Nerfs and Bad Communication
Posted 06-26-2009 at 10:05 AM by michah
We completed Heroic: Firefighter on Sunday, and then finished our drakes on Wednesday by mopping up Heroic: One Light in the Darkness. It was great, we nerd cheered, and we failed miserably to a berserk timer on an Algalon fight that most folks look up to as the hardest fight in the zone - it isn't, just a heads up.
What I really want to touch on are the nerfs to some of the hardmodes. I love it. The one thing about finishing all the hard content, for me, is that I just want to be done with it. We put in our 160 runs at Freya +3, we put in our 190 runs at Mimiron, we did all of our junk when it was hard, and we're proud of it. But we're casuals at heart, we don't like farming and thank god we can just casual the hell out of this crap.
The bottom line with these hardmodes was, they're going to get their time out of you. Mimiron was going to get 150-200 runs out of you, and that's that - whether or not you wanted to do it in 4-5 consecutive nights, or you stretched it out over 3 weeks like we did, he was going to get his time out of you, and it was going to be frustrating and difficult. We were averaging about 35 attempts per 4 hour raid night, and we stretched it long on our 5th night on him to bring him down. We wanted it bad, and felt we could do it, so getting everyone to just focus for 6 hours and bring em down wasn't too bad.
Maybe that's why blizzard switched off the difficulty now - they know the guilds reaching it now are more likely to take 3-4 weeks to get those attempt #'s in with their raid schedule - much like we did, and they intend on having 3.2 coming around the corner by then, and aren't pleased with the number of guilds. 43 guilds completed hardmode mimiron before the nerf - and that's just US/EU mind you, but that's out of a sampling of almost 54,000 guilds that have accomplished some sort of raiding milestone. We're already 2 months into the release of Ulduar, and that was all that had completed it up until Tuesday.
The downside here is that someone gets hurt. Sure there are 100's of guilds that are working on freya now, or vezax now, or thorim now, and this nerf comes as a semi-relief to them as far as the drake and turnover are concerned, but for all the guilds who were working on it, and get stuck with a post-nerf kill, you end up feeling bad for them. They were earning it and had it snatched away. I know on our second night of working on the fight, we were hitting the berserk timer on a few attempts, even if we were still 100 pulls away from the kill. I'm sure plenty of other guilds felt that. Put 6-8 hours into it, and saw some glimpses of the future kill. I had read about a few guilds that were wiping to the berserk with a few pieces dead and one piece at 2-3%. That's where we were 2 Monday's ago, and we didn't get back in until Sunday (emergencies with crucial members sucks, but what can you do). If the nerf had occured a week prior, that could have been us. To be at that point this week, knowing you could do it and then just having that snatched away, I mean shit. If they had at least WARNED about it a week in advance, maybe some folks wouldn't have wasted their time - or better yet, made sacrifices to get the kill they really really wanted.
I suppose that's the real lesson here. For someone in my position, having completed it all, I'm relieved that the "casual schedule" that all of us hardcore guilds talk about, is something that we can now look forward to as a sure thing for the next couple months. I'm sure many guilds further down on the chain are relieved that they too can get those drakes with 3.2 looming in the not too distant future. But for those guys inbetween, that knew they could get the drakes, but just really really wanted to experience the hardest of the hardmodes, you feel it most for them. The communication system about when changes like this are coming is just trash, and perhaps needs to be re-worked by Blizzard. Everyone that wants to do it, should be able to do it. If Blizzard makes it more visible, maybe this can be less of a burn for guilds in the future.
What I really want to touch on are the nerfs to some of the hardmodes. I love it. The one thing about finishing all the hard content, for me, is that I just want to be done with it. We put in our 160 runs at Freya +3, we put in our 190 runs at Mimiron, we did all of our junk when it was hard, and we're proud of it. But we're casuals at heart, we don't like farming and thank god we can just casual the hell out of this crap.
The bottom line with these hardmodes was, they're going to get their time out of you. Mimiron was going to get 150-200 runs out of you, and that's that - whether or not you wanted to do it in 4-5 consecutive nights, or you stretched it out over 3 weeks like we did, he was going to get his time out of you, and it was going to be frustrating and difficult. We were averaging about 35 attempts per 4 hour raid night, and we stretched it long on our 5th night on him to bring him down. We wanted it bad, and felt we could do it, so getting everyone to just focus for 6 hours and bring em down wasn't too bad.
Maybe that's why blizzard switched off the difficulty now - they know the guilds reaching it now are more likely to take 3-4 weeks to get those attempt #'s in with their raid schedule - much like we did, and they intend on having 3.2 coming around the corner by then, and aren't pleased with the number of guilds. 43 guilds completed hardmode mimiron before the nerf - and that's just US/EU mind you, but that's out of a sampling of almost 54,000 guilds that have accomplished some sort of raiding milestone. We're already 2 months into the release of Ulduar, and that was all that had completed it up until Tuesday.
The downside here is that someone gets hurt. Sure there are 100's of guilds that are working on freya now, or vezax now, or thorim now, and this nerf comes as a semi-relief to them as far as the drake and turnover are concerned, but for all the guilds who were working on it, and get stuck with a post-nerf kill, you end up feeling bad for them. They were earning it and had it snatched away. I know on our second night of working on the fight, we were hitting the berserk timer on a few attempts, even if we were still 100 pulls away from the kill. I'm sure plenty of other guilds felt that. Put 6-8 hours into it, and saw some glimpses of the future kill. I had read about a few guilds that were wiping to the berserk with a few pieces dead and one piece at 2-3%. That's where we were 2 Monday's ago, and we didn't get back in until Sunday (emergencies with crucial members sucks, but what can you do). If the nerf had occured a week prior, that could have been us. To be at that point this week, knowing you could do it and then just having that snatched away, I mean shit. If they had at least WARNED about it a week in advance, maybe some folks wouldn't have wasted their time - or better yet, made sacrifices to get the kill they really really wanted.
I suppose that's the real lesson here. For someone in my position, having completed it all, I'm relieved that the "casual schedule" that all of us hardcore guilds talk about, is something that we can now look forward to as a sure thing for the next couple months. I'm sure many guilds further down on the chain are relieved that they too can get those drakes with 3.2 looming in the not too distant future. But for those guys inbetween, that knew they could get the drakes, but just really really wanted to experience the hardest of the hardmodes, you feel it most for them. The communication system about when changes like this are coming is just trash, and perhaps needs to be re-worked by Blizzard. Everyone that wants to do it, should be able to do it. If Blizzard makes it more visible, maybe this can be less of a burn for guilds in the future.
Total Comments 8
Comments
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They are rushing 3.2 too quickly. We had Naxx/OS/Maly for many more months then Ulduar it seems to me.
I want the 3.2 raids to be as epic as Ulduar is/was for me, not some rushed out POS like I think it will be.Posted 06-26-2009 at 10:33 AM by Ferag 
- Congrats. We had similar issues with the initial rounds of nerfs on the normal mode bosses. Getting bosses to 2% then coming in the next week and walking all over them just felt like a cheap kill. I did not realize that the # of hard mode completions were so low. I really feel like they tuned Uldar too high then nerfed it too hard too fast. And this is from a guild that is just starting on keepers.
And the comment on that they are rushing 3.2, I whole heartedly agree. From release to 3.1 was what? Six seven months? Uldar just dropped two maby three months ago. Unless they are looking at releasing it in Sept or Oct it is too soon.Posted 06-26-2009 at 01:28 PM by Sangi
Updated 06-26-2009 at 01:29 PM by Sangi (spellinh) - Your looking at 2 months on the PTR like Ulduar was. So yeah, August/September looks about right.
What i love is that, without seeing the content, or knowing anything about it , people are very quick to give Blizzard a Kick for "Rushing it".Posted 06-27-2009 at 03:10 AM by adrenalize - When you look back at the history of "raid" content, which is now about 10-11 years old from a large scale raiding perspective -- no game has ever had content gaps between the completion of current content and the release of new content that took longer than 6 months, except for Everquest *once*. That happened between the completion of Quarm and the release of the next heavy content expansion, and the game lost almost 40% of it's subscriptions during that time. Blizzard on the other hand has had gaps of more than 6 months between defeated content and new content 6 times now, several of those gaps lasting as long as 8-10 months. So from a content release standpoint, WoW is pretty much the worst MMO ever.
It's kind of interesting when you look back at it. I don't want to say that they're necessarily rushing it - perhaps they're just trying to do a better job. However, I severely dislike that they move everyone up to an equal level with every major patch. I feel like resetting the playing field is one of the biggest mistakes they make and contributes to a LOT of guilds struggling/folding. Progression is Progression. If they want to nerf content, so be it, but don't just completely remove previous content from the progression list with each patch. Why bother with Ulduar when you can just do heroics, get higher i-level gear from badges, and start working on the Coliseum. It's stupid and counter intuitive, and is a major detriment to alot of mid-level guilds. It's bad design philosophy and has a negative effect on the guild-social aspect of the game. Fast content? Go for it, but allow the concept of a progression ladder to continue over the course of an expansion and stop putting so much pressure on everyone to finish the current stuff before the next patch.Posted 06-27-2009 at 10:13 AM by michah - I would still ike to see some sort of token that you have to get from vanilla raiding content to then progress to TBC and then WotLK content. Something that would make everyone have to do the content at least once. The gear would of course be useless but for people who joined the game in TBC or even in WOTLK release days, they, like me, will never know what AQ20, MC, TBC naxx or the sunwell plateau are about!! there could be some of the best scenery in the game in there .. but i will never know !! oh well
onto Ulduar .. Posted 06-29-2009 at 05:06 AM by Daggus - however, there's ppl like me, who have seen all of that, and started over, and NEVER want to go back there.
I've put my time in.
Before the raiding it was hours and hours of strat and scholo.
after that it was LBRS, and UBRS.
then it was the endless days of ZG and MC, and BWL, and Onyxia, and AQ, and Naxx, and new content came out. And it was endless days of Kara, and Gruul, and Mag, and TK, and SSC, and Hyjal, and finally BT.
I never ever ever ever ever want to go back. ever.Posted 06-30-2009 at 01:38 AM by Rialév - The problem with progression is, like everyone who experienced it knows, if you're not able to keep the people who you shared the progression with, you either have to steal players from other equally progressed guilds, or merge with other guilds when you lose players. And you will lose players, it's an inevitable fact of games, people quit, move on to other things, or just transfer for whatever reason.
Recruitment was a serious problem at 60, primarily because the kinds of recruits we were getting were people in all blues, when we were struggling on 4 horsemen in naxx. There was no WAY we could accept that kind of a recruit when it meant completely regearing that recruit using valuable loot from the progression dungeon, all the while wondering if the recruit would even stay or be good enough at the end. It was a crapshoot. That's why blizzard provides gear to allow new players the ability to approach the level of progression content. To ease new players into the endgame and keep raid populations from deflating.Posted 06-30-2009 at 10:24 AM by Durenas - It's called achievements, and tier sets. I still have tier2 in my bank, as well as 5 piece 2.5, all of which i got in progression.Quote:I would still ike to see some sort of token that you have to get from vanilla raiding content to then progress to TBC and then WotLK content. Something that would make everyone have to do the content at least once. The gear would of course be useless but for people who joined the game in TBC or even in WOTLK release days, they, like me, will never know what AQ20, MC, TBC naxx or the sunwell plateau are about!! there could be some of the best scenery in the game in there .. but i will never know !! oh well onto Ulduar ..
Edit: oh i see what you mean. reading comprehension ftl. No i think that would be a bad idea. It would restrict freedom. Remember TBC attunements? Yeah that was a bad idea then and it's still a pretty bad idea now.Posted 06-30-2009 at 10:27 AM by Durenas
