inside as well.

But I agree the attunements in the past became too repetitive when you did it on different alts.

[Moggie]

Don't miss 'em. They were fun for the time, as well as the time it took but these days not thanks.

[Nakotsu]

If you weren't around during the time of raid attunements basically they were questlines that would take you through the world and to certain dungeons and even other raids and you had to complete them in order to enter the raid. Sometimes you were even required to carry in amulet from the questline in order to enter the raid.

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Instan...ent_(original)





If you do remember doing these do you think it would be welcomed back to WoW with open arms or did you despise doing them? And if you never did do them do you like the idea of it?

As a tank I absolutely hate.. I MEAN HATE attunements to have to run 500 ppls threw these things just to raid burns you the @@@ out!
Yea its great for you dps you dont have to keep running the garbage over and over and over and over. SO bloodly Boring.

As far as dungeons I enjoy running dungeons once a week.

[Emek]

Yes, but because it gave an amazing introduction to the bad guy we were going to face. it helped immersion and made raiding feel epic