Why blizz made ICC like ToC and not like ulduar?

[Alan1187]

Sunwell was gated, and people loved how hard it was. Now granted a majority of ICC isn't to difficult, but we're all only doing the easy mode fights at the moment. Once hard mode is unlocked, plus doing the harder versions of the hard modes (i.e. the Invincible mount mode of LK) will probably pretty epic, and hopefully some of the best fights in the game.

[Ultralisk]

I don't quite understand that. So if you find a boss hard...hvin limited attempts is helping you? Last week we had to cancel a raid nite because we had no tries left. It is not upto blizzard to dictate what we do with our time which is what they are doing here.
How is limited attempts helping u not bash ur head on the wall? You still bash your head on the wall..only that u can do so just 10-15 times now. Remember that attempt where u got the boss to 5% and wiped, the group had perfect synergy, everyone had the strat down and you are sure next 1-2 tries and you have it...but oh wait, there's no tries left and next week ...oh wait a couple of people from last nite are missing ! You see what i mean ?

I think you're missing the point. Limited attempts isn't "helping you not to bash your head on the wall". Limited attempts is stopping you from just repeating the encounter endlessly until you luck out and everything goes your way. You have to actually be able to finish the encounter 10% of the time or whatever, rather than doing it 1 time out of 100.

Agreed that it "doesn't reward (extreme) persistence" but why should that level of persistence be rewarded if it's not coupled with any particular level of skill?

[bunnyhat]

Blizzard is trying to skirt their raid design between making hardcore guilds take some time, but letting more casual guilds do it has well.

I define a hardcore guild has one who will raid 18+hours a week to complete a raid compared to a more casual that will only devout 6-8hours a week.


Blizzard doesn't want hardcore guilds chewing through an instance in a weeks time by raiding it for 30 hours. They use to limit this by making bosses and raids extremely difficult and making it so to kill one boss, most of you guild needs gear from the boss before it. This worked, but it made casual raiding extremely hard to do.


They released Naxx and Ulduar and hardcore raiders had it done in less then a week. So they are trying new ways now to limit it.

[Powerogue]

i do disagree with limited attempts, limited attempts should be part of the hard modes.

pretty good instance, but they've used about as much lore in it if not less than the 3 HEROIC 5-MANS. feels wrong when the climax of the expansion feels less lore-strong than the 5-man heroics you use to gear up for it. :-\

[Beachchairs]

Wotlk has been a constant series of disappointments, barring ulduar.
ICC was supposed to redeem Wotlk, however so far it has been a failure. I have reasons to say why I am disappointed in ICC:

>>When we were given the most uninspired, unimaginative and poorly constructed raid ToC and expected to waste time on it for months...the excuse blizzard gave us for that abomination of a raid was that they needed resources and manpower for ICC.

I actually liked ToC. I hate like that I don't have to raid until a half hour before I start work to get good gear.

>>Despite the massive unpopularity of ToC and it's gated attempts, blizzard ignored its playerbase and went on to implement gating in ICC

Gating also prevents failguilds from bitching about how hard Arthas is and getting him nerfed into the ground because they don't have the gear to clear him.

>>Gating has resulted in major dramas, one disconnect, one accident, one time ur fone rang, one lag spike...everything that used to be something most raiders considered as unavoidable incidents and ignored them , now result in major dramas because you only have 15 tries.
This has taken the "Fun" out of raiding for raiders and raid leaders alike.

A decent point.

>>If blizzard did not do any work on ToC and used the resources on ICC, why is it so bugged? We all know that you can not fight Lich King unleass u clear the three wings...why the gating? Is it just an attempt to buy time by blizzard while the polish the unfinished and flawed encounters ?

All software has bugs. Hello World, the simplest program there is, has bugs in it. It is simply the nature of software development.

>>Looking into the future, if one expects the timeline from beta to hitting the shelves for cataclysm to be 4-6 months..it will be available around June-July-ish. Do blizzard really expect people to raid ICC till then? They have already said that ICC is the last major content patch..so what on earth is going on? have they just started taking the playerbase for granted?

I _think_ it was around two months before Wrath hit that everyone basically gave up raiding. They saw no real point to it and thus gave up on trying to progress through content. They instead working on levelling another toon (say one that will be OP in when the expansion hits), farming gold, getting your professions maxed, getting a set of gear for your expected levelling spec, etc. Blizzard probably thinks this will happen again, and thinks people will abandon ICC the same way that people abandoned Sunwell in TBC.

>>So far Wotlk has had only one raid that was loved by majority..ulduar. Best thing about ulduar was the way hardmodes activated. You go in the same raid and could do normal FL and hardmode XT if u wanted, the raiders had the freedom to pick and choose according to their groups composition etc on the raid day. With ToC, its either all hardmode or all normal mode. Given that almost everyone I kno hates ToC, why did they choose the ToC system of heroics over ulduar?

I didn't particularly like Ulduar. It was far too long. It had good encounters, and the vehicles didn't seem to add 3 seconds to your ping (like the 5 man ToC's do), but I prefer raids that can be completed in one night. Ulduar just doesn't fit that bill.

[supa]

When people say that limited attempts takes the 'fun' out of it are just people who are very bad players or in very bad guilds. The limited attempts is only for the last boss in each wing.
At least form what I believe (haven't played in over a month so have only done 1st wing) you can choose which wing to do in what order. So, you can do the 1st wing then the Princes and Festergut and Rotface and Valtheria Dreamwalker. Then attempt Prof Putricide and Blood Queen Lana'thel and Sindragosa. This means you can get 8 bosses in before even attempting the limited attempts situation.
That's plenty of raiding time. If you can't complete those bosses in the attempts then oh well, you still had a good raid night. If you are raiding that long and not dropping bosses its likely 2 in the morning and no one is functioning very well.
That's how I see the limited attempts system.

[Gron]

>>Despite the massive unpopularity of ToC and it's gated attempts, blizzard ignored its playerbase and went on to implement gating in ICC

ToC gated attempts - while looked good on paper - didn't work out well. On the other hand, I quite like ICC gating system. It has ONE HUGE ISSUE - the buggy/bad code Blizzard released with raid will disconnect raiders during the limited encounters. Worst offender is Prof. Putricide, on excellent goes (nearing a kill), 1-2-3 people DC in chains, with one of them being a tank. Lag spikes will kill raids as well.

>> I understand that bugs etc are common in a game however...Wotlk has been a disaster so far (except ulduar). One would expect blizzard to try redeem themselves in the final raid of the expansion especially since they themselves said that ToC was put together fast so they could work on ICC, but unfortunately..ICC does not even come into the top 5 raids of all times by a long margin.

Lets not rush with that one- we have not seen all content in ICC yet. However most fights are fun, albeit not as good as some of the old raid content. But let's not compare ICC with TOC or Naxx 2.0. I would rate TOC and Naxx 2.0 1 on a scale of 1-10, 1 being abysmal. Not rating ICC a 10, but a lot of small things look good, e.g. some NPC's helping you on trash as you progress in lower spire, etc.

>>Looking into the future, if one expects the timeline from beta to hitting the shelves for cataclysm to be 4-6 months..it will be available around June-July-ish. Do blizzard really expect people to raid ICC till then? They have already said that ICC is the last major content patch..so what on earth is going on? have they just started taking the playerbase for granted?

Yes ofcourse they expect. Doing raid content takes a long time, see the Gunship battle - loads of work/tonns of bug possibilities (if you do new things).

>>So far Wotlk has had only one raid that was loved by majority..ulduar.

I agree - I think ICC can live up to Ulduar depending on the remaining encounter "fun" left. In my view, ICC is not too far off from Ulduar quality, and can reach it if the remaining encounters are as good as we expect them.

[Hypernetic]

I like the limited attempts and I especially like them being included on "easy modes".

I think limited attempts encourage players to step up their game. Causing a wipe pre-limited attempts was an annoyance, with limited attempts it's a hindrance to the entire guild. Players need to actually pay attention and learn the mechanics of a fight instead of just winging it when they get there.

[Gron]

I like the limited attempts and I especially like them being included on "easy modes".

I think limited attempts encourage players to step up their game.

Imagine the amount of QQ whirlwind that will hit the fan when the hardmodes are unlocked, and guilds will wipe due to that bug (lag / disconnects at Putricide) Blizzard still has in the code. Strange not one person disconnects in raid only when you start Putricide with limited attempts. I guess must be the same root cause that ICC had on Northrend Beasts disconnects.

[Arganaut]

I like what I have seen so far in ICC. But I do agree with the OP that I prefer Ulduar where you could activate hard modes rather than select heroic prior to going in. I've not read that you will be able to do the same when ICC heroic modes are released but I could be wrong.

Either way, the number of disconnects we've noticed recently will not bode too well for those wanting to do heroic modes with the gating system.

[Sfr528]

To be honest, its not like the OP doesn't have one or two decent points, but...

If you really think Blizzard doesn't listen to their playerbase, try playing another MMO... Honestly.

To be honest, I believe the problem is blizzard is so scared of losing its player base that they listen to it way to much.

Limited attempts are great in theory, if blizzard could stop lag and players randomly disconnecting off the servers. I don't believe my attempt should be wasted if the tank's power went out. Can't even begin to imagine how many HM Anub Arak wipes we've had just because a kiter d/ced, stayed in game, and got spiked, and then anub proceeded to wipe the entire raid. Usually that sort of thing doesn't bother people, but when it costs you insanity you just want to kill that

[Demorz]

Answer to the forum question:

Because players liked toeing giant crack-whore stink beetes in the ass more than toeing a billion-eyed death God in the brain.

Amen to the Doom Portal.