Flex Raiding Q&A, Blue Tweets, LoL Lead Content Designer on WoW, News Recap

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Flex Raiding Q&A
Ghostcrawler spent some of his weekend answering questions about Flex Raiding! Reading all of the tweets is worth it if you are interested in the feature, but here are some of the major points:

• Flex difficulty support can be added to old raids in the future, but currently only raids from Patch 5.4 and beyond are planned to support it.
• LFR is designed to clear the entire raid in one night, but flex raiding will be closer to normal raiding, getting one boss or so a week if you are the target audience.
• A shared lockout with LFR or Normal doesn't work, as it would punish people who ran LFR or Normal and then want to do a Flex run with friends.
• Scaling Normal or Heroic would be very challenging, as some bosses would be much easier on one group size than another.
• Being able to use the regular loot system instead of Raid Finder style loot is an option for future patches, not Patch 5.4.
• There is a chance the scaling may go down a little bit lower than 10, but that isn't a promise.

Hey! flexible raids - people may say it's a disappointment , but for me it's a great news, congratulations on the new feature!
"I am not the audience for this feature, therefore it sucks," is a very old argument. It happens. (Source)

I don't know Morello, but I agree with a lot of what he says.
In Vanilla and BC, just leveling, making alts, profs etc. were entertaining enough for a lot of players. A very few raided. (Source)
In LK, largely from Naxx 25, many players discovered raiding, and it was fun for them. (Source)
In Cat, we made 10s harder so that 10 and 25 could deliver the same ilevel. But this pushed some out of raiding. (Source)
We offered LFR to provide raiding back to those players. It worked reasonably well. But it doesn't quite feel like raiding. (Source)
Our hope is that Flex mode does feel like raiding. (Source)

New Flex raids, what about boss mechanics? Low sense of accomplishment in LFR, they feel oversimplified or easily ignored.
LFR is designed with the intent that you will finish in one night. We want Flex to be more traditional raiding. (Source)
By which I mean that you might only get one new boss a week or so (assuming you're the target audience). (Source)

Will Flex Raiding be something we can use for Throne of Thunder?
No, at least not initially. It wasn't designed with that in mind, but retrofitting isn't totally out of the question. (Source)

lots of noise to see signal. Will Flex be an option for T14 and T15? Or T16 only?
Only the new 5.4 raid initially. We may add other raids over time, but it's not a simple change to convert. (Source)

how will flex raids handle healer ratios? is 15man with 1 healer going to be as viable as 10man with 3?
Bring as many healers as you think you need. I would get 2-3 if you have 10 total as a good start. Maybe 1 more for every 5 total. (Source)

I like the idea of flex raiding. Curious how will the number of battle res scale with group size?
We will probably just make it 3, as in the 25 raids. Maybe no limit. We haven't decided yet. (Source)

Can't the the normal difficulty be replaced by new the Flexible Raid? I didn't see the need for them to coexist...
They are just different audiences. Civilization and Halo support many difficulty levels. It's a common solution to difficulty. (Source)
In those games however I'm usually only playing one difficulty at a time. Do you expect people will do that?
I often play new game+ when I finish with a game. It just depends on the audience. (Source)

if you put in Flex raiding, disable LFR for 5.4 please, we don't need them both.
LFR serves a valuable purpose, but it's ideally a back up plan, not the only way you experience WoW. (Source)
You say 'backup plan', but LFR's presence has undermined so many aspects of the game. Teams, community, concept of journey.
So don't run it if you don't like it? For other players it gave them a chance to raid that didn't exist for them before. (Source)
There is this myth that most LFR raiders were former N raiders. By and large this is not true. Most of them were not prior raiders. (Source)

I have to disagree. I would rather do Flex raid than LFR, since I cannot commit to normal raids. Friends>strangers
We would rather you do Flex. We think you'll have more fun. But disabling LFR isn't the right motivation in our minds. (Source)

to me LFR is to see the content and lore. Normal modes are for challenges and gear
LFR is also good for alts or on weeks when you can't make your raid or when you're between guilds. (Source)
But I would submit that it's a lot more fun to joke around with your friends that with random strangers. (Source)

The seeing of the content is the real incentive to get people into raids. LFR accomplishes that at a far easier lvl
You can see the content on Youtube. Experiencing a challenge and getting loot are fun too. (Source)

thoughts on limiting lfr? Say 10/12 available bosses -> incentive to push normals, exclusivity for norm/hc.
Potentially. We all like exclusive content. You just can't let that come at the expense of content in general. (Source)

Now with FlexR getting implement, could you remove tier pieces from LFR? They should only be accessible in FlexR/N/H raids
We discussed that idea, but instead there will be items only available in F/N/H mode. (Source)
just tier or all items ?
We discussed limiting tier items but are more likely to limit some other kinds of items. (Source)
The concern is that LFR needs some rewards - we aren't trying to kill it or else we'd just disable it. (Source)

I know players complained about the game being hard, but the game was healthier back then. It was growing, it was exciting.
It was growing, but it's hard to point to raid difficulty as the reason why. (Source)
You could point to having fewer specs or no mass rez, but I don't think those are reasonable explanations. (Source)
Just because Y had characteristic X does not mean X caused Y. (Source)
But hopefully in your case, Flex will give you back some of what you're missing in LFR. (Source)

If you can see all the content without any effort, people opt for that. LFR is probably responsible for sub loss.
The fact is, WoW always lost lots of players. In the past, we tended to get as many or more new ones as we lost. Lately, less. (Source)
Also, an awful lot of players we lose never even make it to endgame content. (Source)
because your aiming your game at casual fans who join and leave. making same mistakes as nintendo
I don't know. Blizzard and Nintendo both seem to have models that work out pretty well for them.... (Source)
nintendo have had a massive sale flop of the WiiU, wouldn't say its worked out that well.
Sure, but overall their track record is great. I'm still a fan. (Source)
I feel like they want to offer a mainstream experience with a ton of depth. Sounds like an awesome philosophy. We use it too. (Source)
and yet the casual market put them out of the next-gen run. Microsoft announced the same with Xbox one - share prices dropped.
I'm an industry insider, and even I wouldn't predict who has lost or won the next gen game yet. (Source)
What is your plan for /flex raids in regards to past content and gear? How will it work with...let's say Firelands or Ulduar
Flex is only for the 5.4 raid initially. (Source)

Combining 10/25 lockouts so people didn't feel obligated to do both.. Now we'll have three lock outs? What changed your mind?
It's a lesser of two evils thing. We changed the ICC model, but in retrospect maybe that wasn't the right call. (Source)
In game design, there are rarely no brainers. Usually you are trading off pros vs cons. This is no exception. (Source)

Flex raid: why not a shared loot lockout with LfR, so people don't feel 'forced' to do 3 raid difficulties per week?
"Hey, GC can you join our flex raid?" "Oh, sorry dude, I ran LFR on Sunday." (Source)
Thats ridiculous. "Hey, GC can you join our Hc raid?" "Oh, sorry dude, I ran Normal on Sunday".
With a few exceptions, H in particular is designed for set rosters not grabbing random dudes. Flex is all about grabbing whoever. (Source)
Why not allow N/HC guilds to flex too so they can be sure they have a raid on raid day and don't need to bench backups
It would be almost impossible to balance N or H for a variable group of people. Flex mindset isn't about min-maxing. (Source)

With the Flex raids opening in wings, can you start with any wing? Attempt the last boss without having to kill the first?
Not sure yet. (Source)

Are you waiting to see how 5.4 flex raids go before deciding whether to give n/h some flex? Or have you already ruled out?
We can't realistically scale group size for N or H because there would be bosses much easier on one group size than another. (Source)
That risk exists for Flex too, but remember the target audience is raiders who don't min max things like group size. (Source)
H players in particular would probably do a lot of "need 12 for boss A and 22 for boss B." Think that is less likely in flex mode. (Source)

I'm afraid flex-raid will make it even less attractive to graduate to real raiding. What would be the incentive for normals?
Do they need an incentive? We have a lot of players (not millions, but a lot) still struggling on Horridon. Flex is for them. (Source)
flex raids are for us? Your teams made the mistake, not ours. Normals don't need to be horridon hard.
We think Normal is serving its audience. Why deny them that? We can rename it Elite if the name bothers you. (Source)
It's not serving its audience. You've said so yourself that many are stuck on horridon.
Some are stuck on Horridon (and those are the audience for Flex). The success rate for Horridon overall is good. (Source)

A better question would be in time do you see "'flex" raid just replacing normals?
No, we like normals. We have a huge and diverse audience. We want to provide fun challenges for as many folks as we can. (Source)
What are your teams thoughts on how this will effect normals, their numbers and recruitment?
We expect people still wiping on Horridon at 8 weeks will shift to Flex instead. But, we predict most of the shift from LFR. (Source)

Also if your intent is to remove valor gear because flex raid is available I would caution you people do not like RNG
Some people just don't like raiding (even flex). We want to provide pathways for them to advance too. (Source)

What kind of difficulty level are we looking are for Flexible Raids? LFR tank and spanks or nearer to Normal?
Closer to Normal. We don't want the expectation to be that you clear it immediately, but we do want you to make progress. (Source)

Flexible Raids: Any concerns of burn out with three tiers of the same content? Note: Awesome idea, excited about seeing it.
Just pick the difficulty / size that best suits your interests. We don't think it works out well when we try to play game nanny. (Source)
The concern is valid, but when we try to save players from themselves it often backfires as often as it works. (Source)

No offense, but this new 'flex-raid' doesn't help when your realm has difficulty gathering even ten players.
Agreed, but it isn't intended to fix that problem. (Though you can invite friends from other realms.) (Source)

LOVE Flexible RAID idea. Just, PLEASE, don't use LFR loot for it. Use Normal Loot, to share gear between players
We don't yet have a solution for scaling no. of drops. We don't want you to hesitate to bring dude 15 because it means less loot. (Source)

Flex will use Personal Loot to avoid PUG drama, is it possible to let raid lead pick to use real loot system if just friends?
Not for 5.4 but if there is demand, we can look into adding the more traditional raid loot systems. (Source)
We don't currently have a system that lets a boss drop more loot that scales with size other than personal loot. (Source)
The problem is the scaling size. We don't want any pressure to not invite someone for fear of less loot. (Source)
This came up on EU forums (a couple of other posters suggested the same); thoughts?
It's not an unsolvable problem by any stretch but it's not a trivially solvable problem so it will likely have to wait. (Source)

Flexible raiding ticks a number of boxes. However, what does a group size of 11 or 12 mean for PoH and group bound spells?
Probably another good reason to kill that functionality of PoH... but not for 5.4. (Source)

Ji-Kun mount drop on Normal and Heroic mode, as far as I know. What about the new "Flexi-Raid" mode?
In general we want Flex to reward more cool stuff than LFR, Normal more than that and Heroic more than that. (Ji-Kun himself !flex) (Source)

new raid system sounds redundant - non25s can queue LFR, waste dev-time, leads to further cutting down LFR ilvl to squeeze in
There are a non-trivial number of players in more casual 10 raiding guilds who don't want to raid with strangers. (Source)

With Flex raiding, have you considered removing faction restriction for instanced PvE via battlenet? Are there Tech hurdles?
Mostly design hurdles. We like red vs. blue. (Source)

really love the flexible raid plan! Wish it scaled down below 10. 8 players would be great.
We *might* let it go a little lower, just so a late player can join you in progress rather than being replaced. #nopromises (Source)

Blue Tweets

Professions
What exactly is the Engineering "Sky Claw"? I've heard some blue talk about it not being released in 5.3 yet. Any explanation?
It was an Engineering mount that ended up having a lot of bugs. We're considering a different Engineering mount. (Source)

Game feels a bit sterile. Feel like focus is too much on metrics and not compelling gameplay. Balanced around rewards, My 2c
Does it feel like that when you're playing or when you interact with the community (and us) on the Internet? (Source)
I'd say in-game largely. Professions good example. Realized at the end they all mostly give 320 stat gain.
But that sounds like you are focused on the rewards for professions not the fantasy or fun of crafting. That's why I asked. (Source)
Not like BC where I could craft myself Primalstrike because it was really good for me, pre-raids. (Er... 3/2.)
We did have a problem in BC that certain crafted pieces were so good that many players felt like they had to re-learn professions. (Source)
Wasn't that mostly with Drums of Battle? Exhaustion-style debuff could've fixed that. Don't remember ppl changing early in exp
I meant like Stormherald and Frozen Shadoweave. (Source)
Ah, I see. On the other hand, those items sure made those professions compelling, didn't they?
Absolutely. Everyone always recalls it as the glory days of professions (at least for raiders). (Source)
But I can't help but think players would complain today if they felt "forced" to go Blacksmith for a tier. (Source)

If you could steamline 3 of WoW's systems with a magic wand, which ones would they be? (e.g Rotations, Gem Options, Profs)
Professions, end-game gearing direction, ability bloat. (Source)
What are your thoughts on removing power perks from professions? IMO perks harm the fantasy without adding much
My personal opinion is they are pretty lame and encourage players to choose professions for the wrong reasons. (Source)
nobody complained when you removed helm enchant
Are you serious? I was actually amazed at the outrage. We thought we were doing players a favor. (Source)

Why the +Cooking set bonus on "Tradition of Cooking" when it does nothing?
You mean because it doesn't help with the Ways? It was intended as an alt item, not really a shortcut to Cooking. (Source)

Lore
what exclusive is there then? Ra-den isn't story relevant. we've never seen him or heard of him
That you initially don't know who he is or how he fits in is WHY he is story relevant. (Source)
Mogu. Titan. Old god. Sha. Mantid. All these things are connected. (Source)

League of Legends Lead Content Designer on WoW
LoL's Lead Content Designer made some interesting posts about WoW. You can join the discussion on the forums and see Ghostcrawler's response in the Flex Raiding tweets.

Originally Posted by Morello (Source)

It's a tricky topic, because our job is to make decisions based on what players not only want, but need. Let me explain that a bit.

Determining what players want is actually pretty simple - your most invested users tend to be very vocal and will put effort into making sure they're heard (ie; most forumers!) This is a good metric of understanding what players want, at least for high-engagement folks.

What players need is where players don't proclaim a desire for something, but it helps provide something they say they want. Many times, this is more than a single solution - it requires several steps of implementation to reach a result, or takes time to bake in many cases. Let me provide two example of want vs need, and why want cannot be the only driver for developers;

At Riot, we nerf champions. Nerfs are rarely wanted (and many times, unwanted). But, players want to have a fair experience with a variety of options. Additionally, a game without power caps and heavy power creep (something still happening faster than I'd like...) can disrupt the core game design focused around choices, decision-making, and strategy. To accomplish this, we need to nerf champions, even if players don't explicitly want us to.

To use your example, in the pattern of Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, the changes to easier raid content and more accessibility is actually informed by a want that a lot of players expressed - IE, raids were content that was exclusive from them and they wanted a piece. I respect the guys who make WoW (and its success is a testament), but this is a good example of where the developers should have recognized the core need of exclusivity and the right tuning of that, and steered away from players said they wanted. Personally, I think Burning Crusade is a sweet spot.

The above is a fantastic example of why we have to make tough choices and not always just do what players ask us to do - it's not always the right course of action.

The problem you're speaking to, in my opinion, is when developers think they always have that answer and that being a developer gives you divination into what that is. In my mind, game development isn't about having answers - it's the ways in which you find them.

Our interaction on here isn't just lip-service, it's so we can better optimize decisions around player wants - and explain what players need when they don't want it. This informs us a lot, but we make decisions based on a number of factors - player desires and feedback being one of them.

I hope this helps explain how I feel about this, and how the developer/player interaction looks to me.

One other thing to watch is "the game used to be good when the game was less mature, and it sucks now because of changes" thing. Many times, players just get tired of a game after 1000's of hours, and that's natural. I still think WoW is a cool game, I just can't wring any more enjoyment out of it.

World of Warcraft, nerfed it for exceptionally terrible players and ruined quality of the game in by doing so because players who were bad, refused to accept that and get better.
No, that's the lens of your personal values - you believe your values of game-playing (skill mastery) is the reason all players should play the game. Many people play the same games for different reasons.

Or, sometimes, the changes are just bad. WoW was fun when you could have casual 25 man raids in WotLK. It stopped being fun in Cata when 25 man raids disappeared.

In SC2, the change to larger maps and ever increasing rush distances ruined it for me. I didn't like that a second Nexus/Hatchery/Command Center became the first building after supply structure/unit.

You could bury your head in the sand and insist that people left because they got bored or you could consider that your changes aren't universally loved.
Some changes are bad - and they can disengage players. I found Wrath of the Lich King less fun to raid than BC, but the reason I think it was a harmful direction was more what I think engages players overall - many of the things that do not engage me personally. "I quit WoW because there's not 40-man raids and now people other than me and my 39 friends can raid" is one of those things that would have low value, conversely.

The big difference in players get to think about their own experiences (and should!), where developers need to discover what groups of players need, what drives them, engages them and makes them feel rewarded.

WoW was bad. It is bad and it will continue to be bad. WoW had the simple blind luck to be in the right place at the right time.

The original concept was little more than Everquest with a few modifications. Quests were easier to find, enemies were better balanced for your level, and waiting for your life to regenerate took a lot less time. Aside from that the game was an ugly sack of fail. The raids were broken, literally, almost every raid was released in an unfinished and unbeatable state. We found out in AQ40 that this was done purposefully because Blizzard wasn't able to meet deadlines. I do not like to raid, I occasionally enjoy partying but by and by I like doing solo content or hunting for rare materials. So pretty much WoW has nothing for me because Riadrz want their super op weapon drop and god forbid you have allow a plebeian solo player farm mats to craft a weapon even 1/10th the quality of that thing. No, the items that are only 1/10th as good as Raid loot have materials that drop in Raids.

I hate WoW. I hate Blizzard. They took a fantasy universe I found to be brilliantly designed and destroyed it.
You don't like WoW (clearly!), but this is the attitude I'm saying is flatly incorrect. WoW is a well-crafted game that you do not happen to like. Our own personal tastes do not equate to what is good and bad in game development, only what our potential engagement is. And, to be frank, if you're not the audience, it has little impact on anyone else.

I don't like playing Halo. Halo is an extremely good game.

How could you think burning crusade was the "Sweet Spot". A majority of the players couldn't even get to 3/4's of those raids. Hardly anyone ever see's end game content. I mean, christ. Your mindset works for League of Legends just fine. I can't argue with the results. But I sure as hell can tell you that your mindset would of made WoW a worse game by far, and I would of left it after BC instead of sticking around for MoP. Do not go into the MMO Business again, as I think you were with Guild Wars right?
I'm saying I don't think raids should be inclusive, as the exclusivity of content creates a psychological trick in your brain that makes the game feel endless. Basically, my direction would be (and maybe incorrectly - I haven't tried!) that all content is not for everyone. If anything, League proves core gaming has a big audience, and you don't have to make things easy.

That's a fair assessment. I stopped playing Blizzard games when it became clear to me that my tastes were very different from the majority of their player base. I liked BC but never got to raid there. I liked it because even dungeons had progression with the keys and the hard Heroics. WotLK lost that in many ways, but the raids everyone could do became what Heroics were in BC for me. In Cata, there was little to no dungeon progression (it was even easier than WotLK) but raids were out of reach for me too. I spent 3 months playing as part of a guild in the hope to get into a raid group with no success. I canceled shortly after.
As a player, it was sort of the same for me.

Raids HAVE to be inclusive for the most part. Because that's the only major content in a MMO at max level on the PvE aspect of it. That's the only way to really "progress". How could you miss that? That's why there's heroic raids, so people who want challenging content can go and do that and feel exclusive. And even the new thing where there's a uber secret hard boss that is only unlocked in heroic mode.

I'm actually really startled you could miss something like that. I'm glad league of legends is a game where everyone can participate at max level.
You sure? The game has massive numbers even without accessible raid content - it was in a big period of growth during this time - many players who do not raid have plenty to keep them busy.

Since not everyone plays for mastery, and many play for achievement, over-time reward structures (dailies, rep grinds) engage the majority of the players. The minority still raids, but now it's lost the exclusivity. Are you sure your views are representative?

They may be - I don't have access to their data which could prove me wrong. I'm just checking to see if you're thinking about it from a holistic perspective or a personal one.

Keep Them busy?........Such as Dailies? Do you know how awful those things are? Dailies for everything these days......But yes, recently there's a huge amount of content that is not raiding, that you can certainly do. There's actually a staggering amount of things you can do in WoW that isn't raiding.

Yes, I believe my views are Representative. A much greater part of the minority raids now, I believe ghostcrawler threw a quote out there saying that the size of players seeing end game content was "staggering" now that LFR was out.

And there IS Exclusivity still in the form of heroic raids.

No one really has access to that sort of data except blizzard, but i distinctly remember ghostcrawler saying something similar to "Barely anyone has seen end game content, so we're coming out with Looking For Raid".

I mean, you're putting the bulk over your story and endgame content into raids, something (as you've said yourself) the minority of players will ever get to experience. Why limit that to such a small portion of the community? And also why bother making that content if only a small portion of the community could ever play it?
I think that's the decision-making process that has driven Blizzard - and clearly it is successful. I just think I'd value different design aspects of WoW if it were my decision to play up engagement over the long-term - a bit of less-is-more design.

Can you please teach Ghostcrawler how to properly balance the game then? Instead of throwing Hunter's under the bus like the "Redheaded Step Children Who Lives Behind The Staircase" that we are made to be.
I have a ton of sympathy and respect for Ghostcrawler; he's the face of an entire design team also. I don't think their balancing is really bad, either, I'm not in agreement with their overall high level design philosophy - not that it's bad, I just have a different conclusion. Within that philosophy, though, I think their balance methodology is really appropriate.

Innovation drives the gaming industry in one way or another, and WoW never innovated anything.

The 2 sided conflict of characters with different classes available (initially) had been done before in MMOs. Battlegrounds and CTF style combat had been done in other MMOs, Raid style content had be done before in MMOs. Crafting with almost identical systems existed in other MMOs before WoW. Seamless worlds existed prior.

Nothing World of Warcraft did was particularly unique or innovative. The main reason it became such a huge smash hit was because it was made by Blizzard. Being set in the Warcraft world made it instantly desirable to everyone that had played a Blizzard game, which was a LOT of people. They recruited their friends to play with them who pulled in friends, etc. And we get the legacy that is World of Warcraft.

Was it polished at the time excluding graphics? Sure, hell yeah. But to someone who has been playing the genre of games since Everquest, it was incredibly bland and uninspiring. Especially at launch.

Do I respect World of Warcraft? Of course I do. It's made gaming normal in every day life and an acceptable pastime. It made more money than you can imagine and brought my first and favorite genre of computer games to the masses. But it wasn't special. It wasn't particularly well crafted. It was just -VERY- well marketed.
But WoW redefined what MMO's are for an entire generation of gamers by using well-known methods to deliver the first "doesn't kick you in the balls over and over" theme park experience. While maybe it didn't invent gas powered engines, it certainly built the Model-T.

Innovation is a powerful thing to have, but it's not the only thing that defines a well-crafted game.

It's funny to me, personally, that you use World of Warcraft as an example and say that it lost "a ton" of players. I know personally I couldn't even stomach playing WoW before Wrath of the Lich King (and I bought Original when it released) because of how incredibly exclusionary the gameplay was if you were not in that top 5% . It really had nothing to do with time playing (I played JRPGs most of my young life, so I knew what it took to spend hundreds of hours on a game). I had no interest in committing 40 hours a week to preparing to play a game for 20 more hours that weekend. I feel THAT is what has been addressed by Blizzard, and save the nostalgics and the elitists (who I feel are similar to those on these forums who gripe about special skins not being so very special), no one has much of an issue with needing to do less mindless grinding to experience the actual purposes of the game.
Hardcore players, this feedback is not valuable. We know what happens if developers are too swayed here - you get new versions of an old game that has just enough difference to not pull you over (CS:GO, really the AWP cost being the same was important? No.), but not actually advance the series or genre in a meaningful way. Doing this disallows you to actually give the game any meaning - why does it exist, who is it for?

Now, developers have a responsibility here too; deconstruct why they're saying what they're saying. Many times, your hardcore fans want to ensure the new game has depth and skill. If you're changing how that's done, explain this process to your hardcore dudes. Don't pander or cave, just be upfront. If you're removing burden of knowledge/etc (things that most extremely hardcore gamers will latch on to as meaningful skill), be honest with it and try to evaluate that you're adding real skill mastery to your new game as well.

Your hardcore guys are valuable, but be careful to not let them rail your new game into total conservatism.

Weekly News Recap
Here is your chance to catch up if you missed a day of news this week!

• June 2
  
  • DMF had cross realm zone turned on.
  • Setup of the Month was posted.
• June 3
  
  • We previewed the Battle.net Desktop Client!
• June 4
  
  • Character services are 50% off until the 10th.
  • There were a few hotfixes
• June 5
  
  • Titan Runestone will be a guaranteed drop off of Lei Shen.
• June 6
  
  • Patch 5.4 - Flexible Raid preview!
• June 7
  
  • Flex Raiding questions were answered.
  • Diablo III is coming to Xbox 360 and PS3.
  • Bashiok hinted that there are more interesting Patch 5.4 features to come.

[MrKnubbles]

Flex raiding is going to please so many LFR haters.

[Deleted]

In Vanilla and BC, just leveling, making alts, profs etc. were entertaining enough for a lot of players. A very few raided.

This is so wrong, in vanilla i raided. Love leveling my toon and getting more stuff. It was entertaining. Now it's just grind fest or "maybe i'll do couple of lfr and hope to get some loot". Back then it's was an accomplishement to get some loot. Novadays, you can get same loot but little difference in stats. So bring back old days and don't say that.

[Korru]

It's another guy's opinion people, don't get mad.

[Deleted]

This is so wrong, in vanilla i raided. Love leveling my toon and getting more stuff. It was entertaining. Now it's just grind fest or "maybe i'll do couple of lfr and hope to get some loot". Back then it's was an accomplishement to get some loot. Novadays, you can get same loot but little difference in stats. So bring back old days and don't say that.

You are not the entire playerbase. Disagreeing with a statement does not make their figures moot.

[greyghost]

LoL designer is smart, but good lord I pity him for having to converse with the gutter of LoL's community (ie, the one questioner who don't understand objectivity vs. subjectivity).

[Arbs]

The LoL designer is right, sometimes you do need exclusive content because just giving everything to everyone makes the game lasts less & people don't put in as much effort as they would. TBC / Wrath was a good mix & sweet spot for sure.

[Mandible]

One thing that annoys me, and thats the old used " we can add it to old content later" except it won't ever happen due to them focusing, like a work horse, on max level. The only thing added to lower levels were cross breeding zones, and it ought to be in Pandaria by now to have any effects for low pop sides/servers.

[Chenz]

LoL designer is smart, but good lord I pity him for having to converse with the gutter of LoL's community (ie, the one questioner who don't understand objectivity vs. subjectivity).

It's no worse than what GC (and other public figures for Blizzard) has to deal with on a daily basis.

[grandevil]

Why do we care what the league of legends designer has to say about WoW? This is just weird.

[Balo]

so what I gathered from this blizz is going to do what ever it wants to and if you dont like it you can fuck off and go play some shitty F2P game

[JoeShmo]

Im amazed that blizzard designed a system (flex raiding) to help out friends and guilds that were not able to complete normal raids in their intended design, and made it a 5.4 raid exclusive. How is their target player base suppose to utilize flex raiding, if they are still struggling with the previous two tiers of raiding?

As for the LoL dev, he makes a lot of valid points about subjectivity and objectivity, and need vs want. People in general make most statements based on what they perceive and want (subjective), rather than an overall understanding of the subject (objective). One persons enjoyment does not mean that others will enjoy it equally, and every person's enjoyment is equally valid, but does not constitute how things "should" be based on personal taste and opinion.

Raiding is not "end game" , what you do at the lvl cap IS end game. Raiding is only 1 single point of many points of entertainment for players, yet people are continuously narrowing down to raiding being the "only viable" means of entertainment at lvl cap, which has never been the case in any game. This has become compounded by developers thinking in the same mindset, that players only want to raid at "end game" , so they make all other avenues of enjoyment at the lvl cap uninteresting and sub par in the process (because of manpower and time). When you do that, of course players are going to look at what they have available to them, and believe that raiding is the only thing of worth and fun to do. If a game had nothing but enjoyable 5 mans to do, nobody would care about raiding because they would be having fun doing 5 mans, but they HAVE to be FUN to each player.

It doesnt matter what the content is, so long that it is enjoyable to players, and players have to realize that not ALL content will be fun to them, just like not ALL vegetables are enjoyable to eat. People start seeing other people doing "fun things" and get jealous, just like a dog or child feels when they see someone enjoying themselves. When they dont feel the same enjoyment that they saw others feeling, they think something is wrong with it, rather than understanding that its just not fun for them. I dont go around telling suppliers that their oranges are terrible and need to be changed so that I can enjoy them, I realize that some oranges are just not designed to my liking.

Its in the best interest of a seller or provider to have enough enjoyable things for everyone to enjoy something, but it is not required to have everything enjoyable by everybody. If there is enough enjoyment in doing Project A to fill up your time, then it doesnt matter if you rarely or never do Project B or C, since you are still enjoying yourself with a project. The people that believe they HAVE to do and enjoy everything, are the ones that end up being disappointed, because they believe they HAVE to enjoy everything or specific things.

In blizzards case, it is the fault of the player base for believing they need to be able to experience and enjoy every part of the game, but it is blizzards fault for not giving players enough specific things to enjoy and spend all their time on. When only a couple aspects of a game are being focused on, then only the people that enjoy those aspects are going to feel enjoyment. Stop making every project enjoyable to every person, and make every project enjoyable to the people that enjoy THOSE projects. Then everyone has the project they want to enjoy, and its enjoyable.

[Zipzo]

Why do we care what the league of legends designer has to say about WoW? This is just weird.

There is some frame of relevance as LoL and WoW are both online games with massive popularity, so it's easy to see how the developers from both companies probably under-go a similar thought process in how they handle changes to their game in order to either draw in more, or please current players.

More notably, League of Legends active playerbase makes WoW's playerbase look like a lan party. Don't act purposely obtuse as if there's absolutely no connection between the mindsets of either company. They are both employing some of the same strategies to gain players.

[Azrile]

One of the problems with the WOW community is most people cannot see past their own face.

Flex-raiding will be a huge success to a few different segments of the population. Just because you personally do not see a purpose for it ( or for LFR for that matter) does not mean it isn´t an important addition to the game.

1. It will be a step-down for guilds that are struggling on normal mode
2. It will be a great way for 10M guilds to find new players in order to try to build to be a 25M guild
3. It will be a great realm-pug thing for players (like me) who want more of a challenge than LFR, but don´t have the desire to schedule my week around a game.
4. It will be great for 10M guilds who constantly have to sit a few players.

I just sincerely hope they do not change the loot system as it is one of the reasons I avoid pugs to begin with. I hate loot drama.

[Mmoplayer111]

It's as the LoL developer said, your personal want of how the game should be is not how everyone in the game feels.

If BC was the sweet spot then far more people would have been raiding as it was 95% of the populace didn't get to see the entire end game. That is a vast waste of time for the developers, if they had seen good participation numbers they would have kept things as they were in BC.

No game I think will ever be everything for everyone. It's part of why you are seeing more games that are building for a specific kind of gameplay ala camelot unchained, shadow of the avatar and so on.

[DarkZero]

This is so wrong, in vanilla i raided. Love leveling my toon and getting more stuff. It was entertaining. Now it's just grind fest or "maybe i'll do couple of lfr and hope to get some loot". Back then it's was an accomplishement to get some loot. Novadays, you can get same loot but little difference in stats. So bring back old days and don't say that.

I raided in classic. Oh boy, how annoying it was. My raid never got past Molten Core, because many there sucked (normal, everyone did) and we had about 40 players and not much more, so it happened to have times where we didn't raid because we didn't have enough players or healers.

Just because someone else can get worse loot than yours by dedicating their time to the game you feel that raiding normals and heroics loses value? Also, the difference in stats is not that small. Even more if you're talking about heroic gear.

[Aqua]

Flex raiding is going to please so many LFR haters.

Oh hope so... I really really hope so...

[nekobaka]

Im amazed that blizzard designed a system (flex raiding) to help out friends and guilds that were not able to complete normal raids in their intended design, and made it a 5.4 raid exclusive. How is their target player base suppose to utilize flex raiding, if they are still struggling with the previous two tiers of raiding?

As for the LoL dev, he makes a lot of valid points about subjectivity and objectivity, and need vs want. People in general make most statements based on what they perceive and want (subjective), rather than an overall understanding of the subject (objective). One persons enjoyment does not mean that others will enjoy it equally, and every person's enjoyment is equally valid, but does not constitute how things "should" be based on personal taste and opinion.

Raiding is not "end game" , what you do at the lvl cap IS end game. Raiding is only 1 single point of many points of entertainment for players, yet people are continuously narrowing down to raiding being the "only viable" means of entertainment at lvl cap, which has never been the case in any game. This has become compounded by developers thinking in the same mindset, that players only want to raid at "end game" , so they make all other avenues of enjoyment at the lvl cap uninteresting and sub par in the process (because of manpower and time). When you do that, of course players are going to look at what they have available to them, and believe that raiding is the only thing of worth and fun to do. If a game had nothing but enjoyable 5 mans to do, nobody would care about raiding because they would be having fun doing 5 mans, but they HAVE to be FUN to each player.

Well we dont know what else is coming out in 5.4 but for now we can assume the developers expect these players to do what they did before, do the LFR that they did not like in the first place to get to do the format that they enjoy.

The LoL dev does help show what the WoW developers have been trying to convey to their players that often gets drown out by the players. It is really hard when dealing with the more vocal casuals as they often are among the least constructive in terms of conveying what they need. Its mostly blanket statements like "nerf this" instead of "this fight is too hard because I cant see the maze". These players wanted something to keep them busy at end game after doing all their grinds and directed their frustration towards raiders who was still busy with their grind. Most of the feed back I see in support of LFR is not the content, it is the gear progression and this is why Blizzard is also supporting LFR, gear progression and not the actual enjoyment of raiding. The raiding system with its RNG gear and weekly lockouts is a long term grind and as the LoL developer talked about long term goals and grinds being needed. One of the issues from a developers stand point with a system like LFR is that it is heavily dependent on a constant supply of players. In order for LFR to succeed and remain successful it has to draw in as much players as it does. So in turn Blizzard designs the game around LFR to funnel players into it even if Blizzard knows that is not what the players really need.

[Wolfster]

lol i love those who defend LFR against to what the LoL dev were saying....LFR is the same as looking to the bosses pics on mmo-champ...only u get to push some buttons....any1 who calls it raiding is only kidding himself to enjoy the loot...u dont have to move from fire...hell half the raid is afk carried by few heroic geared people (10 at the most)...and i totally agree with him about the exclusivity, I mean why should i as a heroic raider get the same item as some1 who afked an instance only different colour? people got used to receiving things on a silver platter...and blizzard will keep giving them shit like that if they are paying their subs.

[Kaleredar]

...and i totally agree with him about the exclusivity, I mean why should i as a heroic raider get the same item as some1 who afked an instance only different colour? people got used to receiving things on a silver platter...and blizzard will keep giving them shit like that if they are paying their subs.

Because it isn't the same item...?