Ghostcrawler Developer Blog: Raid Progress

[Deleted]

No, that's exactly what hardmodes are there for. You clear the normals, and then you clear the hardmodes. Less than 10% of the playerbase has even seen a heroic raid last I checked. I've just never understood the logic behind wanting more content you can't clear.

I know that is what theywere made for, that is what I said
And that sucks.

Why more content?Because more is better. Not always ofc but when it comes to principally repetitive things like raiding it absolutely applies. You dont go to the movies to watch the same film again and again and again. Diversity is the word here.

It is more fun to wipe for days on a new boss than it is to wipe for days on the hardmode of a boss you have already done a LOT of times. By that logic, it would be OK for you they add a Hardermode and uberhardmode and ExtremelyHardmode instead of creating new raids? I dont think so.

I know not one person, not even casual or simply bad raider, who enjoyed having to raid ICC for one year. Even the most "casual"(in most cases this meant simply bad) guilds should have been done with content long before december last year.

[Cope]

Hmm, seems like a bunch of obvious stuff. Raids are fun if people are challenged but bosses are killable. Bosses are easier with more gear and better strategy. 10 Heroic is harder than 25. Nothing new at all...

[Doombringer]

We have BWD down pretty solid, and will be on Nefarian this week. That said, we do have the occasional wipe. Our biggest gotchas right now include Maliorak and Atramedes. On Mal, if we miss an interrupt we can throw off our pacing. We've also had the aberration tank get frozen on some occasions, despite the hotfix that was supposed to resolve that. On Atramedes, the laser in his Air Phase is horrible.

AOE is also a problem. They nerfed most AOEs, but designed encounters with it being a requirement - Maliorak again, and Magmaw. This will improve as we get gear, but right out of the gate it can be a little harrowing.

[mokoshnek]

Another pointless babble that isn't worth the hard drive it is written on from an elaborate fisherman in no way qualified to manage a team of video game developers.

In short, this guy is a colossal (literally) idiot.

"Literally" a colossal idiot, eh? Last time I checked he was pretty average size.

[bloodwine77]

While I still view Kara and Ulduar as the best WoW raids, I must admit that BWD, BoT, and TotFW are pretty good raids. They have minimal trash and none of the fights are boring tank and spank fights. It requires tanks, dps, and healers to not be asleep at the wheel (or greatly overgear the encounter).

Ascendant Council is a good example of a well-designed encounter. Each boss plays off of each other and the raid utilizes one boss's abilities to counteract the other boss's abilities.

However, the biggest problem with WoW right now is that there is not enough to do at level 85 outside of raids. I think a lot of the decisions Blizzard has made to streamline the game has been good, but comes with bad side-effects. Now that there is a shared 10-man and 25-man lockout, people don't double raid (do both 10-man and 25-man). With faction rep tabards it is a joke to zerg to exalted with all the Cataclysm factions, so people aren't doing a lot of dailies. The only real dailies people run every day are the Tol Barad dailies and those get old real fast. They just aren't that enjoyable. Sure we don't hang around all day AFK in Dalaran now ... we hang around all day AFK in Org or SW. Heck, the cooking and fishing dailies don't even take us away from the city.

There needs to be more filler tasks to keep us engaged while not raiding.

[lkonig]

I just think there are more Casual Raiding guilds struggling than hardcore guilds clearing hard modes ATM. I mean Casual as guilds who have average raid ability and play time. I can see what the Hardcore raiders are saying as well I just think there should be balanced between normal and hard modes a bit better as most casual/normal playing raiding guilds will never see hard modes.

[Deleted]

What i like about his post is that it suggests that even with firelands out we will still raid BOT & BWD.

haha yeah, exactly what I got from it too.

Not only do we have to wait longer until new content gets released, we can also look forward to raiding "old" content by then because they will keep overtuning it so except for the top200guilds nobody will be done by the time they release it. Great times ahead folks!
(I like the basic idea of it A LOT. The only problem here is firelands is not coming in 4.1 so we can look forward to further raiding content that is half a year old by the time 4.2 finally hits...what a joke)

I can almost see it like a picture before my eyes, we will be left with the cataclysm version of ICC by the end of the year and forced to raid through it until the end of 2012 again!

[Hoosiermama]

10 Heroic is harder than 25. Nothing new at all...

heroic 10 is harder to balance than 25 man because you can't assume they have all tools available to them. the hard part of 10 heroic is having the right comp for each encounter. i've not raided 10 man heroic, but i'm sure they'd be easier if you could pull different classes in for different encounters (which isn't feasible for many guilds).

[Tic Tacs]

I think Ghostcrawler doesn't understand that casuals, like me, don't care about heroics pretty much. 12 / 12 normal is done for us.

[Deleted]

I just think there are more Casual Raiding guilds struggling than hardcore guilds clearing hard modes ATM. I mean Casual as guilds who have average raid ability and play time. I can see what the Hardcore raiders are saying as well I just think there should be balanced between normal and hard modes a bit better as most casual/normal playing raiding guilds will never see hard modes.

I can imagine that is right.

Easy solution is - make normal modes even more trivial. Make hardmodes even harder.

But push new content out faster. great content that is balanced and polished and not ToC 2.0.
I doubt they will make the same mistake they made with that raid again, in fact I am very excited for all the raids in the future because I expect them to be awesome. But there needs to be more of them.

[Deleted]

Blizzard don't need to nerf instance even more.
Ppl will have the chance to overgear by a lot actual instance so they will have the chance to see content.
And when new content hit just remember that will be easier to beat normal bosses. Why? Because all bosses will say what ability they do. Hardcore guilds will not need to wipe over and over to understand what this or there ability do. Casual guilds can spent 5 min looking to that before engage boss. Pugs will not need to pray that everyone read the tactic. One of the big problems of pugs is that ppl see videos and think that the boss is easy and don't read abiltiy, what dmg they do, what i should avoid and why, when i have to use cds, etc.
Spending 5 min before one boss to read abilities will help even more then the RL /rw what you should avoid. Will prevent many people go to a boss knowing he has to avoid that somehow and because yes he should increasing the success of many raids.
Everyone should remember RL shouting about difile but half of the ppl did not understand how it works before did that over and over. With some blizzard ui showing what defilie actualy do I bet you save lot of wipes.
So no! Don't nerf future raids. (maybe 1, 2 ability on old content so pugs do it easy for achivs in future)
This if fine and will be easier with new ui.

[Ares42]

Just me or was that quite a large amount of text without much of a message ?

[Tic Tacs]

Easy solution is - make normal modes even more trivial. Make hardmodes even harder.

But push new content out faster. great content that is balanced and polished and not ToC 2.0.

Nod. Blizzard thinks that progression for all players is normals -> heroic raids when actually it is not. Casuals don't even care about heroics, full clear normal is pretty much done.

[Rukentuts]

Now, show me on the doll where the bad crab touched you.

I giggled.

---------- Post added 2011-03-18 at 02:36 PM ----------

"Literally" a colossal idiot, eh? Last time I checked he was pretty average size.

Average is pretty big for USA these days. He's a porker. WTS him a neck.

[Hoosiermama]

I think Ghostcrawler doesn't understand that casuals, like me, don't care about heroics pretty much. 12 / 12 normal is done for us.

why not make the jump to heroics then? just start with the eaiser ones (halfus/chim) and see how you feel about them. if you've cleared normal mode, you're going to get pretty bored waiting for normal mode firelands.

[Senaelanna]

"We think progression is the key to players having fun."
There is no progression if you don't let pugs into raids because thats exactly what you did, in this expansion you killed pugs.

Let me make this clear:
Leave normal mode raids to pugs and causals.
Hard mode should be for the cool pros, elitists and guilds.

Yeah lets just obliterate the end game scene for the majority of the raiders. IE, the middle class raiders who raid 2 nights a week and are working on heroics now. That makes a whole lot of sense.

[Deleted]

Just me or was that quite a large amount of text without much of a message ?

it was also blue!!

[Tic Tacs]

why not make the jump to heroics then? just start with the eaiser ones (halfus/chim) and see how you feel about them. if you've cleared normal mode, you're going to get pretty bored waiting for normal mode firelands.

Waste of time and boring doing same content with some changes to mechanics. I would rather level my warrior in Rift than wipe on boring content that I've already done on normal.

[lkonig]

I just think there are more Casual Raiding guilds struggling than hardcore guilds clearing hard modes ATM. I mean Casual as guilds who have average raid ability and play time. I can see what the Hardcore raiders are saying as well I just think there should be balanced between normal and hard modes a bit better as most casual/normal playing raiding guilds will never see hard modes.

[zrankfappa]

looks like the devs (or management) finally got around to nerfing Ghostcrawler, he certainly doesn't have the bite he used too. Little more than Gamon pre-Cata ...