Flexible Raid Lock System in 4.0.1
Originally Posted by Bashiok (Blue Tracker)
Almost six months ago we announced that Cataclysm raids were being redesigned to make both raid sizes the same difficulty, drop the same quality of loot, and exist in the same lockout. This evolution in raid philosophy is built on the belief that the size of your raiding group should be a choice based solely on what's more fun and enjoyable for you, and that you should not have to complete the same raiding content twice in a week to maximize your character's progression. These systems are the culmination of a great deal of design and player feedback from the last few years. With the release of the 4.0.1 patch, the new Flexible Raid Lock system will debut in Icecrown Citadel and The Ruby Sanctum.

With the Flexible Raid Lock system, instead of being locked to a specific raid size or raid group, each character will have the opportunity to defeat each raid encounter once a week. You could kill Lord Marrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper with a 10-player raid on Wednesday, join a 25-player raid to kill Festergut and Rotface on Thursday, and then lead a completely new 10-player raid to kill The Lich King on Friday. Every raid has a list of encounters associated with the zone. For example, Icecrown Citadel has twelve encounters. After you defeat Lord Marrowgar, you can open up your character's raid information dialog and see the list of encounters in Icecrown Citadel with Marrowgar marked as defeated. You may no longer fight Lord Marrowgar with any raid size or difficulty until the weekly raid reset for your region occurs.

Another key change is that if you join someone else's raid in progress, you are no longer locked to that raid after merely zoning in. Your raid status will only change when a boss is defeated, at which point it will be updated to reflect the state of the instance in which you are currently participating. So, let's say you have killed the first four bosses of Icecrown Citadel, and you then join a raid that has defeated the first four encounters, as well as Festergut and Rotface. The dialog that displays upon entering Icecrown Citadel will show that the raid has defeated 6 of 12 encounters. If you help them defeat Professor Putricide, then you would be marked as having defeated not only Professor Putricide for the week, but also Festergut and Rotface. If instead after joining the raid you then proceeded to wipe ten times to Professor Putricide, you could leave the raid with only the first four bosses marked as completed.

To help communicate to players which bosses are dead in the raid leader's raid, there is new functionality to link in chat a list of the encounters the raid has defeated. So before you join a raid, you can see what they've already defeated. If a raid leader advertises in chat that she needs another healer for an 8/12 Icecrown Citadel run, you can see precisely which bosses are still available to fight. If you were only looking for that one item from Queen Lana'thel that never drops for you and this raid already defeated her, you will know not to join that raid.

Let's look at another example of the Flexible Raid Lock system. A guild schedules three nights for 25-player Icecrown Citadel raiding on Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Wednesday, the raid defeats Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Saurfang. On Thursday, five people cancel their raid attendance due to real life emergencies. The raid leader knows that if he cancels Thursday raiding, there's little chance they'll have enough time on Saturday to defeat the other eight bosses in Icecrown Citadel. So he splits the remaining 20 Thursday raiders into two 10-player raids. Each new raid enters Icecrown Citadel and defeats Rotface, Festergut, Blood Council, and Valithria Dreamwalker. The next Saturday with all 25 players online, they reform as a 25-player raid and enter Icecrown Citadel once more. Only Professor Putricide, Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and The Lich King remain. After a tough fight, the Lich King falls and everybody celebrates. Without the Flexible Raid Lock system the entire raid probably would have missed out on a night of raiding, and likely would not have reached the Lich King.

While players can freely move between raids of different sizes in normal difficulty, there are some additional rules for Heroic difficulty. If a 10- or 25-player raid defeats a boss on Heroic difficulty, then those players may now only raid additional Heroic encounters with that specific raid. If your Heroic 25-player raid defeats the first four bosses of Icecrown Citadel on Heroic, then they may not split up into two 10-player raids and continue to fight in Heroic difficulty. You may also not join someone else's raid if they have defeated a Heroic encounter.

But let's say you are a member of a Heroic raid in Icecrown Citadel, and after killing Lord Marrowgar on Heroic you have Internet connection issues that prevent you from raiding for two nights. During those two nights, the rest of the raid kills everything. Without the Flexible Raid Lock system, you would be done with raiding Icecrown Citadel for the week. Ouch. With the Flexible Raid Lock system, you can join someone else's raid as long as they are doing Normal difficulty. This would at least give you the opportunity to earn your Justice Points for the week. If this raid attempted to switch to Heroic difficulty for Icecrown Gunship Battle with you in the raid, the raid leader would receive an error message stating that she cannot change to Heroic, because someone in the raid (i.e., you) is already locked to a different Heroic instance.

All of the new Cataclysm raids will feature the Flexible Raid Lock and Dynamic Difficulty systems, and when the Cataclysm occurs the other Wrath of the Lich King raids will also have these features. It's important to note that this system doesn't affect Heroic dungeons, they will work as they always have. We look forward to feedback for this new system after 4.0.1 is released. As a reminder, Icecrown Citadel and The Ruby Sanctum are the only two raids that support the Flexible Raid Lock until the Cataclysm occurs.

Update
One piece of clarification on questions being asked so far, although we're still compiling feedback and will work to answer some of the questions and clear up any confusion we can.

The loot system in Icecrown and Ruby Sanctum is not changing. This implementation of the new flex raid lock is only that, a new implementation of the raid lockout system we'll be using in Cataclysm. This does not change the separation of 10 and 25 in ICC, and does not change the item drops or achievements.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Flexible Raid Lock System in 4.0.1 started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 365 Comments
  1. Mowse's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Nikboss View Post
    25 men Raid won't die until Cata will arrive simply because 25 men still drop higher level items than 10 men (talking about ICC and RS). For all the ppl that hoped to get 264 ilevel gears from 10 men i'm sorry for you.
    I don't believe that is what people complaining about 10 mans are talking about. I know for me specifically, being my guild's tank, this means I will not be able to get complete my heroic 10 man achievements if I want to keep helping the guild progress in 25..
  1. Rezzyk's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Naylol View Post
    So will ICC25 loot drop in ICC10 when 4.01 hits?

    The flexible raidlock sounds like a bad idea to me. So you have killed the first 3 bosses in a bad pug, then you need to find a raid that has killed exactly those 3 bosses? How is that helpful.
    No, killed -at least- those bosses. As long as the bosses you have killed are dead in the raid you are trying to join, you can go in. You just can't kill the same boss twice in a week.
  1. Spotnick's Avatar
    Nah, this system is great.. explanations were a bit confusing, as I'm unsure how they actually set your raid ID if you join a raid, does all kills spread to your ID now? Meaning if somebody only did Sindragosa, now nobody can do it if you kill Marrowgar?

    But the issue here is that they are introducting it for ICC, without any explanation, and at max a 2 weeks warning. Not only do people now have 10 and 25 man groups, but they are also working to get specific items, doing specific achievements, etc.

    Is 10 man difficulty going to be increased, will it drop 25 man loot now? does your 10 and 25 man achievements merge?

    I mean, wtf, leave ICC alone and start this with the new raids, what's the point of introducing it now?

    So many unanswered questions.
  1. Olumdril's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by CaspianRoach View Post
    Heroic/Normal division makes zero sense.

    "Here, have this awesome system and no, you can't use it if you're good enough to do heroics"

    yay?
    ^^ this.

    Why wouldn't a guild good enough to do heroics benefit from being able to split the 25-man raiding team into 2 10-man teams when they only get 20-21 signups one night? Isn't 10-man and 25-man supposed to be equally difficult? What, then, does it matter to make it behave in the same way that the normal system works?
  1. Rezzyk's Avatar
    I guess my other question is.. are the bosses killed based on the raid leader? So say, I'm in a 25man, only do the first wing of ICC because I'm busy the rest of the week. BUT my guild, who started in that same "raid id" in the old system, clears the place. That doesn't matter, because it's specific for me? And I can either join a raid that has at least the first wing dead, or start a raid and since it's my raid the first wing is cleared?
  1. Smartie's Avatar
    So from reading that, sounds like the new fancy raid lock out is mainly a pug tool.

    It doesn't help people raiding heroic bosses at all with their guild. You cannot downsize from that, so if we lack people one night we cannot continue.

    By the time people are ready to raid heroic encounters they're usually maxed out on badge/justice point gear anyways. So being able to joined some scub pug to grabs some points on normal is crap.

    Sounded nice until they prevented it all working with heroics.
  1. Oziriz's Avatar
    Great to see Blizzard actually looking how to improve this game, I feel that WotLK was a big trial (some failure, some success) when it came to configuring the raid lock-outs. The new system is great for progress raids, new guilds (that can't always get 25 man together for their first few raids) and also PuGs, if people even care to do it any more. While keeping the normal heroic progression in tact.

    I don't know what people are talking about when they say R.I.P 10 or even 25 man or they fucked over progressive 25/10 man heroic guilds, because the system is exactly the same as it is now. You just have to choose between 10 and 25 man, without feeling forced to do both any more, isn't that GREAT? More time to do other stuff in-game, IRL or maybe play other games!

    Great job Blizzard I'm very grateful for these changes, now with my current 10man hc guild I don't have to worry about 25man any more!
  1. swills's Avatar
    Man, the amount of people who fail totaly at reading comprehension is nuts. Everyone should read this twice before posting as it probably doesn't work the way you think it does.
  1. DrgnDancer's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Naylol View Post
    So will ICC25 loot drop in ICC10 when 4.01 hits?

    The flexible raidlock sounds like a bad idea to me. So you have killed the first 3 bosses in a bad pug, then you need to find a raid that has killed exactly those 3 bosses? How is that helpful.
    No, you can join a group that has killed 6 bosses and kill the remaining six. You'll lose your chance at the middle three, but it's a Hell of a lot better than being stuck not being able to continue at all. It'll suck if *all* you want out of ICC is DBW or something, but at least you can keep going.
  1. Sunstrikeisretlawl's Avatar
    So will 10m drop 25m loot now?
  1. Rezzyk's Avatar
    Blizz quote:

    The loot system in Icecrown and Ruby Sanctum is not changing. This implementation of the new flex raid lock is only that, a new implementation of the raid lockout system we'll be using in Cataclysm. This does not change the separation of 10 and 25 in ICC, and does not change the item drops or achievements.
    http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=7

    So no, no ICC/RS25 loot in 10 mans.
  1. Brett Skullcrack's Avatar
    If it takes such a wall of text to explain this system and it's still not clear how it works, it might be a good idea to go back to the drawing board and come up with a better system.
  1. sidebar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by rushm0r3 View Post
    Meaning that if yr 25-man raid has 11/12 HM down for the week but has never and will never kill LK HM there is no opportunity to do the 10-man version!? Bummer.
    It also means you don't have to go slog through 11 bosses to get up to LK in 10 man ... and I dooooo mean slog.

    ToC was the worst ... you had to run the dam thing 4 times each week (10 norm, 10 hard, 25 normal, 25 hard) to get max loot / badges. ICC was a little better only have to run it twice (and I really liked the way they dealt with badge gear). I really like the change to a single lock out so you only have to run stuff once ... per toon.

    I am still going to spend just as much time raiding after the patch as I did before, the difference will be my alts will get a lot more play time and that will keep the game fresh as the encounters play a bit differently from class to class.
  1. steamrice's Avatar
    This thread is funny, it's like people don't want to read and keep repeating questions that gets answered repeatedly and that's why having to listen to voice dialogs in SWTOR isn't going to work for today's wow gamers. :P
  1. Mowse's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by steamrice View Post
    This thread is funny, it's like people don't want to read and keep repeating questions that gets answered repeatedly and that's why having to listen to voice dialogs in SWTOR isn't going to work for today's wow gamers. :P
    Good, maybe I can finally enjoy a game without all these morons then
  1. Batos's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by shokter View Post
    you can, in fact do a boss on H then the rest on reg. The heroic restrictions, i think, are so you cannot sell yourself out as a key to heroic encounters to those who have not already unlocked them (without committing yourself to that raid group for that lockout at least). If you were to join a group to help them access lootship, for example, you would not be able to raid anymore heroics that week unless it was with the same raid id.
    Too bad the people who don't get it won't take the time to read this.

    I love the new system. On my low-pop server its hard enough to get 25 people together, let alone 25 good people. I always had more fun doing 10 mans anyway. And if you care about ICC loot at this point, you're doing it wrong.
  1. Jontus's Avatar
    One piece of clarification on questions being asked so far, although we're still compiling feedback and will work to answer some of the questions and clear up any confusion we can.

    The loot system in Icecrown and Ruby Sanctum is not changing. This implementation of the new flex raid lock is only that, a new implementation of the raid lockout system we'll be using in Cataclysm. This does not change the separation of 10 and 25 in ICC, and does not change the item drops or achievements.
    Blue post
  1. Kuja's Avatar
    Hate this change My guild disbanded because of this.
  1. Kingsonz's Avatar
    so what they changed the gear from icc 10 item level 264, and herioc icc 10 to item level 277? man this is rediculous ppl going to be walking around with 6.5k gs just by being carried through icc 10 herioc.... lawl

    <Mod Edit: You cannot read. No gear is changing>
  1. Kingsonz's Avatar
    i mean herioc icc 10 to 277*

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