[Official] Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible Race to World First

[The Oblivion]

Seriously? there are people here who enjoy 3 days of endless splits and M+ farming before the race actually starts?

Surely getting rid of all that shit is half the reason to want to move to a tournament realm. (the other half being the global release)

disagree, i think playing with characters and gear that are not even yours, is dumb and counter to the main point of would of warcraft. I think a tournament realm would all but destroy the race and make people totally stop caring.

[vizzle]

disagree, i think playing with characters and gear that are not even yours, is dumb and counter to the main point of would of warcraft. I think a tournament realm would all but destroy the race and make people totally stop caring.

As I suggested in my last post, it could work if you're allowed to copy your character + all existing gear over at any point after the race starts. Meaning you can do all the splits you want, and then when you're ready, you go transfer over to the tournament realm to push for WFs. No other copying after that first copy.

[Randris]

No one to blame but Blizzard. 20 years since launch and they still refuse to do global releases for the raids. It would solve all this ridiculous arguing.

I understand their reasoning. They don't want to subvert the raid release and maintenance schedule to accommodate an unsanctioned community event for the sake of a few dozen people. We may not like it but it is what it is and by all accounts they have no plans to change.

[Gorsameth]

disagree, i think playing with characters and gear that are not even yours, is dumb and counter to the main point of would of warcraft. I think a tournament realm would all but destroy the race and make people totally stop caring.

You may well be right.
In which case we are stuck with the current situation and we can enjoy this discussion every single f*ing tier.

[The Oblivion]

As I suggested in my last post, it could work if you're allowed to copy your character + all existing gear over at any point after the race starts. Meaning you can do all the splits you want, and then when you're ready, you go transfer over to the tournament realm to push for WFs. No other copying after that first copy.

Why? Why should you as a raider not be able to go grind more gear after your raid team is done for the night? Its like saying they should only let each team raid 4 hours a day and then kick them off the realm so no one can have more time playing.

[vizzle]

Why? Why should you as a raider not be able to go grind more gear after your raid team is done for the night? Its like saying they should only let each team raid 4 hours a day and then kick them off the realm so no one can have more time playing.

Echo, Method, and Liquid are already raiding 16 hours a day to get these world firsts. When exactly are they finding the time to "go grind more gear" outside of those pushing hours?

[shanthi]

This would all be a good argument if the race was just one boss and not the entire raid. You don't get to erase pre-end boss time as if they aren't putting any energy / mental strain on downing those other bosses. It's a marathon, not a sprint. It's the race to finish the raid, not the race to get to Sakareth, and then kill him. The event doesn't start on the last boss; part of what makes it interesting is watching them raid for 16 hour days for several days and them having the focus to keep it up.

I didn't erase it. I pointed out that the bosses before the last one give EU teams, in this case, an excellent chance to catch up due to the dynamic of getting to collect data and strategy possibilities (what works well, what doesn't) in advance of any pulls of their own. It's ridiculous to claim it's a "big assumption" to think that matters--a huge amount of pulls on difficult bosses is simply figuring out what the killing strategy will be. Getting to shortcut past all those pulls obviously matters. If it *was* only one boss, a 13 hour lead would be totally insurmountable. As it is, the earlier bosses give the teams behind the leader the chance to make up the ground, which happens in every single race, and the final boss (which is not the only boss that matters, but is the final stage) is largely done on equal footing, time-wise.

[Gorsameth]

Why? Why should you as a raider not be able to go grind more gear after your raid team is done for the night? Its like saying they should only let each team raid 4 hours a day and then kick them off the realm so no one can have more time playing.

Isn't there a mandatory break period in the Great Push? Think I saw something like that last time I tuned in for a bit. Since its an official Blizzard event (as the RWF would also be on a separate realm) they have to atleast pretend they care about the health of participants and not make them play constantly for X hours to not fall behind.

[Relapses]

Yes... but the majority of top contenders don't stream at all to hide their strats that make a significant difference in times. I've tried watching TGP and the people actually streaming it don't perform well enough to be worth watching.

I get it -- I'm not trying to fully discredit the Tourny realm thing I just don't think it's reasonable. Given how much Blizzard currently benefits from the RWF I think them moving the race to the Tourny realms is even less likely than them changing the reset time. It also means cool shit like Sang getting the WF Evoker Legendary then unlocking it for the whole region is now impossible. It's better for the professionalism of the race and better for the contenders but patently worse for the fans.

There are only two real solutions here imo: An agreement between the guilds participating to have a set start time or Blizzard coming in and enforcing a "more fair" reset window. Each of these two solutions also has downsides: The former would encourage WF guilds to keep their streams off kinda undermining the whole thing; the latter would make resets really weird for an entire region. And in either situation, fans will still figure out ways to cope and discredit their opponents so it's like... why bother?

[vizzle]

I didn't erase it. I pointed out that the bosses before the last one give EU teams, in this case, an excellent chance to catch up due to the dynamic of getting to collect data and strategy possibilities (what works well, what doesn't) in advance of any pulls of their own. It's ridiculous to claim it's a "big assumption" to think that matters--a huge amount of pulls on difficult bosses is simply figuring out what the killing strategy will be. Getting to shortcut past all those pulls obviously matters. If it *was* only one boss, a 13 hour lead would be totally insurmountable. As it is, the earlier bosses give the teams behind the leader the chance to make up the ground, which happens in every single race, and the final boss (which is not the only boss that matters, but is the final stage) is largely done on equal footing, time-wise.

The problem is that this will always be an assumption because it's not a solid variable. You cannot factually say how many pulls it saved them to see Liquid kill it first; you cannot factually say that they wouldn't have figured it out on their own.

These are the issues you run into when you have a race where there's a 13 hour gap between start times of the two biggest participants.

[The Oblivion]

Isn't there a mandatory break period in the Great Push? Think I saw something like that last time I tuned in for a bit. Since its an official Blizzard event (as the RWF would also be on a separate realm) they have to atleast pretend they care about the health of participants and not make them play constantly for X hours to not fall behind.

which doesnt work well for raiding, every team works different. Some are best slow and methodical, some are spam pullers, some players better in the first half of raid day, some heat up towards the end of raid day. any type of time/gear/grind restrictions would impact some teams more than others, again making the race unfair.

the best option IMO is open market. what we have now. a first kill is a first kill no matter what, and it can never be fair. So once we have the top 10 (or 15 or 20) clears locked in, those guilds are invited to a blizzard sponsored tournament. Its like how in some PVP games you solo Q, which is never fair, but that ranking is used to qualify for a larger fully balanced tournament. There is no way to fully balance a world first kill, but there is a way to balance a follow up tournament that would not only be fair, but easy to pretend to care about health. A month or 2 months after, host a race with premade chars and set time frames.

So while yes, getting the first kill would still be a big deal and celebrated, its not the end game.

[bloodwulf]

I get it -- I'm not trying to fully discredit the Tourny realm thing I just don't think it's reasonable. Given how much Blizzard currently benefits from the RWF I think them moving the race to the Tourny realms is even less likely than them changing the reset time. It also means cool shit like Sang getting the WF Evoker Legendary then unlocking it for the whole region is now impossible. It's better for the professionalism of the race and better for the contenders but patently worse for the fans.

There are only two real solutions here imo: An agreement between the guilds participating to have a set start time or Blizzard coming in and enforcing a "more fair" reset window. Each of these two solutions also has downsides: The former would encourage WF guilds to keep their streams off kinda undermining the whole thing; the latter would make resets really weird for an entire region. And in either situation, fans will still figure out ways to cope and discredit their opponents so it's like... why bother?

One thing i wonder, reading your comment. Why the hell does Blizzard not just do the patch at normal reset, and then unlock the raids a few days later after all the patching is done. It could be a global unlock, and not require the servers to be down for any amount of time affecting casual players. Make the raid unlock window known ahead of time, and say the patch comes out on Tuesday\Wednesday Globally, and then the raid opens at 10am Saturday or some other arbitrary time.

[Gorsameth]

which doesnt work well for raiding, every team works different. Some are best slow and methodical, some are spam pullers, some players better in the first half of raid day, some heat up towards the end of raid day. any type of time/gear/grind restrictions would impact some teams more than others, again making the race unfair.

the best option IMO is open market. what we have now. a first kill is a first kill no matter what, and it can never be fair. So once we have the top 10 (or 15 or 20) clears locked in, those guilds are invited to a blizzard sponsored tournament. Its like how in some PVP games you solo Q, which is never fair, but that ranking is used to qualify for a larger fully balanced tournament. There is no way to fully balance a world first kill, but there is a way to balance a follow up tournament that would not only be fair, but easy to pretend to care about health. A month or 2 months after, host a race with premade chars and set time frames.

So while yes, getting the first kill would still be a big deal and celebrated, its not the end game.

Didn't they do this in the past at Blizzcon for fun?
Obviously wasn't billed as a big deal and no one ended up caring about it but it has existed in the past.

- - - Updated - - -

One thing i wonder, reading your comment. Why the hell does Blizzard not just do the patch at normal reset, and then unlock the raids a few days later after all the patching is done. It could be a global unlock, and not require the servers to be down for any amount of time affecting casual players. Make the raid unlock window known ahead of time, and say the patch comes out on Tuesday\Wednesday Globally, and then the raid opens at 10am Saturday or some other arbitrary time.

and then after the first reset we are back to US getting a resets worth of gear 13 hours before EU.

Global release time does nothing for retail because almost all raids take longer then 1 reset. It only works for Classic because the race is over in an hour.

[vizzle]

the best option IMO is open market. what we have now. a first kill is a first kill no matter what, and it can never be fair.

Why wouldn't it be fair if they started at the same exact time? Or is this just another way of pretending that a 13 hour gap isn't a big deal?

This might be the third time now I've asked you to clarify your words because of the sheer ridiculousness of them. I wonder if you'll ignore it again and go off on another tangent.

[durrtygoodz]

Declaring yourself a "fan" of any world of warcraft raiding guild is quite literally the most cringe thing imagineable, sort your lives out.

Seriously do you guys go to bed in Echo branded pyjamas and drink from LIMIT mugs?

[shanthi]

The problem is that this will always be an assumption because it's not a solid variable. You cannot factually say how many pulls it saved them to see Liquid kill it first; you cannot factually say that they wouldn't have figured it out on their own.

I didn't say they wouldn't have figured it out on their own. Of course they would have, they just would have needed a bunch more pulls to figure out their successful strategy. While one cannot say exactly how many pulls it saved them, we can perfectly factually say that it saved them a lot of pulls. Raiders from both Echo and Liquid (and other top teams) have made clear that seeing data and strategies from teams ahead of them accelerates their progression.

And yes, the 13 hour difference in start time isn't ideal, but between Liquid (or whichever US team might happen to be in the lead) experiencing all the bugs first and allowing Echo (or whichever EU team might be primary chase) to shortcut their progression, it all leads to both teams being on similar footing by the end, which we can see from a number of metrics (real world time on the last boss, pulls on the last boss, combat time on the last boss).

[The Oblivion]

Didn't they do this in the past at Blizzcon for fun?
Obviously wasn't billed as a big deal and no one ended up caring about it but it has existed in the past.

- - - Updated - - -

and then after the first reset we are back to US getting a resets worth of gear 13 hours before EU.

Global release time does nothing for retail because almost all raids take longer then 1 reset. It only works for Classic because the race is over in an hour.

they did, much smaller in scale. However, blizzcon viewers dont really compare to twitch streamers. Its the personality of the players and teams that bring a lot in. Which we would have assuming blizz allowed them to stream and didnt force people to pay to watch.

[Relapses]

Declaring yourself a "fan" of any world of warcraft raiding guild is quite literally the most cringe thing imagineable, sort your lives out.

Seriously do you guys go to bed in Echo branded pyjamas and drink from LIMIT mugs?

Buddy, I'll have you know my Liquid-branded adult diapers are personally signed by Max himself.

[The Oblivion]

Why wouldn't it be fair if they started at the same exact time? Or is this just another way of pretending that a 13 hour gap isn't a big deal?

This might be the third time now I've asked you to clarify your words because of the sheer ridiculousness of them. I wonder if you'll ignore it again and go off on another tangent.

i have said else where in the thread, it would take a lot to be "fair"

1. same start time in every region in the world
2. NOT streamed
3. no patches
4. no maintenance
5. no changes what so ever until cleared, even a small change would impact the race if 1 team is alseep and the other is awake.

and these are just things i can think of in a few minutes, i am sure there are a TON of other things that would be needed.

[bloodwulf]

Buddy, I'll have you know my Liquid-branded adult diapers are personally signed by Max himself.

Wait, he did two releases?