how would you feel about raids not being open at launch?

[Shockzalot]

They should keep the raids closed for several weeks up to a month to allow everyone to level to 85 and enjoy the lore of the game without rushing to 85 to be able to brag about realm 1sts for ez-mode content.

[Mammoth]

They should keep Goblins and Worgens closed until 2 months after the expansion launch, so people who like to raid can do their raid progress before rolling alts.
-- see what I did there.

People will always be at different levels of progress in the game. I don't agree with holding people back, because you want to level slowly. If it is your guild forcing you, then its not Blizz' problem but rather you and your guilds problem.

Personally I might rush to the end with my main, but at the same time level my alt through the lore so I can take my time. From my experience of LK launch, the lore aspect wasn't that strong, because with the competition for mob kills meant everyone was rushing anyway - this will always be the case, especially on PvP realm.

[Multigasm]

While I do agree with you to some extent, I believe that your proposed 2 months is far too long of a period to be without raids. Following suit with past expansions, leveling will likely take no more than two weeks-one month. If this is the case, you would have a large population (those who did not immediately re-roll) sitting, twiddling their thumbs as there is nothing to do aside from heroics.

I always enjoyed the idea of attunement to slow progression, and I believe there would be potential for some epic, pre-raid quest lines. However, with the Warcraft community being as whiny as it is, this idea would never fly, and we'll once again be stuck with a world class guild clearing the first tier, week one, in last expansion's gear.

[Edit]: Grammar Fail.

I like the idea of bringing back attunement's into the game. I still think the Hand of Adal title is one of the best in the game. It also could help bring up the quality of raiders.

[unillenium]

Short answer at bottom:

Why do all the college age, unemployed, liberal blogger type raiders think that they are the one and only true hard core? and that somehow despite being one of the most successful(if not the most successful) company in the PC gaming market Blizzard completely fails at marketing, and that if WoW isn't 100% of what they want then blizzard CLEARLY didn't do their homework.

"I think if blizz gears the game towards ME (i.e. super hard bosses that need a special item to kill that only I get) I will recruit peepole and they will give blizzard all their money I swear!"

Everything blizzard does is likely the result of countless hours of research and development. Maybe you understand it, maybe you don't. But Blizzard can afford to have an R&D department, you can't. So you don't know what you are talking about, but blizzard does. Yes sometimes R&D can fail too; and Blizzard has been better than any other company in correcting such failures.

What I'm saying is that yes I'm eager to hit the green portal as soon as possible when Cataclysm comes out, but if Blizzard feels that they should put a 1 or 2 month gate on it (or let the eager ones charge right in) I respect that decision. It's either more or less time to optimize my gear and spec before starting progression and chances are it is a very informed decision (because informed decisions that effect millions of people cost millions of dollars.)

WoW is not an anarcho-socialist game; they owe nothing to the community, or the so called die-hards. They have only an obligation to their share-holders to make World of Warcraft as profitable as possible.

Because WoW makes money via recurring costs, the sale of memorabilia and is a NON-ESSENTIAL(YES WoW is actually Non-Essential) product then the best way to make profit is to use competitive pricing, a high degree of customer service, and extensive research and development to make the game as fun as possible to as many players as possible in order to maintain as large a customer base as possible.

So I'm tired of reading "blizzard fails if they make this or that decision.". Blizzard's decisions appeal to the majority, and the majority rules that is the democratic glue that holds any free society together. Free because you have no obligation to give Blizzard a penny of your hard-earned(surely it must be) money.

So once again my short answer to OP question: I'd be confident that whatever decision blizz made regarding initial gating was the optimum decision.

[Aswed]

Pissed.

[Krathdar]

naw, i like the fact you can raid at launch, some guilds can put together a group of people that power level extremely fast together, and get into the initial raids in the second week of expansion release. More power to those guys honestly.

[Harith]

i think 3 weeks sounds good i took me just over a week to get to 80 from 70 and i lost like 2-3 days sens i got so sick i slept like 20 hours a day then i spent 1 week for HC farming and crafting items. add abit longer lvl time and some rep grind and you kinda get 3 weeks.

and yes this means if you reroll a new goblin char or worgen you need to step on the gas petal to make the 3 week limit to raid start but you can't really make the ppl who didn't reroll wait for you to take your time to get to 85.

[Baron01]

I would support certain delay in first raid availability--1 month from the day1 of the expansion seems fine to me. Even the most dedicated players would take 3-4 days to hit level 85. Average WOW player would take anywhere from week to 2.
I believe all of us hope that Cataclysm will not follow in WOTLK steps when it comes to initial raid difficulty and availability. This leaves around 2 weeks of heroic 5-man farmig, questing for best gear available and leveling up professions for the entry-level epics/enhancement.

I dont think more than 1 month should be acceptable but we can always use combination of gear-checks, gating and delay to find a acceptable balance.

[couic]

Yeah, I think delaying raiding would be good. Why? Simply because Blizard put a hell of an effort to put real stories into the quest as far as I can see. It would not be a burden to lvl up from 1 to 85, as it could have been before (yeah, there was some lvls boring to grind, like 30-40 or 50-55), but really interesting.

Encouraging "hardcoregamers" (yeah, I'm pejorative, but hey it's not the best side of gamers...) to grind without looking at what they do ("ho, red!!! killlll!!!!!!") only to be "first" and "the roxxor", and then have them rant because there are bugs/balancing problems (well, if you don't give enough time to developers, guess what happens???), guess who will put out a fit????

I really love the leveling part in WOW (note that I used "level", and not pexx/grind), and blizzard learned to evolve from just "kill XXXX" quests to real storylines. It pains me that people are so blind sometimes... (or don't like/know how to read.... when you see them write you may think it's more the second... But that's another matter entirely...)

[Baever]

No.

Because gating isn't 'fun.'

[Mess]

Just because you enjoy reading the quest text and fully experiencing the leveling content (as I do) that doesn't mean Blizzard should force all players to do the same. They've stated multiple times they won't force players to play a particular way and there's no reason they should start now.

[Deleted]

They really shouldnt release Cata without raid content, they better release it with a lot of raid content... Like lets say 2 of those 6boss raids, two 1 boss raid instances, one piss easy with HC hard mode (think sarth), one somewhat harder (Malygos). And VoA of Cata obviously.

They better just not release twilight and horde-gnomes at the launch. Or better yet release them but cap them at 74lvl for lets say a month, maybe 6 weeks.

[HomeSlice]

Raids need to be there at launch imo

[digiNuck]

I think gating is a fantastic idea. 2 Months is a bit long, but I wouldn't mind at all if they held off on the first raid for 3-4 weeks. My guild probably won't start raiding until then anyway, and it would take a bit of pressure off getting things organized and ready to go. I mean, if most of the estimates are correct and the expansion releases in November, that's almost a year of ICC and that's bad. They definitely could have stood to have the earlier content last a bit longer.

[sicness]

I like the idea of bringing back attunement's into the game. I still think the Hand of Adal title is one of the best in the game. It also could help bring up the quality of raiders.

Attunements were just bad for the game overall, and no it wouldn't bring up he quality of raiders at all.

[Deleted]

Attunements were just bad for the game overall, and no it wouldn't bring up he quality of raiders at all.

Pretty much this.
Back in TBC, I was a Shadow Priest. A VERY BAD Shadow Priest. I got the attunement for kara done and got kicked from my first 4 runs before even getting to Moroes because I was so bad. That's how bad I used to be.

[palamanian]

Attunements were just bad for the game overall, and no it wouldn't bring up he quality of raiders at all.

Unless the quests were tutorials on how to not stand in colourful stuff, then it might.

OT: Don't really care, I play WoW to play WoW, not to qq about what I can't do or what isn't available.

[Kalserrar]

However, with the Warcraft community being as whiny as it is, this idea would never fly, and we'll once again be stuck with a world class guild clearing the first tier, week one, in last expansion's gear.

Taking the proposed gear-scaling of Cataclysm into account, that seems highly unlikely.

[zaneosak]

It takes roughly 7 Million exp to hit level 82 from 80, and this took me roughly 8 hours of casual questing in Vashj'ir.

It's sped up for beta, guaranteed. But I dont expect to take more than 4-5 days to level to 85 from 80.

---------- Post added 2010-07-14 at 02:46 PM ----------

Some people like playing alts, some people love playing the auction house, some people love farming, some people like doing achievements, and some people like to raid. It should be ones choice to speed level to 85 with their guild and start killing bosses in Bastion of Twilight as soon as they want. Just because people want to experience the new leveling experience
(it does look nice) doesn't mean the people who want to raid immediately should have to let them catch up.

Let people pick what they do at launch. Gating is stupid, just make more content or make it more challenging.

[Gron]

Short answer at bottom:
WoW is not an anarcho-socialist game; they owe nothing to the community, or the so called die-hards. They have only an obligation to their share-holders to make World of Warcraft as profitable as possible.

Because WoW makes money via recurring costs, the sale of memorabilia and is a NON-ESSENTIAL(YES WoW is actually Non-Essential) product then the best way to make profit is to use competitive pricing, a high degree of customer service, and extensive research and development to make the game as fun as possible to as many players as possible in order to maintain as large a customer base as possible.

So once again my short answer to OP question: I'd be confident that whatever decision blizz made regarding initial gating was the optimum decision.

I have to humbly disagree here.
I really like the way you build up your argument - its one of the few educated, nice posts on the forums.
But... but...

1, If you agree that the Blizzard only needs to answet to its shareholders, WE ARE DOOMED. Because shareholders would love to kill WOW for short term profit. Deduct any developers out of WOW, let it run for as long as possible. Shareholders are dictating the majority of the game developers - lets see the many inventions that come up recently - Civilization 5, Call of Duty 6, etc etc. No major innovation - its like Spider Man 4 movie. Mans with suitcases dictate not to take creative risks, let people eat the same food for next 5-10 years.

2, Blizzard have shown in WOTLK bigtime, they have no idea what they are doing. Look at the many many changes they made throughout this only one expansion:
--- They had to nerf dodge rating for warriors because Naxxramas items were overitemized, too much avoidance for first tier of raiding, and next tiers of raiding (I think it was Ulduar or they made it at TOC) had too much of these on gear.
--- Going into ICC, they had to introduce the Ice Throne debuff - there was still too much dodge on gear, because they didn't correct it well last go.
--- Blizzard announced how tokens, badges will work - was different in every raid tier. (e.g. how you get tier gear).
--- Blizzard announced how hardmodes will work - was different in Ulduar, was differnet in TOC (Limited attempts) and different in ICC (shared lockouts, etc).
--- Blizzard doubling the effect of resilience on characters in PVP because the resilience was miscalculated and in PVP players were twoshotting full resilience players in PVE gear.

If Blizzard had enough research on their hands, they'd never do these things.

Blizzard also announced that WOW will have 1 major expansion every year.
This was a message for shareholders, done while The Burning Crusade was the expansion.

Guess how well they could keep it.

This is why I am not confident in Blizz decisions. And to be honest, it would not be a bad idea from Blizzard to visit these forums, as its customer feedback here as well.