7/10 Mythic Nighthold in less than a day...

[Lilija]

^ This.

PTR should be removed. Blizzard should run sims on their side and not show everything to the players before they go live.

No, ptr should not be removed. Removing ptr means therer will be much more bugs. There is no way internal team can catch everything.

The thing is every solution to the speed of the race will come at a price and this issue is not worth it.

[Sencha]

No, ptr should not be removed. Removing ptr means therer will be much more bugs. There is no way internal team can catch everything.

It's just about how much resources are dedicated to find bugs. Blizzard chose to rely on players because they don't cost anything.

The thing is every solution to the speed of the race will come at a price and this issue is not worth it.

And I think it's worth it. Opinions.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I don't give a toss really. For all I care they could have cleared it already. I'd prefer that actually. That way I know my normal guild of working people gets to clear it as well during the current content patch.

[Orangetai420]

Look at it from Blizzard's perspective. Imagine if the entirety of the true top guilds (Method and Serenity) quit - it'd cause a lot of other people to quit as well, something I'm sure already happened when Paragon did.

The players that even know these guilds are in the minority, I doubt it would have much impact.

[tratra]

You can't expect top tier raiders to raid forever anymore. 7/10 in the first day isn't even good enough. I think each tier should be cleared the first 2-3 days and thats it.

Whats the point of making it last weeks for them? They gonna burn themselvs to death and there are a few of them having actual jobs to do.

[RobertMugabe]

Is the race really even worth it any more?

Eh not really. I bet most people didn't care anyways... ever. That was maybe interesting in times were we didn't have PTR (basically early vanilla only), so people really had to figure out themselves what to do when the raid came out (I think on PTR you could test all bosses except Guldan or only you couldnt test his endphase idk)

[TheFirstOnes]

... So what can be done?

The best guild in the race at the moment, <Serenity> EU, are at 7/10 in the Nighthold and we've not yet wrapped up the first day; my suspicion is that probably only Gul'dan will survive the reset, and even that might not happen given the pace at which bosses are falling over (and split-runs will be completed).

I'm not arguing the game is too easy.

I'm not saying the top guilds are doing too well.

I'm not even whinging about how quickly the best guilds in the world are clearing content I'll never look at.

What I'm suggesting is that, just maybe, the top players have mastered whatever PvE can throw at them and perhaps a review is needed.

So, here's the question:

Is the race really even worth it any more?

I won't lie, this is the least interested I've ever been in the race to world first, and I've been tracking it since mid-Wrath. Even the community seems generally disinterested, with MMO-C not having their usual WoW Progress page linked to the first post. The typical guilds are all there, with <Method> likely to be the first to round the place out, and I'll probably wake up tomorrow to see a guild or two moving up a couple more notches on the progression bed post.

What's next?

Blizzard put every effort into making the race exciting for top players, and they're wrapping up these instances in record times with nobody to seemingly care. Whether it's the fact that players are better than ever now, the access to PTR/beta, or random gear inflation and legendaries making bosses beatable before their intended time, "the race" seems to be dying a death before anyone even knew it was happening.

Is it now time to accept that chasing the dragon of difficulty fetishists has flunked, and that Mythic is really just an unnecessary exercise in vanity?

Or is there something else Blizzard can do to make their progression players excited?

Answers on a postcard.

You're right. They HAVE mastered the PVE shit, and the whole legendary/54 trait stuff is only going to increase their win advantage.

The game isn't easy, it's not even simple. It's just that these guilds have been doing this for over 12 years now, and these so called "Buffs" are only going to increase their advantages....

Besides, this is a race to see if the people actually care about completing the hardest difficulty, not to make sure that they got a new mount or so....lul...

[Deleted]

I don't get why people care who clears a raid dungeon first. People who are invested in this sort of shit need to find something better to do with their time. Go volunteer or something.

I don't get why people care about people who cares about who clears a raid dungeon first. People who are invested in this sort of shit need to find something better to do with their time. Go volunteer or something.

[Sierra85]

is it really a race anymore at this point?

world first isnt what it used to be.

[Super Kami Dende]

The Best players in the World, manage to get 7/10 Mythic in a day.

Seems reasonable to me. Since they would never tune Mythic to only be clearable by the best of the best. Thus these players will always breeze through it better than 99.99% of players.

[Gottalot]

What I would do:
Create a Mythic Raid realm. It would work similar to the Tournament Realm. You use a character template, have access to a variety of gear through vendors and the only thing active is the raid. Bosses drop no gear; there is no further character progression to be had. Tuning is made with the gear available in mind, as tight as possible.

What you talk about here is almost PTR (without placeholders and bugs).

People have to have in mind that all these "top guilds" A) Did the raid on PTR numerous of times. B) They play the game 24/7 and are financed by different sources.

[Heathy]

It is still the first tier of the expansion. i think the tuning has always been higher on the later tiers.

there comes a point though where the tuning is bullshit for anyone but the twitchiest players, 'do this instantly or get one shot' is essentially as far as it can go.

its like in normal you can have 2-3 ppl fail, in heroic you can have 1-2 fails, in mythic you can have 0 fails maybe 1 if your healers are pro and can recover.

[ItachiZaku]

In SoO, Garrosh survived the first lockout, died the second

Gary didn't die until Thrall brained him in WoD.

[Pua]

The tournament realm was essentially a different category of realms than the rest of the game that you had to pay a small fee to access. For the Mythic Raid realm that could I guess be waived...

I don't disagree with your intent, I just think you're over-complicating it a wee bit. Mythic instances level everyone's gear down, save for specific itemization, and they don't reward gear at all (outside of cosmetic). That saves the need for specific realms, and means players can use their live characters for Mythic progression. When other players eventually get there, assuming they want to, they just start as normal.

We're agreeing on the end, I think it's just the means we view differently.

You're right. They HAVE mastered the PVE shit, and the whole legendary/54 trait stuff is only going to increase their win advantage.

The game isn't easy, it's not even simple. It's just that these guilds have been doing this for over 12 years now, and these so called "Buffs" are only going to increase their advantages....

Besides, this is a race to see if the people actually care about completing the hardest difficulty, not to make sure that they got a new mount or so....lul...

While I believe that tournament settings could create a much more interesting race, particularly if it were tied into E-Sports, I also believe that it would see Mythic numbers collapse even more. The top guilds are there for the competition, but I suspect that the overwhelming majority of players in Mythic raids wouldn't do it if it didn't reward gear.

Just a hunch.

[ThunderTaco]

Blizzard put every effort into making the race exciting for top players

I disagree, Blizzard made it hard for top guilds to prepare, because of the legendary and the AP system. In WoD and MoP it was way easier to maintain multiple characters "raid-ready", now it takes tremendous effort. I don't see how it is exciting for top players to grind legendaries and AP before the race even starts.

To make the race truly exciting, Blizzard would need to make too many arrangements :

1) Avoid datamining/ptr, people shouldn't know all the strats, class changes, loots and sims month before the patch hit, that would also make it harder to balance specs, tune bosses and find bugs. Good luck with that.

2) Make sure everyone starts with the same relative power, so essentially, we go back to WoD with all the "nothing to do ! worst expac ever", no dungeon farming, no ap grind, no warforged titanforged. Everyone starts "the race" at the same point. Which means top players will gear up alts for class stacking. That also means find a way to negate the impact of split runs. Hard to do without screwing regular altoholics.

3) Get rid of class stacking or limit its impact, perfect tunning between all classes will never happen, there will always be some differences that are advantages/disadvantages for specific bosses. So unless you make all the classes of a same role (tank, melee, ranged, healer) the exact same copy but with different names/skins, there will be class stacking. And this is even harder because "no datamining" or beta/ptr.

If they managed to do that, then yeah, the race would be way more "skill based" and "fair" for the top player, but at what cost ? Bugs, "nothing to do" rants, even more unbalanced specs, overtuned bosses (blast furnace) or underwhelming (Ra-den), less incentive to play alts and to play at all.

Then they need to find some hard nerf mechanic, otherwise you will see an even bigger decline on the Mythic participation, if it's a fair challenge for top players, even good players won't be able to handle it without nerfs or overgearing it.

So many problems, just for the sake of the World first race ? Blizzard decided it's too much.

And you only talk about what you. Do you think top players want races that last 4 weeks ? I don't think so, it's already the third race since legion and if they lasted one month each, people just wouldn't be able to participate in them. It's already hard for them to recruit, this would make it nearly impossible.

[Dug]

I'm sorry but world first race has always just been a dick measuring contest. How it's different now? I don't understand. The players were given more tools to increase their power and they're willing to take that grind on and put in unprecedented amount of work to be #1. Players are just getting better and better as time goes on and Blizzard can only innovate boss mechanics so much.

[Deleted]

I'm sorry but world first race has always just been a dick measuring contest.

Yup, and said dickmeasuring just depends on who had the best RNG and who invested the most amount of hours into the game. Skill comes with experience and addons, nothing more.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Top guilds put in insane effort to get the kills as soon as possible, hence why they're 1% of 2% or something like that. Why the hell do people care as long as THEY (the rest of the raiding scene) are not clearing shit with EASE at that pace?

The day that every Mythic guild has cleared most of a raid within a day or 2 on Mythic difficulty, I'd be concerned. There's no need to do anything, let World First guilds do the race and if one day there's no interest left in it, so be it.

- - - Updated - - -

Yup, and said dickmeasuring just depends on who had the best RNG and who invested the most amount of hours into the game. Skill comes with experience and addons, nothing more.

I can promise you that the world first race players outplay the vast majority of people. If it came down to experience and addons and "nothing more" (sounds salty to me), far more guilds would be in the running considering PTR/Beta testing.

[Deleted]

According to that math, 15% of the player base would be roughly 13mil people.

WTH are YOU smoking that 15% of ~5-4mill people is 15 million people????

[Deleted]

I can promise you that the world first race players outplay the vast majority of people. If it came down to experience and addons and "nothing more" (sounds salty to me), far more guilds would be in the running considering PTR/Beta testing.

Experience comes with time, so yea if everyone had over 10 hours a day to play (I do) and wanted to invest said time in the world first race, they could.

Ofcourse they can outplay the vast majority, because of the reasons I mentioned.

They have performance enhancing addons, cuz that's what those addons exist for.

Funny how you mention saltiness, because you're the only one that's triggered by this ordeal.