It's an achievement if you do it pre-nerf. Perhaps if you're among the first few guilds that kill a boss, then it's an achievement. After a certain amount Blizzard lowers the difficulty to enable more people to see it. The 'achievemnt' getters have run their race and that's played out anyway. So Blizzard 'caters to the casuals'. But if you look at these numbers then that is not even as strong as a lot of people would like you to think. That's my point.
And yes, I agree that not the entire population raids and that if only a mere 35% of them do. That would still mean that only 15% has killed Ragnaros on normal. Considering the amount the encounters were nerfed, it's fair to say that catering to the casuals is not that much true, since only 15% has managed to kill him by now.
My point is not that is should be made easier, my point is that it apparently isn't that easy judging by these numbers, at least for 85% of the population (extrapolated from you assumption that only 35% does raid). Ergo, catering to the casuals is not as big as expected.
I don't raid any more. When I did, it was in an extremely casual setting with a guild that was mainly about having fun on Vent while we sometimes took down bosses. We usually got to the end of a tier by the start of the next one - and long after many other guilds had...but we didn't really care because we got to see all the content. As you can imagine, we didn't really do much in the way of heroic / hard modes...but we didn't really care because we got to see ALL the content. Heroic modes of the same boss aren't new content. They are versions of the same content that everyone gets that are specifically designed to be challengin enough for a small subset of the raiding population - the hardcore raiders. Some people are talking on this thread like even the most casual or raider should get to beat heroic Ragnaros because the paid for the content...which is just ridiculous. The vast majority of development time for a raid is done for normal modes - development that heroic modes also use. The design of the environments, the basic boss mechanics, the modelling and skinning, the sounds and the spell effects. Heroic content development is simply adding some extra abilities and occasionally mechanic, increasing health pools and tweaking damage output. There was a grand total of one extra artwork project for heroic content (Rags with legs). You paid your money, and if you've raided and gotten to at least 6/7 this tier then you have seen all the content (unless you killed the 6th boss and didn't even go into the last boss' room). Blizzard has made a fairly cheap concession to a small but significant number of players who need more challenge that you do - and has given them the chance to do the exact same fights again, but harder. But the only way this concession is valuable to that group is if it *is* too hard for people who are more casual in their play. So to argue that having only a small number of people have killed this same boss with the extra phase means that Blizzard isn't doing it's job and that it should nerf the encounter is just....silly.
Odd how only 2600 or so players have killed H Rag. But if you hang out on these forums, you'll find at least 3000 folks who claim to have done it in their sleep, while pointing the 'ubad!' finger at other posters.
Not bad for a game with apparently 16 millions of players , approx 25, 000 players would apparently killed end contentSomething went wrong here
Exactly this^ maybe 2 or 3 people here have actually killed H.Rag period.Odd how only 2600 or so players have killed H Rag. But if you hang out on these forums, you'll find at least 3000 folks who claim to have done it in their sleep, while pointing the 'ubad!' finger at other posters.
I am in the 209th US guild, 6/7 prenerf heroic modes (Normal Rag down week 2 after FL came out) with 4 legendary staffs (3 earned 1 xfered in) Our lowest dps is above the 75% on raid bots and we still can not get Rag down...
Please tell me how bad I am? Tell me how bad we suck and how dumb we are because we cant do it again? We are very good players and have yet to see meatball phase... so take your bullsh*t talk somewhere else please. Heroic Rag is hard even post nerf, its not the mechanics which are fairly simple for us, its the dps requirement that comes with it.
Last edited by jax; 2011-10-13 at 11:42 AM.
Obligate, I'm assuming you mean entitlement? If so, well paying for it kinda does.
You should have a choice how you want to experience all the content, not be denied of it. Would be weird if you were reading a book, but would not get the final chapter unless you could prove you read all the previous chapters thoroughly.
That's even the reason why lots of games have cheat modes, because developers realize that people need to be able to see all the stuff in the end, and not throw it in a corner because they hit a wall. If you're skilled enough to do it the hard way, bless you. But not every player has the same skills or even time to master the skills.
37 + (3*7) + (3*7)W/L/T/Death count: Wolf: 0/1/0/1 | Mafia: 1/6/0/7 | TPR: 0/4/1/5SK: 0/1/0/1 | VT: 2/5/2/7 | Cult: 1/0/0/1
That's still less than 1% of the level 85 playerbase. You can argue about how many are alts, or never tried... all of these may have some logic behind them, but that doesn't really change the raw data.
On the other hand, I don't see why folks are complaining about heroic content being a waste to implement. Most heroic encounters (afaik) seem to work the same as normal, with much higher health pools and damage. It's not like they're revamping entire instances for heroic raiders.
37 + (3*7) + (3*7)W/L/T/Death count: Wolf: 0/1/0/1 | Mafia: 1/6/0/7 | TPR: 0/4/1/5SK: 0/1/0/1 | VT: 2/5/2/7 | Cult: 1/0/0/1
My 2 cent incoming:Regarding the hc Ragnaros 1st: top 3 classes with achi's:1- Druids - can fullfill any role in a Raid2- Paladins - they are a must have too especially as Holy and Prot, less as Ret3 - Priests - good nuke as shadow imba healing as holy good support as DiscoLast class with achi:Shamans - not surprised, they have lost their support abilities once Lk struck. Resto shammies are inefficient due to their lack of in-built haste and because of the 'jomps to the closeest target' mechanics of Chain hela which is their speciality. Earth Shield is also terribad and useless those days compared to what it was.Enhancement has no dps at all and no use in a raid. Agian, its support skills were given to other classes too.Elemental has a pretty decent damage and is the one saving the shamans form the total shame. But it is still resumed to 3 spells: Flameshock - Lava Burst - Lightning bolt. They also need in-built haste and a more normap Spellpower ratio.Regarding the thing with nerfs - self explanatory - they brought the latest raid in game to the level where it can be easily cleared by every above average player, a thing which gives me an idea about wha twill they do after cataclysm with 'give everything to the hardcore', or better said what they consider to be a hardcore player.So, they where right when they said that WoW died with LK. RIP WoW.-----Just my 2 cent-----
So out of 10 million + UNIQUE subscribers, less than 2% of them have cleared NORMAL end game content? Less I'm sure, since this is based on 'characters' and not accounts, with several people who probably clear on multiple toons. I'm not saying it's because the content is hard, but if it's because people aren't interested in doing it, I'd say that's nothing to brag about either. So what I take away, in my extremely bias view, is that WoW has 10 million subscribers, but very few are actively participating in the game's newest content. (Yeah Yeah, people PvP, but I said newest content, Cata BGs aren't newest content and weren't that great anyway)
Well, you might be very good but you still are not good enough. Your players are not bad but they still are worse than the ones in guilds that have killed hc ragnaros. Also I can't understand why people always state their ranking based on their region... US 209th guild is what? World rank 500 or something?