Do we win too much? Raid ideas <---

[Yoshimiko]

Something like killing Kil'jaedan but a more powerful demon being released in his summoning ritual, who hid away biding his time and eventually causing the cataclysm a year and a half later. I honestly think that would have been epic.

That's what I thought of when I read the OPs post at least.

[procne]

well as i said, its already happening and it will happen.

nefarian was working on creation of ultimate dragonflight. we killed him then and defeated black dragonflight couple of times but they still managed to do it.

we killed kaelthas and illidan, but what do you know - kaelthas was secretly working with sargeras and almost managed to summon him into azeroth

now we killed malygos. i bet that in the future we will see negative impact of this. maybe his death was part of deathwing's plan? or burning legion's? or old gods'?

we freed kalecgos and defeated brutallus but we didnt save madrigosa and first she turned undead and then we had to destroy her.

my point is - we just dont notice how big price azeroth paid for our victories. we just kill boss, loot and thats all we remember

[Nefarious Tea]

Like, Say, Arthas appearing all over northrend and in HoR to smack your ass down? Building up a bad guy doesn't require an encounter you outright can't win.

Apart from HoR, all those appearances just made him look like a pussy, rather than building up the story/tension. We encountered him how many times? And each and every time, the LK was like fuckin Dr. Claw: "I'll get you next time, hero!"

[Greid]

The issue is that raiding takes the form of "loot acquisition." i think there is nothing wrong with looting from a chest as opposed to a body in the grander scheme of things even if it makes no 'logical' sense.

onyxia hide should be looted from onxyia, however, looting a neckpeice or sword from a box on a ship or next to someone....its a leap of faith to even care about this. i digress.
I really want to see a "losing battle," and I do feel that they have tried it before. And as much as we want the "bowser battle," it would get old really fast.

The biggest issue is this...how can the penalize us fairly for raiding. Not dropping loot would make the fight unplayed e.t.c., (they could do this on a second to last boss and it could be cool), having them place a debuff on us for a few hours would be tedious and just annoying.

How? if the boss just runs away or kills us, what happens next? can we just hearth to dala and keep spamming our profession trade-spams like any other raid night? Id love to see a boss fight that kills your characters for 3 days...or even just one character in the raid. It kills them, the guild has to use guild currency (whatever other things come with the new system) to ressurect them then everyone gets a title (YAY!!!)

so many silly options

[Zinjan]

So like:
We are fighting Deathwing, he does something that knocks the whole raid unconscious and he is about to smash us like bugs our screen fades black into a cutscene where you see jump Alexstrasza is on top of Deathwing forcing him down while we have to flee for our lives. The fleeing could be a part of the scene or another phase of the fight.

[Grzlynx]

We never actually fought Ragnaros at his full potential, he was severely weakened from being summoned in our physical plane. We didn't really defeat him, we merely kicked the guy when he was down.

We didn't kill Onyxia, Varian did.

It's not like we solo these bosses: We didn't kill Illidan alone, we got help from Akama and his followers, and in the end, Maiev killed Illidan. Not us!

We didn't kill the LK, the entirety of WotLK he was merely taunting us, and the final encounter with him was simply part of his plan. It's pretty obvious to anyone with a brain that the whole LK fight is simply him giving us our final test, to see if we're worthy of being his, as he puts it, strongest warriors. When he sees that we're good enough, he shows his ACTUAL power and 1shots us easily, and then starts rezzing. This is when TIRION shatters Frostmourne, where we get help from Terenas and the countless souls within Frostmourne to kill Arthas - we had very, very little to do with his defeat.

And to say that "the heroes" that defeat these bosses do it unscathed and without loss is stupid. Have you seen Icecrown? The entire place is littered with alliance and horde corpses of soldiers that fell. We, as players, are but mere soldiers in the massive army that is the Horde or Alliance.

Think of us as just some of the units that you used to command around in the Warcraft RTS'. We're not big and bad. The actual lore figures do all of the work, we're just following them.

[Uller]

I could see something like this happening in cata with the gilneas castle(on alliance). You fight a losing defensive action against the scourge, at the end, with most of your troops dead, you manage to escape the throne room with the king and say the royal treasurer, and it shows you heading to stormwind where after a cutscene your thanked and the treasurer plops down a royal chest saved by him containing your loot

[Zinjan]

And to say that "the heroes" that defeat these bosses do it unscathed and without loss is stupid. Have you seen Icecrown? The entire place is littered with alliance and horde corpses of soldiers that fell. We, as players, are but mere soldiers in the massive army that is the Horde or Alliance.

Think of us as just some of the units that you used to command around in the Warcraft RTS'. We're not big and bad. The actual lore figures do all of the work, we're just following them.

That is not true, in game we are renowned heroes who are exaulted by large groups of people, we are celebrities, and ToC was about finding an elite force to infiltrate ICC and take out the defenses on a smaller scale than a full on siege. Think of us as the heroes in WC 3, just not in a place of power like the major plot characters and not super powerful but in numbers we are a force to be reckoned with.

[WarriorWrath]

We never actually fought Ragnaros at his full potential, he was severely weakened from being summoned in our physical plane. We didn't really defeat him, we merely kicked the guy when he was down.

We didn't kill Onyxia, Varian did.

It's not like we solo these bosses: We didn't kill Illidan alone, we got help from Akama and his followers, and in the end, Maiev killed Illidan. Not us!

We didn't kill the LK, the entirety of WotLK he was merely taunting us, and the final encounter with him was simply part of his plan. It's pretty obvious to anyone with a brain that the whole LK fight is simply him giving us our final test, to see if we're worthy of being his, as he puts it, strongest warriors. When he sees that we're good enough, he shows his ACTUAL power and 1shots us easily, and then starts rezzing. This is when TIRION shatters Frostmourne, where we get help from Terenas and the countless souls within Frostmourne to kill Arthas - we had very, very little to do with his defeat.

And to say that "the heroes" that defeat these bosses do it unscathed and without loss is stupid. Have you seen Icecrown? The entire place is littered with alliance and horde corpses of soldiers that fell. We, as players, are but mere soldiers in the massive army that is the Horde or Alliance.

Think of us as just some of the units that you used to command around in the Warcraft RTS'. We're not big and bad. The actual lore figures do all of the work, we're just following them.

you know i completely forgot about him showing his true power and blowing us all up, thats the kind of stuff we need to see more often. I enjoyed that storyline where all he wanted was the greatest heroes to rez and become deathknights to overthrow the rest of the population...Still a little set back like theses but in a bigger scale would be awesome!

[Monteverdi]

I've always thought it would be cool if Blizzard would have some of the major enemies in an expansion appear for multiple encounters and either defeat (but not kill) the raid, or be forced to flee from the raid, before finally being destroyed. For this reason, I love the Lich King encounter in Halls of Reflection. IMO, we need more of that.

[Izanami-Okami]

HoR 3rd boss, RUN AWWAAAAAYYYYY! was a defeat in my book

Anyhow, I don't see how it could be done without feeling gimmicky and abitary unless it was at the end of WoW. Otherwise it feels like you fought your best and "won" only to be handed a chuck of "Sorry, thanks for trying but no only is you princess in another castle, we blew up your car and dug pitfall traps in all roads on the way there." It'd have to be carefully done.

We didn't retreat, we just advanced in a different direction! Lawl.

[drache]

We arent on our own we got Alexstrasza and the dragons on our side...

I always kind of wondered what they did while we fight LK. I mean, yeah, they stepped in at the wrath gate. but aside from that, where are they while people are fighting him.

[Bitmap]

I always kind of wondered what they did while we fight LK. I mean, yeah, they stepped in at the wrath gate. but aside from that, where are they while people are fighting him.

Defending the Ruby Sanctum? Or trying to at least.
To be honest, I don't remember them ever not having a reason for main characters not helping us, even when is was revealed slightly after the fact, or sort of de-facto (Thrall is governing the horde, not raiding etc.)

[deyndra]

Honestly we don't ever seem to win.

The raid bosses keep coming back for more ><

For example:
Onyxia (Cataclysm marks the 3rd time)
Nefarian (Cataclysm)
Ragnaros (Cataclysm)
KT (WOTLK and heck for all we know he may be back again)
Kael Thas (MERELY A SET BACK)
Blood Princes (ICC)
Van Cleef (Cataclysm)

You get the point.

In my opinion we should have to fight Death Wing several times. Once when he is createing an army or something and after we "beat" him the army gets released and creates a new world event where we have to defend the cities because we failed stopping him from making the army. Then a few more times after he gets powered up along with Rag.

Any link that Van Cleef will come back?

[procne]

well, deadmines gets a remake, so we assume vancleef will still be there

and from wowwiki:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Deadmines

During BlizzCon, it was stated that "Edwin was back, and he's VanCleef-ier than ever..."

[Slant]

What i am saying is, it would be nice to have some raids that when you complete them you feel like your purpose there was unsuccessful, like you try to stop a boss from opening a portal to release armys of dragons, but you complete the fight successfully but the nature of the event makes you feel like you failed.

Not to burst your bubble and it's probably been said already... but, you did fail in the LK Encounter. Remember how he insta killed every last one left of your raid? Tirion saved your butt, so did the ghost of Arthas' father. Not you.

I like your ideas, though. Especially a phasing fight in Stormwind.

[Fraza]

The raid bosses keep coming back for more ><

For example:
...
Van Cleef (Cataclysm)

I heard Van Cleef is a raid boss.

Apart from HoR, all those appearances just made him look like a pussy, rather than building up the story/tension. We encountered him how many times? And each and every time, the LK was like fuckin Dr. Claw: "I'll get you next time, hero!"

The whole idea of this was that he wanted you to get more powerful so when you finally encounter him in ICC, he can turn you into one of his powerful servants.

[kivipää]

Honestly we don't ever seem to win.

The raid bosses keep coming back for more ><

For example:
Onyxia (Cataclysm marks the 3rd time)
Nefarian (Cataclysm)
Cataclysm is the 1st time she comes back. 5-year anniversary revision was for furn, nothing to do with what actually happened. Also, their models look wery undead-ish to me. And what's the point of necromancy? To resurrect armies and powerful minions who were once defeated.

Ragnaros (Cataclysm) Funny thing with elementals and demons usually is that you just destroy their manifestation in the physical world. Their essence the returns to the plane they came from and is then free to return for a 2nd try. That's what makes them so formidable enemies.

KT (WOTLK and heck for all we know he may be back again) Nobody has done anything for his phylactery yet. He might have lost a fight or two, but he's been killed 0 times.

Kael Thas (MERELY A SET BACK) Yup, this guy, I think, we can all agree of.

Blood Princes (ICC) Undead will keep getting reanimated until you either completely vaporize the bodies or kill the dude who keeps reanimating them. That's the point of having undead minions, and makes them dangerous.


Van Cleef (Cataclysm) "Existing artwork, but new creatures, fights and abilities" <----- yeees, sounds very "vancleef is back!" to me... NOT.

You get the point. I hope you do too. It's not like the bosses who were actually killed came back in exactly same fight and without some kind of a reanimation/repair/remanifestation that are a common part of the abilities of such creatures in majority of the fantasy genre. (KT was not killed, onyxia never has returned lorewise and... well, Kael'thas is the expection that confirms the rule)

Valid points countered by my own, validier points.

[procne]

who knows maybe deadmines will be turned into raid. can you imagine 25 people cluttered in those tight tunnels? hehe

[Pepitobenito]

Yes; defeat is necessary to build up the cause of those fighting for good. If good triumphs over evil every time, who cares?

I agree with the idea of having some events or encounters that are basically lost causes. The objective is to lose as gracefully as possible; perhaps we would have to save fellow members of the Alliance or Horde from impossible odds, or deny the enemy some valuable resource they are after, or maybe just survive. The LK encounter in HoR is a good example of this, and I'd like to see more of it.

I'd expect to see Deathwing frequently on our journey towards the final showdown with him, and I'd also expect him to not be merely 'testing' us as Arthas was. No, whereas Arthas was a constant shadow at our backs, watching us grow in strength and march towards his goals, Deathwing should be a fireball in our face, brutally trying to kill us without mercy or hesitation.