Knowing the Buff is coming might help guilds retain their top 10% and keep them from jumping ship.
"Yeah it was a wipefest this week, but in two weeks we'll have the buff and we'll down it."
It would be nice if they attached the % increases to numbers of dailies done, etc, so that the level of easiness in ICC over time is directly related to the effort outside the instance that the more casual players put into it.
On the whole, I'm not a fan of the raidwide buff idea, though I think the gating is good. I think that Ulduar had the appropriate level of difficulty in progression, and I hope it's similar in ICC, even though my guild failed at Uld for a fairly long time.
I hadn't thought about them normalizing the effect of holiday vacations hitting guilds, but that makes a lot of sense.
Regardless of that, Blizzard has done a lot over the years to earn my respect and trust. If they need additional time to hammer out Arthas and several of the later, more epic IC fights, I'm just fine with that.
And just like a child wants dessert before dinner, I think forcing the community to wait for one (two? three?) months before the Big Reveal of Arthas will give us a chance to have a steady stream of new things to look forward to, rather than a all-at-once release.
At the very least, my guild can go mop up our achievements that we've been skipping in Naxx and Ulduar (and Dedicated Insanity!) during weeks where the Weekly Raid quests send us there.
What happened in Ulduar with a lot of the more hardcore guilds, was that they cleared the instance by going hardcore all day and night, and then when they got to doing hardmodes after being geared up, they were already bored of the instance.
This is probably a better system to spread out the lifetime of the instance, as well as keep guilds from getting bored of it before they get to hardmodes.
The Ashbringer...
I'm not overly concnerned about the gating, but the limited progression strikes me as strange. Only 5 attempts per wing boss and only 15 in total including Arthas?
Either normal mode is going to be very easy or casual guilds like mine will be in ICC for months simply because we have so few chances and learning the encounters.
Or the plus side i expect strategy videos like those on tankspot to become even more popular, so expect increased traffic Cider.
Other guilds' progression does not effect other guilds. Being 1st to down WOW PVE Is like beating a car off a stop light.Originally Posted by mistersix
Either play to win, or shut up and lose.
I think that this mode of limiting is excessivly redundant. So now not only do you only get one win every few weeks but now you only get 5 attempts on the final boss of each wing? I think this might be part of some kind of bigger plan to essentially make raid weeks shorter and shorter because atm if you can clear TotgC in one night you have the rest of the week to do nothing that directly contirbutes to you or your guild progression.
The best guilds will still get Realm Firsts! and all those sweet rewards asap, middle level guilds with decent players will have chance to fairly compete with those who could dedicate much more time than most players possibly ever would.. oh and after a while even small casual guilds will be able to kill Arthas, explore the final story of LK and enjoy it.
Clearing the most epic raid and killing the Arch-Nemesis of this expansion in few days after going live would just ruin the whole idea of Icecrown being the final ultimate goal to face (Cataclysm didn't happen yet) imo.
ToC was gated at one boss per week.
This is gated at one wing per several weeks.
If there's 4 bosses in a wing, and they wait three to four weeks to unlock the second wing...
...I'm not seeing a huge need for further justification.
If it was a few weeks per boss yeah, making with the QQ would be reasonable.
But a week per boss isn't bad, and they're front-loading the boss access by releasing a wing at a time.
I didn't reference progression. I meant within guild some players wouldn't fall behind others in gear or experience.
How much this will turn Algalon way to:
Get your alts ready - go and try boss 5 times then come with mains and kill it? Who have alts ready for it will win?
Mookey | GM of <RISE> Xavius [EU]
Blizzard seems to be pushing hard to put everyone on the same playing field when it comes to instances first coming out. Paring a gated progression system with a wipe counter will make it more about who gets the best strategy down faster, and not about who uses brute force to down it first.
I for one am happy that i dont have to worry about my guild taking a week or two off of raiding due to holidays. though i dont know how i feel about "a few weeks later" that seems like a awful long time to farm the same 4 bosses.. oh.. dont we already have something like that?
Pros:
I think it's good for the christmas period as you probably won't have the full instance open then so it makes it easier for guilds to do a pretty limited schedule. When hard modes come it'll be well after xmas and then people can spend time working on them then. On a personal level it works well for me because i have a lot going on at the moment and i'm liking the days off we currently have due to toc/togc being cleared very easily each week, a full icecrown could have put a stop to that though so i'm somewhat happy.
Cons:
Not sure i agree with only 15 tries, that's less than a night for even a "casual" guild like mine. Maybe if it was just the lich king but it's the 3 end wing bosses + the lich king which means you won't be able to spend much time on the fun stuff (ie. progressing on hard stuff). Also having to kill all hard mode end wing bosses EVERY RESET before being able to try hard mode lich king - for all those that did it pre ToC, imagine having to do firefighter every reset before you could do your hour of algalon!
Xíanth <Valkyria>
Well said.
Dancing Peon Productions™
The only thing I feel pesimistic about is the amount of tries for normal boss encounters. It is not that bad in terms of "deserving" and making it more like an achievment but it could lead into more stress for more casual raiding, as in my guild, where people would be more annoyed with the numbers decreasing. I find it quite satisfactory as a player but as an officer and (sub) raid leader it could mean less tolerance within a raid towards each other. We all know that in casual raiding whining or even nagging happens often with more wipes, exceptions are there ofc
I think that part of heroic mode is actually for what you said above...the aim is certainly for hardcore progress guilds and to make them feel challenged, suffering sometimes can be parallel to that!, as the feeling of beating something that caused so much trouble is quite astonishing I believeAlso having to kill all hard mode end wing bosses EVERY RESET before being able to try hard mode lich king - for all those that did it pre ToC, imagine having to do firefighter every reset before you could do your hour of algalon!
In my opinion, beating the last 3 bosses in heroic mode in order to reach Arthas heroic mode would most likely remind of the days from Sunwell.
I think the gating system is also related with keeping people play the game. Not that many people would be willing to play another game until they see Arthas holding Frostmourne whispering your ears words dominating your mind...at least this is my idea.
I like the gated opening and the very limited number if attempts even in normal mode.
It means we won't all disappear into an Icecrown-shaped hole the day the place opens. We'll be able to maintain a reasonable schedule, while still being focused and taking the instance seriously due to the limited attempts. When we're done with ICC for the week, we'll still have days left to work on our Starcaller, give people black drakes, and such (we're a 10-man group).
In all I like new content but I much prefer having it in this limited and gated way, rather than in an all-absorbing way. Well done to Blizzard for this design.
Actually this is total bullshit. Gated and limited amount of tries? I want to raid, i want to play not keep waiting and waiting, and waiting.
And all the positives about it, which someone mentioned, x-mas time (uh oh what?) and that the raid progress is more even in server first, i don?t see why this is good actually, top guilds stay top guilds and the x-mas argument, i don`t get it sorry.
I`m so disappointed right now, i just can`t express das clearly but i`m shocked this get some positive resonance here.
I think you'll find that you're in the minority around here with that opinion. A system like this rewards planning and skilled play. It doesn't artificially reward those who can simply throw 6 hours a night at it with the hopes that the RNG will favor them on one of those attempts and they'll get it.
I think this is a much better limiting system than the timer they used for Algalon, too.
Don't worry, though. If you're looking for the orgasmic flurry of sleepless raiding progression from the past, just wait until all of heroic mode is unlocked at once.
Gating a wing is fine by me, keeps players looking forward to when Arthas is unlocked etc. Limiting the number of attempts is not cool though because of the limits it puts on your raids. Do we call raids because a key player is unable to log on, or someone's connection is in question for that night? What about when things like wintergrasp start and cause the server to lag for 10sec?
How will guilds decide when to bring in recruits on trial status when they aren't familiar with a guilds strategy and may only have 15 attempts to learn? It would be hard to justify bringing trials in during these first few weeks until the number of attempts available increases.
<Rak> shouldnt you be sleeping
<Rak> its early afternoon
Yeh this is going to be quite a big problem, and is already a problem in ToGC. You would be reluctant to bring in a guy who may have some experience of the instance but not all of it if you're working towards getting insanity or at least mad skill every week. It's going to be a more widespread problem now that the tries in ICC are applying to normal mode - even a "non-hardcore" guilds will have their progression stopped if they bring new recruits to those bosses.
Xíanth <Valkyria>
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