"Ulduar - The future, past and present of raids"

[HappyGoLucky]

Hi!

Someone posted this thread on the EU raids and dungeons forums that I think more people should see. I am not the original poster however, but another forum user called Capote

I agree with everything thats stated in this text below, and think more people should see it. If anyone can post it on the US Raids forum aswell that would be great.

The original thread is located here: https://forums.wow-europe.com/thread...13133702&sid=1

"Hello.

I made this post as a reply to the thread "Ulduar - How Though?" ( http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....13092020&sid=1)

(My original post can be found here: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....sid=1&pageNo=5)

This is a subject I've given a great deal of thought lately, since I care a lot for this game, and altho I am only a subscriber amongst millions, a voice can be heard through the masses if expressed right.

Since my original post got such a nice feedback (thank you guys, I appreciate it a great deal everyone who replied), I decided that I was so happy with my original statement I want more to see it.

It goes as follows..
__________________

Blizzard gained 11.5 million customers based on a recepie that involves so much more than just the endgame instances.

Altho, despite the popular belief that instances "cant" be available to a select few because this and that, I somewhat seem to recall that the 11.5 million figure was released at the end of TBC.

When I first started raiding myself I always figured that people in better gear were simply amazing, and oh how much I had to accomplish before I could even be near their quality.

Instances like Black Temple and Mount Hyjal were something to aspire to, and something I personally found really enjoyable looking forward to.. to the day me and my guild would be good enough to challenge the last bosses of SSC and TK and finally enter the very end of raiding in Hyjal, and finally attune to the motherload, The Black Temple.

Attunements and "hard" instances arent bad for the game, they are bad for people who are impatient and do not wish or do not have time to invest any sort of dedication into a living world created by Blizzard.

The argument is that everything should be accessible to everyone.. but WHY?

When you give everyone access to every last strip of content you remove these aspects:

1) The sense of accomplishment of graduating to the next level of raiding
2) The work and anticipation behind qualifying for entry to the endgame.
3) The uniqueness and separation from the very best to the very worst.

There is nothing wrong with being unable to see everything. Atleast you have something to work for, and someone to look up to.

Endgame raiding is for a lot of people a form of eSport, a way to shine in their game and reap the rewards of their efforts. I can understand that Blizzard feels a need to "back down" so to speak after Sunwell, it was a hard instance and it left very little chance to the flawed or unfocused raider. It was also by far the best instance in TBC.

Not only because it was a real challenge to the endgame raiders, but because it also represented a separation between the casual and the professional. (no need to comment on this, i understand the actual contex).

So why should the casuals be barred from seeing the content others can see? Well, because its endgame. You have a motherload of a virtual world to play around in, and as with everything, nothing should come free. Sure you pay to play, but you only pay to create your level 1 character. What you do with it later is your own choice, and how much time and effort you'd like to put in should also be your own choice, but there should always be something or someone to aspire to.

One can make the claim that high end guilds are selfish, that their motivation to protest is because they want the gear/progress and everything that comes with it for themselves.. understandable if you are on the other end of the table, its frustrating to be openly denied what others have seen before you.

I myself like to claim that "scrub" guilds, or less performing guilds if you will, are selfish for insisting. Selfish for insisting a free way to the endgame, while they should really, as any guild be earning the right to play where so many have earned the right before them. Attunements, hard progress, accomplishments over a long period of time. This is what makes raiding fun, and interesting. Its interesting to monitor other groups progress, at any level. Competition inspires.

WoW may be built for the casual player, because its so easy. But completely deterring from the recepie that got Blizzard the _huge_ playerbase it has to today may be a dangerous path to take.

As any active player I looked forward to the expansion like christmas eve, it was so exciting, me and my guild cleared sunwell long before 3.0, and we looked at the others on our realm dash through the content at 3.0 and being oh so proud. Guilds that spent months clearing and progressing hyjal/bt after they removed attunements and increased accessibility. People get cocky when they reach the end of a long journey, altho they never realised they should never have reached it. In reality.

Naxxramas 25 is a entry level dungeon built around a asumption that everyone who plays the game is new. I read Ghostcrawlers posts and sometimes cringe a little, but mostly since Im not a new player. I never understood the need to make a raid instance based around a asumption that everyone needed a entry level instance to make themselves aquinted with raiding.

Isnt this a insult to litterary everyone who reached the end in both Vanilla and TBC? As stated. ". If Naxxramas was the introduction to raiding 101 class for players who have never raided before, think of Ulduar as the second year class."

So what about us who graduated? Should we look for a new job in another game? I happily pay my monthly fee to pay WoW, its a brilliant game and I help run my guild at the best of my ability, its a community I wouldnt want to be without. But what do one do when the community is worn tired of a instance so easy, as i mentioned earlier, should only be classified as a insult to everyone else who isnt a beginner.

Naxx was fantastic, let it rest in piece and not be remembered as a travesty. Considered your endgame instance has been lag ridden like *nothing* before since week 2, I'm surprised we havent all quit.

When Ulduar comes, everyone will have access to it the same day, the same content and the same chance to progress. This also means that any guild that failed Naxx (how extremely amazing that may be,seriously) will follow. Ulduars gates will become a hub of lag and misery and the servers wont be stable for atleast a month, if that.

I wish upon a star that the game developers will look into their hearts and rethink their idea of accessibility and difficulty. We've been raiding endgame that takes excactly 1 night to clear for 3 months. As I said, there is nothing wrong with making people work for it. And if working for it is a bad thing, then you dont deserve to go all the way to Icecrown Citadel.

WoW didnt loose players during sunwell becuase it was too hard. they lost players because it was in the middle of the summer, sunwell was just the excuse. They all returned from summer break when wotlk hit, not to mention the horribly failure of AoC.

I'm actually begging on my knees that you dont stop releasing content that leaves reason for other players to aspire to someone more experienced then they are. Its what made WoW fun for me when i was a newbie, and Im sure its the same way for anyone who gets the feel for the game and starts looking deeper into it. Uncovering a new world and a new group of players that go where you havent is always interesting, but the myths and admiration get lost if there is nothing to be curious about anymore.

Please leave something to the imagination, not all to the fact.
"

[bunyipee]

wall of text crits for 5000000000000000

seriously if you want to write an essay do so where it serves some purpose not on a world of warcraft forum.

Posts about difficulty or accessibilty make my eyes bleed tbh.

Ulduar is going to be harder than naxx and while some people may attempt to pug it they will likely fail horribly as the people who try to pug mally.

What do you propose a return to tbc style attunement?

where to get into ssc or tk required you to kill maggy, gruul and clear kara?

please the pain was incredible, as were the attunement to bt.

When recruiting someone new do you have to run them through the old instances just for one attunement?

I have no issue with the way mally is done as it only requires one person to kill saph, but a return to the tbc attunements would be a terrible mistake.

[choody]

Bla bla bla...

[Angelico]

I'll just hope they make a soft "attunement", 1 a series of quests to be completed before you can enter 2 that the first boss of ulduar cannot be avioded by any means and that it is a gear/skill check of dimensions... "your in questgear you say? BOOM! you're dead"...

[Nighty]

i think i read about 10% of this at max and then my thoughts just drifted away ;D

seriously, is there anyone out there crazy enough to read the whole damn post and keep focused all the time to understand what this guy is trying to tell us ?

[neohartrix]

That was straight from heart, have to say. But again, he aint from Ensidia or Inner Sanctum or from For the horde. People should stop thinking that there isnt anything to be done or "we are the best" .... That is a far more better attitude than to whine about content clearing ... "towel" -->> you guys have the best guild in the world to comepte with in your server.. How about beating them to Ulduar world 1st achie rather giving a gabe lecture of how hard you raided TBC... Doesnt really prove anything . You have to see the business perspective of the game from blizz point of view. cba asked to give a "way to go" reply for this or try explaining it ..... back to farming relic of Ulduar. Sad post tbf

[rufryde2000]

I regret to inform you, that while well written from the business stand point of blizzard your point has "0" validity. And of course we must remember that blizzard is now a business, not of course to say they weren't before, but has exploded to now to an area they have not been in the past.

Your argument boils down to: Content is to easy, ergo it should be harder cause everyone get to see the game. while i do agree with your sentiment, being an "endgamer" from vanilla --> wrath, and even being a part of server firsts, this is where the argument comes off the hinges. For every 1, oldskooler they may loose they pick up 3 new fresh kids/people.

Try this argument on for size: Blizzard is saturating their market. If we assume that people play to raid (AND THAT IS A BIG ASSUMPTION, cause there is also pvp and achievements now.) but if we make that assumption anyway. after 1 month of raiding there is no longer a reason to play. now this argument assumes to many things, and initself is inherently flawed.

assumptions:

1) people play to raid
2) people always get the drops they want/need
3) people have no alts
4) people don't really care about pre-wrath achievments.

if 1-4 is true then the market will saturate itself very quickly, people will become bored and look for entertainment elsewhere. If none of the above are true, it still can have an adverse effect with the ease of content, due to extreme boredom of leveling alts and repeating current content until boredom again ensues.

The Argument of "Ease of Content" is garbage stop using it. It doesn't prove anything, and it doesn't help your case. It's the equivalent of getting mad at your mother for letting your brother play baseball with you because she bought him a baseball glove like yours, but bigger so he could catch the ball also.

The argument of saturated content, while smaller has at least some validity, If you can get everything you wish to accomplish in the game accomplished in a short amount of time you are less likely to play later.

Faults to saturated content :

1) casuals may not be able to accomplish as quickly, ergo not affecting them.
2) much more additional side content to keep the flashers on and stop you from seeing that any true progression content has long such been completed.
3) And hardcores have no true alternative from wow, adversely allowing blizzard to continue in which gives them the most profit, without having to create/adapt to the market.

just some thoughts.

[Batsmuggler]

This is it!

Hits the nail on the head. I remember seeing characters geared in stuff I've never seen before. Now you see guildless 2 hour-a-week warriors in the same gear as the more hardcore players, there's no sense of achievement.

[Mandible]

Don't see the big deal in having people go through a series of quests to get access to the raid instances - only shows that people are able to do the things needed to kill the bosses. Doesn't even have to be more than mc attunement.

[Nezoia]

The majority of the readers and posters on WoW related forums seems to be very casual, so you'll probably get more of those "blabla" comments on this forum, how sad it may be.

The orginal post (I read it on the wow-europe forums) is very good, well written, and posts some good points.

...but why did you let Trenver join Towel ? I mean, seriously

[Lynfiord]

And you really think that blizzard's first raid in WOTLK should ramp up from Sunwell difficulty to please the "hardcore old timers" that clear all raids from Vanilla?

Sorry to the OP but that's the worst market plan in the world. You can't think of make a good market by balancing the first raid istance of an expansion raising the level cap (and thus making garbage of all previous raid istances loot, interest and to an extent difficulty) to the last of the previous one.
That is a nice market plan to NOT enlarge your playerbase since whoever will join wow or start with raiding in WOTLK would have 2 choices:
1) raid from Kara trashing every drop and pratically facerolling everything up to sunwell (thus learning nothing about teamwork) and than get blocked cause the 1st tier of new raiding requires more than what Sunwell requires at 80 (being the same scriptd stuff but at your level and not 10 level behind),
2) don't bother start raiding cause you can't, as you know, start your raiding experience with a Sunwell difficulty raid.

Be confident that the difficulty of raids as Blizzard stated will ramp up and probably end with Icecrown with something a bit less hard that Sunwell (they stated it was TOO hard for their feeling). But really you can't ask for a Sunwell like istance as entry level due to how many old timer you want if you want to make money also enlarging playerbase.

You can argue there is not enough raids at start (ramping up) and thus leaving the old timers short to do, you can argue they don't release them fast enough, but you can't really ask for the first raid content to ramp in difficulty or be equivalent to Sunwell imho.

[Nezoia]

I think it's more in the line of having a entry raid, and then next level of raid instance, which is equal difficulty to the most difficult in the previous expansion.

So us who don't fail at life in playing our class, can continue with something fun and challenging, and let all the scrubs/noobs/failures stick around in their entry level raid for 1-2 years.

[lostdruid]

You know it's kind of sad when people invest so much in virtual accomplishments and they start to QQ.
You want to feel hardcore ? Go naked to raid naxx or sarth3d with 2mt or whatever. There are things to do in the game if you feel your virtual pride is at stake.
Scrub guilds because they want free pass ? lol it's a game.

Ok I miss vanilla and it was very hard mostly because of the learning curve, 40player raids, the class balance, the noobs and the harsh mechanics.
Sunwell was a joke to me comparing to the old times.
But I don't care any more for those things. Wow has died for me and I ("we") still playing it as ghosts trying to catch the old feeling.

I think also blizzard don't know what to do anymore with wow to "please" that huge fanbase. It's out of control and probably out of ideas and a bit outdated.
They can release 3, 4 or 10 hard raid instances leaving players to grind them for an eternity. And when it's over ? No more content again?
Rehash and repeat and QQ until next expansion ?

Get over it please and live your RL.
cya @ ulduar or next expansion or their next mmo (which obviously focusing right now)

[sublimeguy]

wall of text /cast mind flay
mind flay crits you for 9001
you take 1 dmg (over 9000 dmg overkill)

[marv3llous]

So many people talk about blizzards "marketing strategy" and how they are merely a business ... but the main point is - what got blizzard 11.5mil subscribers? Answer: Vanilla+TBC!

When i was a "noob" leveling up in vanilla i didnt feel like "omfg i will quit wow now because some other guild already had MC epics and i dont" ... this made me play more, get deeper into the game and try to get my own guild to get into MC. This was what made this game fun. Not easy welfare epics or as they call it nowdays "entry level raid". This game has been around for 4 years and now we get an "entry level raid" for 3+ months. I seriously doubt that people who are so casual that they have trouble clearing current content would care about us, hardcore, having end-game content that they can never get into. I doubt they would care, i doubt they would whine about it, i doubt they would cancel their accounts. They dont care because they are "casuals". So why spit in the faces of people who made this game what it is now? Why spit in the faces of real gamers!?

WotLK is just sad.

[Slim_Jim]

Kids these days... took couple minutes to read that text, nothing bad.
But then again, people dont read books these days either.

I definitely agree about raiding difficulty, it is easy atm, but we'll see how Ulduar goes or the raid instance after that. Icecrown will surely be quite hard but there's gonna be atleast 2 or 3 large places to visit before that.

Surely, I enjoy the difficulties of raid encounters, but I absolutely hate the fights where you had to get lots and lots of resistance gear and I hope it will never come back.
Sapphiron nowadays cant really be called it, 2 pieces isnt much.

Other one is long attunement chains, those are just horrid.
No problems if people advance with the guild, but the problems come with newly recruited people who might be missing them.

[Bera]

I don't buy it, I think there are more people who played before, actively playing now, then the casual new comers blizzard states, and claiming that 3 new people start if one old timer quits, is inaccurate, this old timer has payed for 3 copies of wow, to RAF several toons and ordeals like that, I also have out lasted the "new comers" as persae So thinking its financially smart to not appeal to your complete playerbase and ignore them is a horrible business tactic.

But whatever, its there game, they break it we pay for it. Eventually another amazing game will come out and Blizzard can live in its waste and poorly managed resources.

[awake283]

Bla bla bla...

[awake283]

The majority of the readers and posters on WoW related forums seems to be very casual, so you'll probably get more of those "blabla" comments on this forum, how sad it may be.

The orginal post (I read it on the wow-europe forums) is very good, well written, and posts some good points.

...but why did you let Trenver join Towel ? I mean, seriously

"Sad"? Really? Get off your high horse. It's a freakin' game, man. Don't misunderstand things.

[GAfo]

He got the point.
I'm not an hardcore raider, i've never cleared SWP or BT, and i did not kill Malygos hero yet either.
He's just damn right.