WHAT IF: It was illegal to post boss details/strategies online

[Underskilled]

Browsing through some of the changes in 4.2, I came across the encounter journal. After a good look at it, it really showed me the time of rushing headstrong into a fight, with plans to "work on the go" are a thing of the past. No longer does Blizzard want those to be uneducated of the current boss fight.

Though I really see no faults with the encounter journal, what if it was the exact opposite? What if there were no strategies, no how-to videos, and just about no information on bosses entirely? What if it was illegal to post such information, and the only way to acquire it was either word-of-mouth, or just fighting the boss and see what he does? Blizzard would remove testing new raids on the PTR, and hire employees to do 100% of the testing.

What do you think would happen, if Blizzard gave us no information whatsoever, on bosses, cut off all ways of obtaining information, and have the only way of learning an encounter, would be to simply do it? How would if affect the long time raiders, the newcomers, the hardcore players, the more casual players?

I personally think it would impact the game in a very positive way. Raiding would become a true challenge to all, and the idea of discussing boss strategies with your fellow players would definitely bring in a new sense of community.

[skitzin]

Then gold farmer would just start selling them?

No, seriously tho it would prob impact on the rate of progression for many people sure some of the hardcore lot would survive but many others would also lose out on it. However there is still the fact that reading up on a specific fight and actually completing it are two different things so in many ways one could argue that the situation is almost in the same bal park at the moment.

[BatteredRose]

Both casual and hardcore guilds would take more time to clear the content.

[Deleted]

Browsing through some of the changes in 4.2, I came across the encounter journal. After a good look at it, it really showed me the time of rushing headstrong into a fight, with plans to "work on the go" are a thing of the past. No longer does Blizzard want those to be uneducated of the current boss fight.

Though I really see no faults with the encounter journal, what if it was the exact opposite? What if there were no strategies, no how-to videos, and just about no information on bosses entirely? What if it was illegal to post such information, and the only way to acquire it was either word-of-mouth, or just fighting the boss and see what he does? Blizzard would remove testing new raids on the PTR, and hire employees to do 100% of the testing.

What do you think would happen, if Blizzard gave us no information whatsoever, on bosses, cut off all ways of obtaining information, and have the only way of learning an encounter, would be to simply do it? How would if affect the long time raiders, the newcomers, the hardcore players, the more casual players?

I personally think it would impact the game in a very positive way. Raiding would become a true challenge to all, and the idea of discussing boss strategies with your fellow players would definitely bring in a new sense of community.

If it was illegal to post video game strategies on the internet, i think we'd be living in a strange world.

[Kouki]

Browsing through some of the changes in 4.2, I came across the encounter journal. After a good look at it, it really showed me the time of rushing headstrong into a fight, with plans to "work on the go" are a thing of the past. No longer does Blizzard want those to be uneducated of the current boss fight.

Though I really see no faults with the encounter journal, what if it was the exact opposite? What if there were no strategies, no how-to videos, and just about no information on bosses entirely? What if it was illegal to post such information, and the only way to acquire it was either word-of-mouth, or just fighting the boss and see what he does? Blizzard would remove testing new raids on the PTR, and hire employees to do 100% of the testing.

What do you think would happen, if Blizzard gave us no information whatsoever, on bosses, cut off all ways of obtaining information, and have the only way of learning an encounter, would be to simply do it? How would if affect the long time raiders, the newcomers, the hardcore players, the more casual players?

I personally think it would impact the game in a very positive way. Raiding would become a true challenge to all, and the idea of discussing boss strategies with your fellow players would definitely bring in a new sense of community.

*The following is not trolling*.

Your wrong, your saying that knowledge is bad, the journal does NOT fight for you, it does not tell you where to go what to do how to kill the boss.

What it DOES tell you, is "Hey you know that 3 second long dot the boss just put on you? That you can't read before you die?
The Dot you can Google, and wowhead? Ya that dot does this.

Thats all.

/endrant.

[Chrno]

it would have a very very positive impact on the community for sure. (guilds sharing info with each other server wide via whispers).

it would also make my job as a raid leader much more interesting

[ReaverGX]

Some people would be happy, others would cry and moan same as usual. Personally I would love this. I was in a small family-ish guild and we just didn't care when Ulduar opened up we just went in guns a blazing and had tons of fun. The guild grew exponentially and suddenly we had a bunch of wannabe-elitist* who would complain and moan, but they had a tie in somewhere and were not removed due to the lax nature of the guild.

*Wannabe-elitist: Not someone who wants to look up strats to maximize time, but that one asshat who thinks they are really good and do okay at best, and try and tell everyone how they are doing X and or Y wrong. The kinda person who doesn't try and help people spec better in a nice way via suggestions, but more out right says "You are doing it wrong having points in that is stupid."**

** "You are doing it wrong having points in that is stupid" : There is a difference between helping out a new player and being an ass, same applies to "telling it as it is" and being a bitch...

A tangent...
"You don't have to look up the strats if you don't want to!"
-Well, most sane people don't like to waste time doing something trivial with an answer sitting to their left. The chances of having 9 (or even more unlikely 24 people) who are willing to dedicate their weekend or whenever to raid and just bang their heads against a wall with a "How to" just a click away is extremely unlikely. You could also have people who have the same ideals but you just hate their guts. so now the challenge is not only to find 9/24 similar minded players, but finding 9/24 similarlly minded players who are also enjoyable to be around. Because i don't care how challenging something will be, if i am dynamically opposed to said people i won't enjoy it and might as well stick with the group of people who are looking up strats to maximize their game time.

[Kryos]

then it wouldn't be about skill but about who gets more illegal data

[Themessiah]

*The following is not trolling*.

Your wrong, your saying that knowledge is bad, the journal does NOT fight for you, it does not tell you where to go what to do how to kill the boss.

What it DOES tell you, is "Hey you know that 3 second long dot the boss just put on you? That you can't read before you die?
The Dot you can Google, and wowhead? Ya that dot does this.

Thats all.

/endrant.

I think you should chill out... He is just asking a hypothetical question. Its been stated before in blues that the reason content is done so quickly now is due to just how accessible the information regarding encounters is - one of the reasons anyway. I have no doubt that this would impact the pace of raiding (assuming everyone was to abide by that law).

[Seriss]

Both casual and hardcore guilds would take more time to clear the content.

Hardcore guilds have no guides. They make them.

[Icebear]

Dungeon Journal

[Kouki]

I think you should chill out... He is just asking a hypothetical question. Its been stated before in blues that the reason content is done so quickly now is due to just how accessible the information regarding encounters is - one of the reasons anyway. I have no doubt that this would impact the pace of raiding (assuming everyone was to abide by that law).

So to make their game last longer, they stop people from learning to play?

[Thenoose]

TBH I like that idea, especially the part about how it would get people talking about strat together. But alas it would never happen, even if Blizzard wanted that there's no way to keep information off of the internet. But I mean if you had a whole group of like-minded people, you could easily go into every fight blind for those exact reasons, but I really don't see that happening either, not for me/my guild anyway.

[Deleted]

Your wrong, your saying that knowledge is bad, the journal does NOT fight for you, it does not tell you where to go what to do how to kill the boss.

What it DOES tell you, is "Hey you know that 3 second long dot the boss just put on you? That you can't read before you die?
The Dot you can Google, and wowhead? Ya that dot does this.

Thats all.

http://imageshack.us/m/600/6130/rhyolith.png
http://imageshack.us/m/269/3922/ragm.png

Is that so? Those are exact instructions on how to counter an ability.

[Alvito]

This is one of the silliest "what if" questions I have seen on here. Maybe I am just getting hung up on saying it was illegal to post them and the fact that there are millions of illegal things on the internet already, so it wouldnt change much even if some crazy way this could happen.

Ppl bitch about pugs and things like that now if there was no way for ppl to learn about anything before doing it or after they did it and failed then WoW would vanish faster then an ice cube on the sun.

[Zao]

Chances are it would kill half of the casual guilds, who don't have the time to figure out tactics to each and every boss.
It would also kill almost all PuGs that consist of less than 80% alts, since you'd have to explain the whole bossfight to them without any kind of visual help.

And those that don't like tactics don't have to look at them. Yes I know that doesn't count for Top end progression guilds who hunt for world firsts, but everybody below the top100 can simply decide not to look at them and figure it out by themself

[Kouki]

http://imageshack.us/m/600/6130/rhyolith.png
http://imageshack.us/m/269/3922/ragm.png

Is that so? Those are exact instructions on how to counter an ability.

I was under the impression it only said what the spells said.
So that you could read before a fight, like you can with Alt Tab.

I did not know that they had such stupid detailed info.

If they dumb it down to just the details i said in my example it would work.

[Arean]

So to make their game last longer, they stop people from learning to play?

No, actually, they would force people to learn. There is a much used quote stating that "You learn more from your own mistakes than from watching others."

I personally dislike the fact that people are always expected to know the fight inside and out. Takes a lot of the fun out of the game for me, but then again, I'm one of those who never minded a few wipes.

Tbh, I've always found it hilarious how people cry about the content being so easy, when they go in for the first time having read up on and watched every single mechanic, and using addons like DBM.

Ban boss-mods from the game, and we'll see who QQ's about things being too easy.

[Underskilled]

*The following is not trolling*.

Your wrong, your saying that knowledge is bad, the journal does NOT fight for you, it does not tell you where to go what to do how to kill the boss.

What it DOES tell you, is "Hey you know that 3 second long dot the boss just put on you? That you can't read before you die?
The Dot you can Google, and wowhead? Ya that dot does this.

Thats all.

/endrant.

No need for a disclaimer, I know you aren't trolling. I also know where you're coming from. I didn't mean to sound like I meant "the dungeon journal holds your hand through the raid" I more or less meant it does away with figuring out the skills as the fight goes along, since it gives a description of the skills the bosses have, that you can read beforehand.

Chances are it would kill half of the casual guilds, who don't have the time to figure out tactics to each and every boss.
It would also kill almost all PuGs that consist of less than 80% alts, since you'd have to explain the whole bossfight to them without any kind of visual help.

And those that don't like tactics don't have to look at them. Yes I know that doesn't count for Top end progression guilds who hunt for world firsts, but everybody below the top100 can simply decide not to look at them and figure it out by themself

I don't think it would kill off guilds, since this is where the community would come in. Raid leaders could brainstorm ideas for tackling encounters, top end guilds could hold discussions of the latest way to handle X or Y ability, and the entire server could slowly pass ideas around. The quality of a server would no longer be how fair the highest end raid guilds are, but how effectively the entire server itself could create strategies and useful tactics for defeating bosses.

Say you do have a casual guild. They are just getting started to raid, but they don't know the new boss. This opens up a plethora of ways to solve their problem. They could do a few test runs, to see the bosses moves, and develop a strategy from there. They could discuss tactics with other guilds, or maybe even look for help through the higher end hardcore guilds on the server. This wouldn't just be for casual guilds as well. Hardcore guilds would (most likely) no longer be about which guild on the server downed boss X first, all using the same cookie cutter tactic the mega-pros found on the PTR, but working together with each other, to find ways to beat the heroic bosses.

[A Day to Remember]

I honestly cant remember the last time i looked at a "strategy guide" for a boss in WoW. As it is indisputable that the easiest/best way to learn an encounter is by pulling it. No ammount of before-hand knowlege will compare to actually seeing it in action, i honestly feel it would make little/no impact on the game, and most world-first guilds change their strats dozens, if not more times depending on what they see.