What you would have without LFR

[Shelly]

Throne of Thunder would have started at Duruumu the Forgotten. The Zandallari part and the sewers up to Ji'Kun would have been 5-mans.

Siege would start after Nazgrim, Vale would have been a 5-man as would have the landing.

Both of these would have rewarded gear equal to the last tier or tokens that could be exchanged for the current gear. For example: ICC, End of Time, ToC 5's, Zul'amon and Zul'Gurub remakes - all were the required catch-up mechanic to get folks into the latest tier.

Now imagine if LFR had been around (yes, I realize it was there for dragon soul.)

Suddenly the ICC 5s are now a completely separate raid that goes through each boss and ends with your 10 to 25-man group running away from the Lich King as you try to remove the ice walls and get to the gunships.

The End of Time dungeons become a full raid too. Suddenly Azshara gets a better time to shine, Jaina, Baine and Sylvannas all suddenly have power that makes them a real threat so you know you're fighting former faction leaders. The Nozdrumu fight gets really cool and we get a bigger and better showing from Illidan's betrayal.

LFR allows them to build in a catch-up mechanic that allows for bigger, more immersive and cooler raids. Just thought I'd remind folks.

[Jester Joe]

It kinda falls apart as a theory if you include that the raid that started LFR is considered one of the most lackluster raids, and then that Wrath had two very long raid instances too, just like SoO.

Now, I'm not saying LFR is horrible, but I highly doubt it's what makes raids larger. Personally, I would gladly trade a few raid bosses for dungeons instead of having to do LFR to gear up alts.

[Deleted]

Throne of Thunder would have started at Duruumu the Forgotten. The Zandallari part and the sewers up to Ji'Kun would have been 5-mans.

Siege would start after Nazgrim, Vale would have been a 5-man as would have the landing.

That would mean Throne and Siege would both have been 6-boss raids? I doubt it, as that's even worse than Firelands and DS, which both had 7 bosses.

[Pabzi]

Throne of Thunder would have started at Duruumu the Forgotten. The Zandallari part and the sewers up to Ji'Kun would have been 5-mans.

Siege would start after Nazgrim, Vale would have been a 5-man as would have the landing.

Both of these would have rewarded gear equal to the last tier or tokens that could be exchanged for the current gear. For example: ICC, End of Time, ToC 5's, Zul'amon and Zul'Gurub remakes - all were the required catch-up mechanic to get folks into the latest tier.

Now imagine if LFR had been around (yes, I realize it was there for dragon soul.)

Suddenly the ICC 5s are now a completely separate raid that goes through each boss and ends with your 10 to 25-man group running away from the Lich King as you try to remove the ice walls and get to the gunships.

The End of Time dungeons become a full raid too. Suddenly Azshara gets a better time to shine, Jaina, Baine and Sylvannas all suddenly have power that makes them a real threat so you know you're fighting former faction leaders. The Nozdrumu fight gets really cool and we get a bigger and better showing from Illidan's betrayal.

LFR allows them to build in a catch-up mechanic that allows for bigger, more immersive and cooler raids. Just thought I'd remind folks.

Why don't you just pull a Garrosh...Time Travel.. head to Blizzard HQ and when they mention the Idea of LFR .. say "Times Change" and suggest new ideas.
That would make more sense than complaining about things that already happened. Inb4 "Shoulda Woulda Coulda"

[Blufossa]

I'd rather for 5mans, but that's just me. I loved the remake of ZG and ZA (minus taking away the original mounts).

[Treno]

That would mean Throne and Siege would both have been 6-boss raids? I doubt it, as that's even worse than Firelands and DS, which both had 7 bosses.

DS had 8 bosses. But yeah, if they did that, they probably would have had to add a boss or two to SOO to avoid such a small raid.

[melodramocracy]

Throne of Thunder would have started at Duruumu the Forgotten. The Zandallari part and the sewers up to Ji'Kun would have been 5-mans.

Siege would start after Nazgrim, Vale would have been a 5-man as would have the landing.

Both of these would have rewarded gear equal to the last tier or tokens that could be exchanged for the current gear. For example: ICC, End of Time, ToC 5's, Zul'amon and Zul'Gurub remakes - all were the required catch-up mechanic to get folks into the latest tier.

Now imagine if LFR had been around (yes, I realize it was there for dragon soul.)

Suddenly the ICC 5s are now a completely separate raid that goes through each boss and ends with your 10 to 25-man group running away from the Lich King as you try to remove the ice walls and get to the gunships.

The End of Time dungeons become a full raid too. Suddenly Azshara gets a better time to shine, Jaina, Baine and Sylvannas all suddenly have power that makes them a real threat so you know you're fighting former faction leaders. The Nozdrumu fight gets really cool and we get a bigger and better showing from Illidan's betrayal.

LFR allows them to build in a catch-up mechanic that allows for bigger, more immersive and cooler raids. Just thought I'd remind folks.

Making ToT and SoO shorter, and basically turning the first wing of each into 5 mans probably would have been a splendid idea, with or without LFR. Dungeons in MoP were a letdown of the highest order, and a release of new ones as time progressed would had a very positive impact.

Both raids have some weak bosses anyhow (ToT especially).. nothing new certainly, but they're both proof that high #'s of bosses doesn't always make the overall encounter better.

Additionally, plenty of good size raids existed prior to LFR, but you knew that already. LFR was a hail mary pass to stop Cata's sub bleed, and it worked. *shrug*.

[judgementofantonidas]

i want some of what you were smoking.

[Otimus]

The idea that LFR makes it okay for larger raids is kind of true, and kind of false. What it really does is it lets them justify it more easily.

The real reason for LFR is so they don't have to work as hard to make as much content that isn't raiding as they used to.

Seriously, look at each expansion. From the end of WOTLK till now, each one has had less and less content, and has attempted to shove everyone into the same type of content so they don't have to work as hard. On top of that, look at the end of Cata and the end of MoP, the end raids have been mostly made up from recycled content, too.

TL;DR. Blizzard is lazy and knows you'll pay them no matter what they do.

[Belloc]

Turning raids into 5-mans probably takes a lot more work than down-tuning an existing raid.

[Shelly]

It kinda falls apart as a theory if you include that the raid that started LFR is considered one of the most lackluster raids, and then that Wrath had two very long raid instances too, just like SoO.

Now, I'm not saying LFR is horrible, but I highly doubt it's what makes raids larger. Personally, I would gladly trade a few raid bosses for dungeons instead of having to do LFR to gear up alts.

You're forgetting that Ulduar had extended dev time because they didn't need to do more than retune Naxx. So they had extra time to work on it.

Then with ICC they had more time to work on it because ToGC was so short.

Sorry that you all hate that it agrees with what Blizzard has been saying, but 5-mans cost us raid size.

Also LFR wasn't even on the table for Dragon Soul, they just decided to release it because so many people were interested. At the time Dragon Soul was fine, it was once everyone had gone through for the umpteenth time and the need to run it so often that grated. If they'd been able to make an End of Time raid as well as the Dragon Soul raid then it would have stretched out the love. As it stood those dungeons were basically ran once and then never again - cast off for the better loot of LFR.

And if Blizz could somehow go back in time and introduce LFR as a catchup mechanism as opposed to "welfare epics" from badges and that it would have made the Forge of Souls, Saronite Pit and Halls of Reflection that much more interesting and fun I'd love it. Same with if they could have done the same with the End of Time dungeons which all felt weak.

Zetta, I'm not complaining. I'm being wistful in that I wish the LFR system had been around earlier to give us larger raids. That's it, I quite like the system.

Though I found the Firelands dailies and catch-up mechanic to be pretty nice as well. Though that was the result of unused art assets that were to be the Abyssal Maw raid.

[Apexis]

Personally would rather they go back to the wrath model of dungeons, but not make them AOE plow through. I am ok with doing the LFR, but without all the crapp and people that seem to just want to be disruptive from the people that stand there to the people that constantly whine and complain about the person standing there. Both just wast time of others that simply are there to see the content and hopefully get some small reward in the process. I stopped raiding at the end of cata because a could no longer take the constant bitching and complain in my headset. I got better thing I could be doing than wasting my time two or three times week either listen to endless bitching or having to spam for hours to try to find a replacement for the person or person's that were endlessly butt hurt for some reason. Half the time I just got to the point where I just stopped listening and muted the people out or moved to another channel until all parties were done with the complain.

Sadly by the time MoP came out and the LFR opened the same things started to occur and over time I got tired of the noise to the point where I just stopped going in very often. It was apparent Blizzard was not going to do a damn thing to try to fix it. The way they chose to fix it was to make the Flex difficulty, but left the LFR to be a toxic waste dump. Now they think it was just about the tier gear and trinkets and they are making those go away for WoD, yet they problem had nothing to do with gear, but it did have everything to do with both greed and attitude, mostly from the raider that were in gear far better than the LFR and they used it to rub it into peoples faces that had no desire or want to purse raiding at any level.

I believe the only real reason the tier gear was in there in the first place was to draw lower level raider in so they could have a bit easier time progressing through the normal content and in some small way that they would show other people that never raided before how it was to basically be in a large group with others and work together. Problem was it did not turn out that way. It turned into a cesspool with people complaining and bitching at one another and doing deliberate stupid stuff to get a rise out of a few to start some chain reaction crap.

Long and short of it, I would rather just have 5 mans with epic gear, instead of the LFR any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Having this PG thing to have to do in WoD is just going to add even more pain than there already is, it will not even come close to addressing what really plagues this game, people and there attitudes towards others. It does not matter how good they are at dps, tanking, healing, whatever. If there attitudes sucks balls, then whatever run through content is going to absolutely blow anyway. I would rather run a dungeon with a person that doesn't have clue, than a person that feels the need to be an a** all the way through that content. People treating people like crap is what is wrong with this game.

A lot of people deliberately do stuff, because others feel the need to treat them like crap, so they just love nothing more than to throw the crap right back in there face all day long. Frankly, Blizzard seems to be looking or not looking at what is really taking place in the game content or they just don't care at this point, though at this point I would like to think they still care, but just don't really want to deal with the problems in which they had in large part creating themselves.

The overwhelming gating they have done in this game over time as set in motion a lot of the various attitudes at all levels of play and yet they have even more coming in the next expansion. They seriously need to stop doing this drip drip way to go through content, it really does nothing more than turn at a lot people off, because it just takes way to long to get things done that should and can be done in short order.

[BarosanuNr1]

As long as you compare 5mans and LFR only (leaving flex/normal/hc out of the question, because they adress different demographics), I would much rather prefer some mechanic-heavy 5mans like ZA/ZG than the AoE/facerool fests of SoO part 1 and 2. Hell, I only join SoO part 1 when I'm really really tired (friday nights usually) and want to kill something on autopilot without talking to anyone.
I mean, really, High Priest Venoxxis (a 1st boss) is so, so much more fun than LFR-Immerseus (also a 1st boss).

[Deleted]

Throne of Thunder would have started at Duruumu the Forgotten. The Zandallari part and the sewers up to Ji'Kun would have been 5-mans.

Siege would start after Nazgrim, Vale would have been a 5-man as would have the landing.

Both of these would have rewarded gear equal to the last tier or tokens that could be exchanged for the current gear. For example: ICC, End of Time, ToC 5's, Zul'amon and Zul'Gurub remakes - all were the required catch-up mechanic to get folks into the latest tier.

Now imagine if LFR had been around (yes, I realize it was there for dragon soul.)

Suddenly the ICC 5s are now a completely separate raid that goes through each boss and ends with your 10 to 25-man group running away from the Lich King as you try to remove the ice walls and get to the gunships.

The End of Time dungeons become a full raid too. Suddenly Azshara gets a better time to shine, Jaina, Baine and Sylvannas all suddenly have power that makes them a real threat so you know you're fighting former faction leaders. The Nozdrumu fight gets really cool and we get a bigger and better showing from Illidan's betrayal.

LFR allows them to build in a catch-up mechanic that allows for bigger, more immersive and cooler raids. Just thought I'd remind folks.

The flaw in your theory is that we got more bosses in Wrath and Cata, for the last tier, if you count the raids and 5-mans together. Wrath had 12 bosses in ICC and 8 bosses in the 5-mans. Cataclysm had 7 bosses in Firelands and 9 bosses in the troll 5-mans, 8 bosses in Dragon Soul and 11 bosses in the End Time 5-mans.

That makes for 20 bosses in the third Wrath tier, 16 bosses in the second Cata tier and 19 bosses in the third Cata tier. Those are pretty big tiers had they done all of them as raid bosses for LFR, normals and heroics.

ToT had 12 and SoO had 14 which are pretty big raids and a good number of bosses for a raid tier. Had they done some of the bosses as 5-mans and only part of it as a raid, like cutting off after Ji'Kun and Nazgrim, that would've resulted in two raids with 6 bosses each. That's just not enough. That's even less than Cataclysm's second and third raid tier, and that was a catastrophe.

No they are quite able to do a big raid and 5-mans in one patch. The only reason they did it in Cataclysm was because they thought they could get away with putting out small raids, but they didn't. I feel that one of the reasons we didn't get additional 5-mans in MoP was because of LFR, but mostly because LFR replaced 5-mans in terms of a catch-up mechanism. But again, players complained because they want to see more 5-mans.

[Deleted]

The only thing lfr does is make it easier for blizzard to justify using large resources on raids.

They did that anyway, now its just easier to justify. I'm not saying remove lfr, its fine keep it. Just put 5-mans back in the game as they are in WoD.

Everything is good and dandy

Edit:

Here is a suggestion to help make lfr less painfull. Make it 10 man instead of 25. This way people have it easier if they want to form premade groups for it, and run through it quickly. Also its more easily noticable when ppl afk through it.

They could also tune it to only need 1 tank and 2 healers. This would make for faster groups.

[kamuimac]

personally would prefer smaller tiers - 7-8 bosses with extra dungeons each tier but thats only me - 13.14 bosses dnt feel fun t me feel like extreme drag and boring stuff -_-

[The Kao]

The flaw in your theory is that we got more bosses in Wrath and Cata, for the last tier, if you count the raids and 5-mans together. Wrath had 12 bosses in ICC and 8 bosses in the 5-mans. Cataclysm had 7 bosses in Firelands and 9 bosses in the troll 5-mans, 8 bosses in Dragon Soul and 11 bosses in the End Time 5-mans.

Still, those "bonus" bosses were simply not there a few weeks into the content, when everything that still mattered was a small raid. In the end this was the major letdown of catch-up 5 mans like Wrath and Cata had, and I fully understand why they shifted back towards the traditional design. > 10 bosses per raid tier have more consistent road block and replay value than designing half of your content so that it poses no challenge and becomes stale fast.

For me they can keep solo scenarios and tiered quest hubs as a way to deliver background story and concentrate on vast raid content as much as possible. MoP worked out so much better than Cata in that regard.

[Deleted]

Still, those "bonus" bosses were simply not there a few weeks into the content, when everything that still mattered was a small raid. In the end this was the major letdown of catch-up 5 mans like Wrath and Cata had, and I fully understand why they shifted back towards the traditional design. > 10 bosses per raid tier have more consistent road block and replay value than designing half of your content so that it poses no challenge and becomes stale fast.

For me they can keep solo scenarios and tiered quest hubs as a way to deliver background story and concentrate on vast raid content as much as possible. MoP worked out so much better than Cata in that regard.

5-mans weren't the reason we got only so few bosses in Dragon Soul and Firelands. I mean I'm sure they could've maybe done a couple of more bosses without 5-mans, but they were also able to deliver ICC with 12 bosses and additional 5-mans. And SoO is about the same size as ICC. I'd rather have a raid like ICC and additional 5-mans than only a raid like SoO.

[aziras]

If I could have WoD include a shit-ton of 5mans in TBC-heroic style I would be OK without any raids. Or maybe a few Ony/Maly/Sarth/Ruby/TotC instanced world bosses. Raids in their purest form are just a bunch of players going against a boss. They do not need to be 12-14 bosses in a chain. Most of the time there are only 2-3 of them that are really hard, so they could skip the others.

TBC 5man heroics was a blast. Hard enough that you could only roflstomp them with plenty of outgearing. Lots of rewards for players progressing through the gear curve. Required you to have done the normals a couple of time (rep grinds), so people knew the instances before they got to the hard ones.
And then they rewarded some extend of current tier, by giving badges.

I see absolutely no reason why 5mans need to be this "easier than raiding" progression path, and I have high hopes for WoD correcting that. I don't care if I progress a lot slower through the 5mans, but there has to be some kind of progress.

[Shelly]

The flaw in your theory is that we got more bosses in Wrath and Cata, for the last tier, if you count the raids and 5-mans together. Wrath had 12 bosses in ICC and 8 bosses in the 5-mans. Cataclysm had 7 bosses in Firelands and 9 bosses in the troll 5-mans, 8 bosses in Dragon Soul and 11 bosses in the End Time 5-mans.

That makes for 20 bosses in the third Wrath tier, 16 bosses in the second Cata tier and 19 bosses in the third Cata tier. Those are pretty big tiers had they done all of them as raid bosses for LFR, normals and heroics.

ToT had 12 and SoO had 14 which are pretty big raids and a good number of bosses for a raid tier. Had they done some of the bosses as 5-mans and only part of it as a raid, like cutting off after Ji'Kun and Nazgrim, that would've resulted in two raids with 6 bosses each. That's just not enough. That's even less than Cataclysm's second and third raid tier, and that was a catastrophe.

No they are quite able to do a big raid and 5-mans in one patch. The only reason they did it in Cataclysm was because they thought they could get away with putting out small raids, but they didn't. I feel that one of the reasons we didn't get additional 5-mans in MoP was because of LFR, but mostly because LFR replaced 5-mans in terms of a catch-up mechanism. But again, players complained because they want to see more 5-mans.

If you'll notice I addressed this in a previous comment. But I'll go ahead and say it again.

Ulduar - amazing with tons of bosses. Released as the follow up raid to Naxx which was a retune and required very few new art assets or build time.

Tournament of the Grand Crusade - A festering hunk of crap. Which is sad to say because I like a lot of the models used - especially the horde weapons, though alliance beats them on most armor. Again, very sparce art assets. They reuse the raid for the 5-man accompanying dungeon and both the dungeon and the raid use character models already in existence in game. The most interesting thing about it was that you could run it four different times a week - 10, 10H, 25, 25H.

ICC - HUGE beautiful raid. 2 awesome 5-man dungeons and one not so hot 5-man. (Sorry Forge of Souls, thanks for the bag!). Required a lot of new art assets but it all comes together well.

Basically Ulduar and ICC were gigantic instances with a lot of new art assets in place. Naxx and ToGC were not. It's pretty damned clear that because they didn't have to spend much time on Naxx and ToGC that they had more time to spend on Ulduar and ICC.

Now let's take a look at Cat.

Blackwing Descent, Bastian of Twilight and Throne of the Four Winds - Good start to an expansion. Variety of places to go and new art assets.

Firelands - Very sweeping raid, also had a cool storyline as we encroached into the realm of Ragnaros himself to defeat him. For this raid they use a ton of assets they already had created for the Abyssal Maw raid/zone. They also release Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub as catchup zones so you can get geared up without having to slog through BWD, BoT or Throne.

Dragon Soul - Final raid. Not as many new art assets as people would have preferred, very interesting things done with weapon procs. Most of the newer art assets instead used in the creation of the End of Time dungeon series. The raid drags on and on. The End of Time dungeons are quickly out of favor since most everyone much prefers the new hotness of LFR - even if there's a lot of loot shenanigans.

As you can see, each large raid is basically preceded by a smaller raid tier. These smaller tiers require less art assets and less time.

Now if they had LFR all the way through imagine this; Prior to the ICC raid we have another tier patch called The Frostmourne Halls. (Still not as fun as the Forgotten Kingdom ) In this raid you accompany either Sylvannis or Jaina on a quest to destroy Frostmourne. We fail and the only option left is Tirion's open assault upon Icecrown Citadel itself. This raid has 8 bosses, culminates in a fight where you have to escape Arthas, drops another tier of gear.

ZG and ZA are released as 25 man dungeons. They offer another tier of gear, show off better Zandalari influence and pads the time towards releasing Firelands which enables a more polished experience there.

Prior to Dragon Soul being released a 3 wing raid called The End of Time is released. Finally we go in and see Azshara, the corruption of the Well of Eternity, powerful heroes fallen to despair. It releases another tier and allows for more time to create more original art assets for Dragon Soul.

Basically THIS is the pattern I'm hoping for in WoD. I think in Mists we have been the ugly stepchildren of getting a massive amount of new-hires up to speed as well as the rather boring and broken scenarios experiment.

Nupo, for LFR I'd actually want them to INCREASE the raid sizes in LFR. Whenever you lower the raid size what you actually do is increase tank and healer scarcity. What's needed is instead to allow more DPS which will lower the cue times all around.