Cataclysm has destroyed raiding

[Malbabo]

I wouldn't say it killed raiding... it did kill 25man raid guilds though. The few that are out there, are the exception that confirms this rule. There are servers, without ONE 25man raiding guild.

For the first time, since its foundation 6 years ago, my guild took a break from raiding, cuz we cant find any recruits willing to raid 25man. While we wait for MoP to land, we stopped raiding.

However, i dont think this is related to "casualization", as people call it.

[Twotonsteak]

So having almost reached the end of the line (the end of the expansion) I think we can honestly say that Cataclysm has destroyed raiding, destroyed the server's community.

Gone are the days of 25-mans guilds, now most guilds are 10-man since it's the same loot and shared lockout, except you don't really need a guild, pugging works too...

...EXCEPT, players don't even bother, why bother? LFR means you can get the same loot just on slightly lower item level and sometimes different skins.


I've seen many older raiders who quit in WoTLK returning in Cataclysm for some action. They quit shortly after Cataclysm's release, the guilds fell apart. Even guilds that used to be strong in WoTLK (25-man guilds) either disbanded or turned 10-man. Was it worth it? Did the casualization bring back 2 million subs? I doubt it.

The vast majority of your argument could be, and has been, made about Wrath. After all the only new thing you mentioned that can actually be attributed to Cata is LFR. That said LFR gear does have substandard stats and the raid has easier mechanics that can, for the most part, be ignored.

No, Cata didn't destroy raiding or the community. The community destroyed raiding and the community.

[Darkblazer]

Yes madness heroic 10-man No tank used>

And 25-man Guilds have been destroyed because of this...30 25-man Guilds in Wotlk and right now only 1 the..only hardcores remain.
25-man in order to continue raiding need anyone there to play at the best lvl ...In order to remain competitive with 10-man semi hardcore<>

[Mammoon]

I know I might be in the minority here, but Tier 11 was some of the best times I have ever had raiding.

Firelands and Dragonsoul were by far my least favorite raids, worse than ToC imo...

I do think it is very sad how 25 man raiding is near non-existant anymore. I hope Blizzard does something to fix this, but I don't really see them doing anything (gotta do whatever you can for the most subs, and 25 man raiding isn't popular). Even if 10/25 drop the same loot, but don't share a lockout, that will bring a lot of people back to doing 25 mans just for more loot. Perhaps in 6.0 we will see something like 15 man raids, which could help, but to me that means the end of 25 man raids, so who knows.

Overall if Cata destroyed raiding, it was cause of what Blizzard now thinks raiding is. I don't see how delaying HoR or ToES for 4 weeks in MoP is a good thing, especially when they are completed content... but the more and more I have read blue posts in the last month or two, the more and more I see how my mindset on WoW endgame is completely different than theirs... but what can you do?

[Crazyjoe]

Here is the reason why 25 man guilds died.

Because GMs and Officers didnt want the extra work for no reward for there players so they went 10man. Less stress , less time, less effort and the list goes on. When you see a 10man guild ahead of u in progression and u know they have it a lot easier even if they think they have it hard makes u sad panda and u end up going the same route.

As a normal raider most players dont care if they do 10 or 25 , they just need to be prepared for raids but GMs and officers of 25 man raiidng guilds are unsung heros and who can blame them for wanting to take the easier route to glory.

I dont normally bold an entire post but u have to understand this is the reason 25 man raiding guild died. No incentive for the people that mattered.

[Adam Jensen]

No it hasn't.

Raiding is fine. I don't bother with LFR because LFR is stupid. Not the implementation, the players in it. There's always at least 5-6 idiots in every LFR raid who drag the whole thing down. And not to mention that I don't want gear tagged "Raid Finder." I'd prefer gear tagged "Heroic." That little number does indeed mean something to me. I can say I'm proud of a piece of gear I have that says Heroic on it. Not so much for one that says "Raid Finder."

[Crazyjoe]

No it hasn't.

Raiding is fine. I don't bother with LFR because LFR is stupid. Not the implementation, the players in it. There's always at least 5-6 idiots in every LFR raid who drag the whole thing down. And not to mention that I don't want gear tagged "Raid Finder." I'd prefer gear tagged "Heroic." That little number does indeed mean something to me. I can say I'm proud of a piece of gear I have that says Heroic on it. Not so much for one that says "Raid Finder."

Tell me does the boss die any differently on LFR compared to heroic mode, do you get to experience any additional Lore on HC mode? If that few ilevel makes u feel it's worth it then good for you and I hope for the sake of future raiding guilds everyone has ur attitude.

[Dracodraco]

Tell me does the boss die any differently on LFR compared to heroic mode, do you get to experience any additional Lore on HC mode? If that few ilevel makes u feel it's worth it then good for you and I hope for the sake of future raiding guilds everyone has ur attitude.

Luckily anyone that contemplates doing heroic mode are either lootwhores, or prefers a game with a degree of difficulty. I mean, it's like the Pokemon games - you could catch a pokemon and train it to lvl 100, and it'd be strong, and it would 1 shot anything in the game. But if you were a serious player, you could spend hours trying to breed the pokemon you wanted with the correct nature and IV's, and then you'd train its stats by slaughtering a few houndred of the same pokemon so it'd get extra speed points or something, and it'd become much stronger than the randomely levelled pokemon.
People do it for the challenge, and because it's "fun" for them :<.

[Eadoin]

There is no similarity to this expansion's end with any other expansion or the vanila wow.
1) This Expansion brought LFR
2) This Expansion killed 25 people raids, or if you wish "large" raids, or according to blizzard "epic" raids.
3) The amount of people that raids today is greatly reduced, combaring to previous cycle ends counting LFR out.

So to generalize and say "it has always been like that" adds nothing of substance in the conversation. It is only producing noise.

Except it has, and to imply I'm just 'making noise' is to simply ignore opinions you disagree with.

11,000 25 man guilds killed Normal Mode Arthas.

4300 25 man guilds have killed Magmaw in 25s.
60,000 10 man guilds have killed Magmaw in 10s.

4800 25 man guilds have killed Morchok in 25s
54,000 10 man guilds have killed Morchok in 10s

So no, I'd argue non-LFR raiding is just as strong now then it ever was. If your only definition of raiding is 25 mans get over yourself. We're not the only show in town anymore. Which to continue on that point I'd hardly call 3000-5000 guilds "dieing" especially when they number has gone up since the start of the expansion

The more astute observation is that people are simply playing what's more convenient for them. I personally still love 25 man raiding and will continue to do so, I still believe it's more epic then 10s, and gives me a greater sense of accomplishment. I'm also fully aware someone who loves 10s will completely disagree with me, some people like the feel of a small 'elite' team taking care of business, or that having less people in a raid makes them feel more like a hero. Making an assumption otherwise just makes an ass out of you and me.

Your only point that holds up in that gibberish (or 'noise' if you'd perfer) is the absolute number of raiders, which has gone down by about 35%. WoW's also lost 25% of it's player base in the same time, which is going to drive down the number of raiders don't content naturally. A good example is two guilds on my server during WLK that was a PvP-first guilds that raided on the side. Cataclysm ruined PvP for them and now most of them play CoD. There's lots of examples like that too, normal/heroic raiding has just simply transitioned into a part of the game that only people who are interested in raiding do, and that's a good thing in my opinion.

Now, if you want to talk about how badly they screwed up PvP, that's a different topic (and one I'd agree on).

TBC was the best expansion ever content wise, and the raiding model was not worse than the one we have today. It was the total incarnation of "laddered model of progression" vs the total incarnation of "streamlined" model of progression.
Neither is good, but Blizzard always liked to go from one far extreme to the other.

We played the same xpac right? TBC pretended to be a ladder model of progression, when in actuality it was nothing more then a tiered system of artificial barriers that half the time came in the forums of bugs. It's not considered progression on Lady Vashj when you get so fed up of wiping to an overtuned fight (seriously, who decided Vashj needed Mind Control?) you simply stop trying to progress. That's bad deign. Or how about the fact We needed 5 locks for Magtheridon, or 6 shamans for Sunwell, or 2 hours of farming for every 1 hour of raiding. Let's not forget the fact that our reward was epics with worse ilvl then the Blue Heroics. Maybe I just don't remember TBC as fondly because it was probably much more fun for people who did the content after it had been tuned properly, and, more importantly, wasn't completely broken.

WOTLK was the begining of the end. Blizzard made a u turn with the brutal nerfs at the end of TBC, and continued with Nax being tuned redicoulously easy for the standards of those days. (if it was to be introducedd today maybe some would find it hard :P)
Also Wrath brought the end of exclusive 25 man content, preparing us for this mockery of "shared all" 10/25.

First off, I'm assuming it's a joke but I have a hard time taking you seriously when you claimed that Naxx25 would be on the same difficulty level as something like T12. It *might* be on the same level as 30% Normal Mode DS, but I haven't done Normal DS in a while so I wouldn't know.

And what was so wrong about the Sunwell nerfs? They came out one month or so before WLK, if you were still progressing in Sunwell at the time, trust me, you weren't good enough to finish sunwell without the nerf. They butchered a lot of classes so if they had left Sunwell alone it would of actually had become impossible. (Hunters, for example, went from top DPS to absolute bottom because their new rotation was based off of Steady Shot - which they didn't have at 70).

For a moment "old school wow generation" prevailed, and we got Ulduar, the most expensive raid in the history of wow, and one of the best overall, with unique features that were never encountered and that we never seen ever since (ad we will never will).
After that, ToGC came, to state the change in Warcraft in the most emphatic way, and people that were "responsible" for ulduar last their jobs.

I actually pretty much agree with this. Ulduar was the one redeeming quality to come out of WLK. It's the best instance made since Naxx40 and probably the second best raid tier in WoW's history (I'd even give it top 5 instances in MMO history). The fact it was followed up by the horrific, horrible, and complete garbage that was ToGC was one of the biggest let-downs in modern gaming history, the only consolation we got was that this was probably a holdover tier and ICC was going to blow our brains out, which sadly it did not...

ICC for 12 months, with 12 bosses DS for 10 (not 8) months with 8 bosses. ICC was a real raid, not the best, but really, you can't be serious about combaring DS to ICC. Also, the difficulty difference of both without the nerfs makes ICC infinately more difficult content. Also within that year you had the "pug destroyer" Hallion in RS.

Not only specific bosses were more difficult, but each one seperately. And it was better and longer.

Well, actually, I compared DS to the first 11 bosses in ICC. I've got nothing bad to say about Heroic Arthas, it was one of the few fights ever made that was legitimately brutal without being gimmicky. On 25s, it's still the only boss I've never beaten while it was relevant (only ever got to Phase 3 once) and I give it all the props.

The other 11 though? Don't even get me started. Most of the bosses in DS are better then most of the bosses in ICC.

For the sake of not making my post longer then the mammoth it already is, I won't get into why Marrowgar, Gunship, Festergut, Rotface, and Blood Princes were a waste of time, and nothing more then filler. They're mechanics were bland, annoying, stupid, or all 3. For the sake of argument I'll also take out Morchok, Hagara.

Let's take out Ultraxion and Lanathel too. While both weren't forgettable fights, they were mostly DPS checks with 1 extra mechanic a-la brutallus style, so they're pretty much directly comparable.

So, the bosses were left with are: LDW, Saurfang, Putricide, Dreamwalker, and Sindragosa.
And also: Yorsahj, Zon'ozz, Gunship, Spine, Madness.

That's pretty much tit-for-tat. If you take away the junk bosses from ICC, it's pretty much comparable to DS sans Arthas. Which goes back to my original point that ICC and DS are very comparable. The only thing Dragon Soul lacked was an Arthas-style encouter which admittingly is quite a significant thing to miss. However there were so many guilds that just simply finished their progression at 11/12 and did not care to even attempt Heroic Arthas that when comparing instance time, I think it's completely fair to leave Arthas out for 85% of the guilds that never worked on him. Which leaves Heroic DS being unfair to about the top 15% of raiders... but we've been getting screwed since leaving Everquest anyways so how is that any different? It's status quo at this point.

Sunwell was implemented in a different system. The way that system was it could be the "relevant" raid for 2 more years and still fewer people would have it cleared than DS.

You're assumption is Sunwell would be relevant for 2 years if it wasn't nerfed, but Dragon Soul was at 30%. How fast do we forget just how difficult Dragon Soul was at 0%. I cleared most of Heroic DS at 0%, and I cleared most of Sunwell before 30%. I'll probably take some flak for this, but sitting here today, I can honestly say as a Healer, Heroic Dragonsoul was a harder instance. Wether that's true from a DPS/Tank perspective I simply can't answer, but if Dragon Soul was completely left alone, without a stacking nerf, it would be up there with some of the harder raids in existence. Fact is Blizzard put the buff in too soon, and that's what I believe to have been the absolute critical mistake, the sad thing is though I can see their reasoning behind it: A lot of guilds simply stopped doing Arthas until 30%, so Blizzard probably thought they'd put the nerf up as fast as they can to keep people progressing and not hitting that roadblock, they just failed to understand two key things:

A) Much of Dragon Soul (like Sunwell) was a brute force DPS check, whereas ICC had many finesse bosses, therefore a DPS buff in DS nerfed the instance far more then it did to ICC.

B) Sometimes players need a roadblock. Not a harsh one, but with how fast DS nerfs came, it was more like a bulldozer.

No the reason that this topic is coming at the end of every expansion is that people have a complete picture of the hole thing, and usually they are focusing to the things they don't like, which is perfectly normal, and it puzzles me how so many people are bashing to such a normal human behaviour.

Yes, and because people have the whole picture, they almost always come to the conclusion that (Naxx40 aside), there was a better raid in an expansion then the final one. Black Temple was better then Sunwell, Ulduar better then ICC, and both tiers better then Dragon Soul.

Your subjective opinion is quite obviously part of the minority. Preferences and taste is different for each one of us. The fact is that most classify this raid, as the worse end tier ever, combaring to Nax 40, Sunwell, and ICC, and the second worse raid of all times, second only to ToGC.

Perhaps it is, and perhaps it's simply because I've played the game in a minority. I've experienced first hand how brutal this game can be for those without written strats, fighting against bugged encounters. But really though, I don't think my opinion is that 'in the minority' if you read what I said: I said DS was the fourth best raid to be released since WLK came out.

Even if you disagree with me, at worst you'd put it what, five? There's only been seven raid tiers since WLK came out, and it's not worse then ToGC or Naxx25. So I guess the point of contention then is ICC vs DS, and I guess I just remember DS in a more positive light because I remember what the instance was like when it wasn't a pushover, and I don't think Arthas and Putricide are enough to redeem the other 10 very annoying and poorly designed bosses (Sindragosa is still my biggest disappointment for a fight pretty much ever). We're still talking semantics though, it's not like I'm claiming that either ICC or DS is better then anything in TBC, or Vanilla. Even with all the bad things I have to say about Sunwell I still think it was a very well done instance.

Yep, it is also quite wide spread the opinion that people are glorifying in the present things that they were bashing at, while relevant.
This is a fact, but it is also a fact that the game's quality is on constant decline, for the years past. Thus after Cataclysm, Wrath actually looks good.

Yeah I just disagree with you honestly. T11 was quite a great tier, it reminded me of the great raiding we used to have in Vanilla/TBC/Ulduar. Firelands was pretty good too, if only it just had a couple more bosses.

In addition the bosses on Beta are honestly pretty interesting, I've enjoyed my experience and am cautiously optimistic.

TLDR: If MoP continues the trend, and proves worthy of carrying the "worse expansion ever" tittle, that currently belongs to Cataclysm, people might actually start missing Cataclysm :P

Again, personal preference, but I still believe Cataclysm was better then WLK, not by a wide margin, and WLK still has the best raid out of the two (Ulduar), but the combination of T11/T12 make it a better raiding expansion in my opinion.

Of course, I played a healer. Which was pretty awful in WLK, I'm pretty sure I'd of quit if that model wasn't changed. Now I actually feel like I'm contributing to the success of my raid group, instead of just spamming Reju and hoping everything ends up OK.

[nimryas]

Cata started fairly good with the 3 new raids from tier 11. It went downhill from the moment blizz decided to create 7/8 boss raids with FL and DS and make us raid them for too long.. DS should've been some kind of epic raid with insane cool mechanics, but I havent seen them.. not to talk about the end boss spine/madness, both horrible fights imo (allthough spine was a challenge). It's not really this expansion per se, more the last 2 badly designed raids and lack of other fun stuff to do.. (pvp gets old after a while as well).

[Ryme]

I heard this same statement at the start of cata. Except is was about wrath. Once mists is no longer new, everyone will be preaching about how great cata was. I've been playing since vanilla. This is said at the end of every xpac...

I would argue it's been going downhill steadily from the end of each expansion, to be fair.

[shise]

They actually came out with a good name.... "cataclysm".

And now an April's fool joke as expansion.

I wonder what's coming next

[Godsmack241]

How many pugs were doing 8/8h in January and February? My server has a decent number of 25 man guilds, and even some newer ones prepping for MoP. Also, what is wrong with people who enjoy 10 man raiding? There are a few encounters in Cataclysm that are more difficult on 10 man than 25, and vise versa.

---------- Post added 2012-07-31 at 09:23 PM ----------


This x100. Thats how it works every time. Were always in the worst expansion ever and the ones that we used to hate with a passion are the best.

Except that this time it really is different. There was a unifying element in each of the previous expansions. What's unifying in Cata? Deathwing? Old gods? Cata didn't revolve around a centralized *type* of enemy. If anything, it was an elemental based expac along with the twilight cult, but without a new continent to give the elementals and twilight a place of their own, like outland did for the demons, and northrend did for the undead, and without making the xpac centralized around them in most respects, it doesn't feel like anything special. You can argue the elementals and twilight were to DW as the demons/undead were to Illidan/Arthas, but it just doesn't have that same feeling, same association. It feels like 5 zones were added to a modified old world that were completely different from each other in every way, with very little story relating them to eachother. You can say vanilla had no unifying elements, but the fact that it was vanilla wow is enough to make people remember it kindly.

What pops in your head when you think about BC? Space and demons. What pops in your head when you think about Wrath? Cold undeath. What pops in your head when you think about Cata? "Oh, a burning mountain forest, a really pretty coral reef, nazi's, rocks, and uh... these weird elemental guys that would bum rush you!... and a big dragon!!!!" Ya....

Usually, I'm on your side in this argument. But I have to agree with the haters to some extent... that Cata doesn't have what the past expacs had that make us all feel so nostalgic about them. Cata will be remembered as a crap expac that, while bringing a lot of quality of life changes, changed the game into something completely different.

I've been around since Vanilla, but didn't start raiding til BC. I've experienced end-of-xpac burnout, I've laughed at the "This xpac sucks, the last one was better" crowd. But, honestly, this game has never felt as different (in a bad way) as it does now.

[Seregon]

I heard this same statement at the start of cata. Except is was about wrath. Once mists is no longer new, everyone will be preaching about how great cata was. I've been playing since vanilla. This is said at the end of every xpac...

Nail. Head. You hit it. This was the exact same talk that people were uttering at the end of Wrath. I will bet all my right shoes that we will see the exact same thing toward the end of MoP, and Cata will be regarded as "a pretty good expansion".

[Darkfriend]

People said this EVERY xpac. What's new?

[Shroud]

Nail. Head. You hit it. This was the exact same talk that people were uttering at the end of Wrath. I will bet all my right shoes that we will see the exact same thing toward the end of MoP, and Cata will be regarded as "a pretty good expansion".

Eh i was sad to see the lich king gone he was a good villian......deathwing could of been better but he went the way of the crazy dragon which has been done....many many times.The Sha sound so much more interesting and have an air of mystery surrounding them.this Expansion is probably my least favorite in terms of leveling content ala(80-85) 1-65 was really enjoyable that and the worgen and goblin(until both races were cast off to the side after there starting zones).
Cant really say anything about the raids but the 5 mans were fun except the rehash of ZA,ZG was fine since it moved the story further in time and had different bosses.
Heres hoping they go back to the not so linear questing in wrath where you had mutiple paths you could of taken to get to cap.
and before anyone says anything i know little about mist other than the main things since im purposely starving myself of info so its brand new to me in september.

[Ujio]

Dunno if this has been posted but 200+ page thread on the EU forums similar to this topic - http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...17939?page=206
(all the blue posts from that thread - http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/2...tent-too-fast/)

The last 2 tiers of content has been disappointing apart from rag heroic. They need to change up something cause losing 2Mil(?) subs or there about over 1 expansion really should be a wake up call.

I'll be interested to see what they have for us AFTER the first tier of content in Mists of Pandaria. I really want to give this game a chance still and I hope they start catering for the die-hard gamers again.

[Archidamos]

Except it has, and to imply I'm just 'making noise' is to simply ignore opinions you disagree with.

It is too easy to just say "same story in each expansion's end" or "haters gonna hate". I was mentioning to an entire category of posts that take your aproach, yours actuall had arguments unlike some other posters. I just said that this expansion's end is not the same with any other expansion, and also underlined why.

11,000 25 man guilds killed Normal Mode Arthas.

4300 25 man guilds have killed Magmaw in 25s.
60,000 10 man guilds have killed Magmaw in 10s.

4800 25 man guilds have killed Morchok in 25s
54,000 10 man guilds have killed Morchok in 10s

So no, I'd argue non-LFR raiding is just as strong now then it ever was. If your only definition of raiding is 25 mans get over yourself. We're not the only show in town anymore. Which to continue on that point I'd hardly call 3000-5000 guilds "dieing" especially when they number has gone up since the start of the expansion

Hmm here you fouled the ball, maybe by accident.
I said that fewer people are raiding today combared to previous expansion, not to the tier 11. Also, counting tier 13 normal kills is a mistake for 25s, since many guilds that just did LFR 25 especially at the tiers begining, mine included got by accident 4, 25 man kills!
Fair it would be to actually take tier 13 head to head with tier 10.

There you have the last tier before the changes, and the present situation
Just for the record, Lord Marrowgar Normal had 59356 kills in 25 normal while the heroic version 16103 again in 25.
Another clear indication of how the difficulty was scaling back then between normal and heroic, but also a clear indication of the existance of casual 25 ppl teams back then that are totally destroyed today (still 16103vs3299 is quite a significant decline).

Not to make this post too long i will just provide the links, wow progress is a treasure, when it comes to historical data.

http://www.wowprogress.com/rating.tier13_25
http://www.wowprogress.com/rating.tier10_25

And also my post in another thread here regarding the % of guilds that do progress in 25 (rather than 10), the lower you go in the world ranks.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...tuation-in-MoP

post#6

The more astute observation is that people are simply playing what's more convenient for them. I personally still love 25 man raiding and will continue to do so, I still believe it's more epic then 10s, and gives me a greater sense of accomplishment. I'm also fully aware someone who loves 10s will completely disagree with me, some people like the feel of a small 'elite' team taking care of business, or that having less people in a raid makes them feel more like a hero. Making an assumption otherwise just makes an ass out of you and me.

You say later in your post that the only boss not defeated while relevant was LK heroic. I believe that you re amongst those that can afford 25s still. Look bit lower though...

Your only point that holds up in that gibberish (or 'noise' if you'd perfer) is the absolute number of raiders, which has gone down by about 35%. WoW's also lost 25% of it's player base in the same time, which is going to drive down the number of raiders don't content naturally. A good example is two guilds on my server during WLK that was a PvP-first guilds that raided on the side. Cataclysm ruined PvP for them and now most of them play CoD. There's lots of examples like that too, normal/heroic raiding has just simply transitioned into a part of the game that only people who are interested in raiding do, and that's a good thing in my opinion.

The absolute number of raiders is hard to be estimated, i dont know your source but 35% sounds about right. The reduction of the player base though should be around 15% not 25% (12mil--->10 mil)

We played the same xpac right? TBC pretended to be a ladder model of progression, when in actuality it was nothing more then a tiered system of artificial barriers that half the time came in the forums of bugs. It's not considered progression on Lady Vashj when you get so fed up of wiping to an overtuned fight (seriously, who decided Vashj needed Mind Control?) you simply stop trying to progress. That's bad deign. Or how about the fact We needed 5 locks for Magtheridon, or 6 shamans for Sunwell, or 2 hours of farming for every 1 hour of raiding. Let's not forget the fact that our reward was epics with worse ilvl then the Blue Heroics. Maybe I just don't remember TBC as fondly because it was probably much more fun for people who did the content after it had been tuned properly, and, more importantly, wasn't completely broken.

It was a laddered model of progression.
Tier 4 and tier 5 were both available at launch and tier 6 launched before people defeat tier 5.
Now there was the famous karazhan attunement, and the famous "kill final bosses in TK and SSC to enter BT" attunement.
The setup issues you re mentioning were part of the other extreme. It brought the ideology "bring the player not the class" that drove things to the other extreme, thus homogenazation.

Now regarding the attunements and the gearing up new people issues.
Rather than promoting team play to work around the problem, aka, make attunements guild wide and providing guild with means of gearing up newcomers without going back to farm raids, (guild weapon and armor rack) they decided to focus on making everything easy for the individual by deleting attunements and by giving current normal mode equivalent gear by farming facerollable heroic dungeons and even worse by doing bloody daylies in MoP!

First off, I'm assuming it's a joke but I have a hard time taking you seriously when you claimed that Naxx25 would be on the same difficulty level as something like T12. It *might* be on the same level as 30% Normal Mode DS, but I haven't done Normal DS in a while so I wouldn't know.

Nax 25 was more difficult than DS normal pre nerfs. Not on every boss, but specific bosses in that place like Heigan the unclean, 4 horsemen and especially Thadius.
It wasnt hard, dont get me wrong, it was just harder than DS. People couldnt dance, people couldnt comprehend "clockwise" or "anticlockwise" to work around positive negative charge on thadius, people couldnt move on the back side of 4 horsemen, and you were watching groups that had the gear to faceroll it falling appart as soon as the 2 front bosses were dead.

And what was so wrong about the Sunwell nerfs? They came out one month or so before WLK, if you were still progressing in Sunwell at the time, trust me, you weren't good enough to finish sunwell without the nerf. They butchered a lot of classes so if they had left Sunwell alone it would of actually had become impossible. (Hunters, for example, went from top DPS to absolute bottom because their new rotation was based off of Steady Shot - which they didn't have at 70).

I was not good enough to enter sunwell, so to finish it...
The blanket nerf before wrath didnt affect me in any way since i was in my only long wow break (from early august 2008 till late january 2009).
I am a fun of the perspective "i prefer killing the bosses i am good enough to kill", and also while our teams are not hardcore in skill they are hardcore in never giving up (keeping the raiding week ofc under the 10 hours total, threshold). Thus we killed baleroc heroic the last night before DS patch came live.

Sunwell was an exceptional expample of things going too far. But it is importand to understand that blizzard was not intending to have "Sunwell LFR mode", but a raid for those able to clear BT.

The diffuculty was climbing from tier 4 till tier 6,5 not only as simple gear requirement but also in absolute skill requirement smoothly, with some spikes obviously (Lady Vasjh combared to entry bosses BT). It was laddered.
Now it is streamlined and you had difficult (for the entry level gear) tier 11, a more difficult (with normal modes tier 11 gear) tier 12, and a very easy tier 13. Each tier offered a reset, you had access to the gear required for the raid without raiding, and the difficulty from tier to tier was not climbing, it was simply the difficulty the dev team decided it is apropriate at the time!
Cata was like mini expansions each tier, and not part of an entire expansion.


Now, regarding your ICC evaluation. All fights were entairtaining and different in aproach. The only fight that really was redicoulous was gunship.
Rottface and Fester were professor's creations and had some quite interesting mechanics pre nerf. The buff in damage trivialized them particularly rottface.
Same goes for the entrance bosses and Blood council/ Valynthria's rescue. Think about it. They were really great and unique (heal the boss to finish encounter, dps the proper add/ tank the shadow boss while agroing the proper adds but without killing them). There is no combarison between ICC and DS at every level. Not only final boss (LK 25 was easily my favorite encounter and i only did the normal version, it was amazing!)

You're assumption is Sunwell would be relevant for 2 years if it wasn't nerfed, but Dragon Soul was at 30%. How fast do we forget just how difficult Dragon Soul was at 0%. I cleared most of Heroic DS at 0%, and I cleared most of Sunwell before 30%. I'll probably take some flak for this, but sitting here today, I can honestly say as a Healer, Heroic Dragonsoul was a harder instance. Wether that's true from a DPS/Tank perspective I simply can't answer, but if Dragon Soul was completely left alone, without a stacking nerf, it would be up there with some of the harder raids in existence. Fact is Blizzard put the buff in too soon, and that's what I believe to have been the absolute critical mistake, the sad thing is though I can see their reasoning behind it: A lot of guilds simply stopped doing Arthas until 30%, so Blizzard probably thought they'd put the nerf up as fast as they can to keep people progressing and not hitting that roadblock, they just failed to understand two key things:

If Wrath wasnt coming i guess they wouldnt nerf it to the ground . And i admit that without nerf our team would never clear heroic mode in DS either. Maybe after 2 years we would :P. But we did not even entered sunwell, never cleared SSC TK BT. Also Sunwell was not "heroic mode". There was not such a thing back then, thank god.

A) Much of Dragon Soul (like Sunwell) was a brute force DPS check, whereas ICC had many finesse bosses, therefore a DPS buff in DS nerfed the instance far more then it did to ICC.

No i dont agree entirely.
Professor and Sindy were finesse fights, and that is why the dps buff affected them less than other fights.
Blood Queen already had a dps buff in it. With the extra buff, the fight turned out to become one of the easiest heroics.
Rottface mechanics, a race against time, were negated when the fight started lasting less.
The same goes for Saurfang and ofc marrowgar.
Lady was less of that case in p2, and she turned out to become the hardest boss in heroic after nerfs besides only professor, sindy and ofc LK.
Nerfs are altering the raid. Some bosses are getting facerolable while they were intented to be harder than others.
Typical examble in DS as well is Ultraxion 25, that currently is a joke in 25 combared to the start, were only spine was actually harder (according to numbers not personal experience, 25 died for us i am afraid).
TLDR gear check fights are having a predictable behaviour to nerfs, finesse fights are altering the fights in an unpredictable manner.
I dare say that ICC had certain fights that were LESS affected by the buff than DS, while others turned out to become way more easy than DS ones.

B) Sometimes players need a roadblock. Not a harsh one, but with how fast DS nerfs came, it was more like a bulldozer.

Totally agree, we were at 2/8 when they came i couldn't believe that it went so fast with christmas in between. Still spine for us is a roadblock due to the stupidity of our less potent members and the afks. I can't believe that we re able to one shot first tendon with hero. It is mind blowing and the kills on spine 10 will climb drastically the upcoming days provided people are still raiding. But then again, to have people that after 200 wipes are flying away from the back of the boss in the third and most importand roll...

Perhaps it is, and perhaps it's simply because I've played the game in a minority. I've experienced first hand how brutal this game can be for those without written strats, fighting against bugged encounters. But really though, I don't think my opinion is that 'in the minority' if you read what I said: I said DS was the fourth best raid to be released since WLK came out.

Yep, having this kind of experience is unique in both ways.
Most are unable to see how fights are failing for others, cause they cannot conceive how stupid mistakes can happen at any given moment by certain members of teams.
On the other hand you guys have a better picture how a fight is when team is solid, with members skill being relatively close to eachother, and you are able to distinct a genuinely hard fight from a fight that actually is imposible to lesser groups cause of the responsibility of each individual to carry it's weight.
Tier 11 was amazing because of that. Tier 13 was a stack/zerg fiasco in combarison.
And soz i missed that you were focusing in Wrath/Cata raids only.

Yeah I just disagree with you honestly. T11 was quite a great tier, it reminded me of the great raiding we used to have in Vanilla/TBC/Ulduar. Firelands was pretty good too, if only it just had a couple more bosses.

It was!
That is why people are expecting last tier, to judge having the hole picture. If you combare tier 11 with tier 7 Cata would have been better than wrath by miles!!!
The only set back was the death of 25s. Most of the casual 25s died in that tier. Firelands killed the few remaining ones.
Also the sudden change in difficulty, that allienated wrath babys and was the reason for the nerfs and tier 13 dungeons and raid.
For once Blizzard should stop going from black to white. It is plain stupid.
They went from total faceroll to almost early TBC difficulty and back to total faceroll in a year!!! Unacceptable!

Again, personal preference, but I still believe Cataclysm was better then WLK, not by a wide margin, and WLK still has the best raid out of the two (Ulduar), but the combination of T11/T12 make it a better raiding expansion in my opinion.

I cannot forgive blizzard for the 180 degrees change in policy from tier 11 to tier 13.
I cannot forgive blizzard for killing 25
I cannot forgive blizzard for talking about "burnout" to justify shared locks in 10 and 25 but then bringing LFR with SEPERATE locks.

As content, i would say Cata and Wrath were on Par, if tier 13 was a different raid might even say that Cata was better than wrath.
The changes in the game though, made cataclysm a catastrophic expansion that altered the course of the game.

[Archermit]

The first tier was great until they nerfed it, everything kinda went downhill from there :/

But at least the nerf came after the 2nd tier came out which I think is the right time to nerf it.

[moogogaipan]

I hate when the Quarter reports come out. It instigates people to attack WOW, like you need some kind of excuse to justify doing so.
OH IT RAINED TODAY, GOD IS ANGRY, KILL EVERYONE! <-- that kind of insane crap