Icecrown Gated Progression

[Hire]

The limited attempts is there so you can't "nolife" boss encounter and get kills when all the stars line up. Although 5 is kinda low, I hope it goes up each week and eventually just goes away. How can my guild trial members or experiment with changing strategies on those end-wing bosses?

If the "several weeks before gates are lifted" then yeah that's a big issue. All this hoopla over ICC and we can only see one wing for a month or more? I'm hoping I just read that wrong.

I do agree that there are guilds that do this, but I wanted to clarify what I meant by "d/c, lag". It's more the fact that on patch day, instance servers are more often than not glitchy as hell. I had my main stuck in Ulduar on more than one occasion (some times for hours on end) with no way to log in. Until they fixed the servers, some people would always d/c right at the pull of Beasts and Thorim (sidenote: after a lot of troubleshooting player side Blizzard finally diagnosed and admitted there was a problem on their end; I don't know how many servers this affected though)

These sorts of d/c reasons are why I don't like 5 limits for regular mode. Don't get me wrong... I actually really like this release thus far, especially the tier system and self-nerfing content you can opt out of (please please have achievements for no-buff kills!). However "nolife guilds" are playing the same game we are for the same amount, and if that's how they do it then so be it. The most talented players will still kill things first.

[Magorian]

I understand Blizzard wants ICC to last until Cataclysm with it being the end of this expansion. I also like that they gave a Role Playing reason to the gated progression and limited attempts.

How I see things:

The Argent Crusade and Ebon Blade have joined forces to form the Ashen Verdict. An army to battle Arthas and his scourge minions in ICC.

And like any army, if you are unable to take the hill, you fall back and regroup. You call in reinforcements and go and try to take the hill again.

Once you have taken the first hill you are able to set up a larger base camp and gather more reinforcements which allows you a larger army to cross the river and take the second hill.

[Eravian]

The gated progression of Icecrown is probably going to happen regardless of what this forum post concludes, so why bother complaining about it? If it makes people happy, maybe they'll put world firsts the final boss of each wing, so that you get a new race every couple weeks. I understand the desire to progress and kill Arthas first, but to complain that you have to farm the first few wings over and over again is kind of silly. As opposed to what, just farming the whole dungeon over and over again? If people are that excited to farm stuff, there's plenty of places to do that, and you'll be able to in Icecrown soon enough.

As for the argument that you pay Blizzard to play, and they shouldn't mandate that, you're welcome to stay on WoW as much as you want. You just can't run the raids any more than they let you. The money you pay is permission to use their servers and play their game... you had to agree to the User Agreement, the same as everyone else.

[ZaneOSAK]

As for the argument that you pay Blizzard to play, and they shouldn't mandate that, you're welcome to stay on WoW as much as you want. You just can't run the raids any more than they let you. The money you pay is permission to use their servers and play their game... you had to agree to the User Agreement, the same as everyone else.

You really see nothing wrong with that?

Also its not that people want to farm the dungeon over and over, its the fact that upon release we get 4 bosses and the wait is "several weeks" until a new boss. I dont care how good you are or how much you love blizzard, EVERYBODY will get bored of 4 bosses (basically ToC) for "several weeks" especially without the ability to tackle hard modes...

And as far as complaining, people feel cheated so they voice their opinion, I don't see anything wrong with that either.

[Bashal]

I think people are missing something here: the fact that the raids have a 1-week lockout.

If it takes 8 weeks before they release the next wing, you're only "farming" the first wing 8 times before new content comes out (or I suppose 16 if you are one of those guilds that does both 10 and 25-man modes). That's probably far fewer times than anyone here has been clearing ToC to date. Also -- I'm just guessing -- but I don't think they'll make you wait two months for the next bit to come out. It'll probably be more on the order of 4-6 weeks.

But, if you are in a really good raiding guild, regardless of how they release the content (all at once or gated), you'll beat all this stuff shortly after it comes out and be bored, bored, bored until cataclysm. It's really 6 of one, 1/2 a dozen of the other in that respect: you're gonna be unsatisfied with a lack of content either way.

[Eravian]

You really see nothing wrong with that?

Also its not that people want to farm the dungeon over and over, its the fact that upon release we get 4 bosses and the wait is "several weeks" until a new boss. I dont care how good you are or how much you love blizzard, EVERYBODY will get bored of 4 bosses (basically ToC) for "several weeks" especially without the ability to tackle hard modes...

And as far as complaining, people feel cheated so they voice their opinion, I don't see anything wrong with that either.

I'm not saying that it can't be potentially annoying, or that people can't feel cheated by it, but just pointing out that whether we pay or not, the game DOES belong to Blizzard, and most people do play on servers that THEY maintain... that's why they get to determine how many times instances can be run, when instances will be launched, etc. I merely meant to point out that the $15 we pay is access to the game itself, and if we don't like the game we don't have to play it.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that people can't feel cheapened by it, or complain. I totally understand the frustration of liking to play, but being locked out of everything for a week until you can do it again, and everyone has the right to voice their opinions or complaints. I merely meant that making it sound like Blizzard is denying you your rights or trying to control how you live your life are perhaps blowing things out of proportion. It's only a few weeks to wait, and like the above poster said, you can only do the dungeon once every week, and that's assuming you can beat the last boss in five tries. Fair or not, that's probably the reason that you start with so few attempts and get more as it goes, so that it's much harder for people to farm ALL the bosses the first few weeks. I don't think that that's the best system for doing it, but that would explain why you get more tries as it goes, etc.

[Fuljin]

I'm a little bit disappointed by the gated progression as well as by the limited attempts.

About limitation of attempts:
We have 1 hour on Algalon and we can already do more than 5 tries.
Also as already mentioned I don't like such limitations because we will have to pay attention to who will raid. It will be not that easy to manage a guild, a raid, and the members with some of them taking more time to assimilate a strategy (let's hope they will read the strat).

About gated progression:
I hoped an Ulduar-like raid for what should be the most desired raid of the extension. Instead, I feel like I will have to raid 3 months (or more) in a ToC-like instance. It's true that when the second wing will be available we will have done the first wing only 4-6 times. But how many times it will be when the heroïc mode will be available? 10? 20? I think it will be enough for me to get bored by the first 4 bosses.
An other fact is that I'm really bored by ToC. I expected a new raid to completely forget ToC. And It's perhaps not the case.

The difficulty of the normal mode is also something unknown. But if it is too easy, I will have enough time to get bored by the instance before the heroic mode will be available.

I'm really surprised to read so many positive feedbacks on ICC. So I guess I belong to a minority of players. We will see how it is. But until now if you ask me which the best raid of WoTLK, I'll answer:"Ulduar".

[Eravian]

Ulduar is a really cool raid, so there's no reason it couldn't be peoples favorite raid... I just think that saying it's the best without trying Icecrown and merely basing it off the fact that Icecrown is having a gated release is not the best argument to make. If ToC all came out at once, it wouldn't have made it a better raid, same with Icecrown. The speed in which you can complete it, at least to me, doesn't make a raid more fun.

[Fuljin]

As it is not possible to do hard modes or to do the raid in heroic mode, it's obvious that all the community will have to play in the same raid content for a while. If it's several weeks between each release of a new wing, that means according to me at least 7 weeks waiting for the hard modes (based on a minimum of 2 weeks between each wing + 1 week after having defeated Arthas for the reset of the raid id).

I don't really see how it will be possible to satisfy every kind of players/guilds/raids with only one mode available for, let say, two months.
If Ensidia or Wraith or any other top guild enjoy the normal mode it will probably too hard for my own raid and for many others.
If it's about the same difficulty than we had for ToC normal mode, then it means that for a long period of time we will have to be satisfied by the farming of the normal mode.

I don't like farming, I hate this. I have no particular issue with the fact that 2 modes are available. But if you ask me to farm a content 2 months in easy mode before having a chance to enjoy a challenge, don't be surprised if I tell you that I don't like that.

I still have to do something in Ulduar and it was not necessary to gate the progression to have such a result. I had the opportunity to discover it at the rythm we decided and to start HM when we wanted. When I see such a system, I feel that the rythm is no more the result of our choice.

It's clear for me that the decision has not been taken for players or their interests but only for the company and according to the planning. Is it the right way to address the customer's needs?

[Bashal]

It's clear for me that the decision has not been taken for players or their interests but only for the company and according to the planning. Is it the right way to address the customer's needs?

I'd be willing to bet (may have already been said in this thread, not sure) that they are releasing in stages so the can bring it out sooner. If we insisted on no gated release, and they followed suit, we wouldn't be looking at getting the whole thing next week (or whenever the first wing is supposed to be released). We'd be looking at waiting until whatever the delivery date is for the last wing of ICC.

Given those two choices: "we can give you some now and the rest later", or "you're gonna have to wait another two months and then you'll get the whole thing", which do you think sounds better? At least with the former, you get something to do. It'll satisfy enough people just enough to keep them from hibernating their accounts. If they made us wait longer, they'd lose more subscribers, even if the loss was temporary.

Yes, they have a plotline that explains the gated release. But it's fairly easy for their creative folk to come up with a plotline to accommodate whatever business decision they make. The business decision came first. It always comes first.

TL;DR the gated release was a decision to give us a little something sooner rather than later, so satisfy the majority just enough to keep them playing and paying.

[Chamenas]

The only thing that scares me about the gated progression is that it feels like Blizzard may be admitting they didn't make Icecrown as difficult as I hoped it would be. The way I saw it, Naxx was easy, people did Naxx and got gear for the actual raid, Ulduar. Ulduar came out, it was difficult, it was fun and it took people awhile to clear it and then to do hard modes. There was plenty of content and it felt like it was the raid everyone had been hoping for.

ToC came out and people were disappointed because it was so short and so easy and offered little content. I saw it as Naxx 2.0. With everything Blizzard had done, it seemed they wanted yet another "entrance" level instance (albeit you should probably be in some Naxx and badge gear to do ToC) so that people could be geared for the real raid, Icecrown.

I'm sure Icecrown will give a decent challenge to people who aren't terribly good raiders. As I'm not in a raiding guild, I'm sure I'll go through some pretty terrible attempts and people will feel that it's hard. But I get the feeling that if I run with a good group, it's something that could be cleared easily and that this system is an admission to that.

I don't know, it's all speculation. To be honest, the gated system works out well for my schedule anyways and it's good to know I won't be pressured to stay longer in order to get more bosses down. And, as I'm not in a top-raiding guild, I imagine the first four bosses will provide plenty of challenge to the people I raid with anyways. From what I've seen, most of the encounters look fun, I hope they're sufficiently difficult, but I'm still looking forward to ICC.

[nethervoid]

My main concern is a more global concern over the excitement of a guild first downing of a boss. It's becoming less and less cool because of how 'easy' they make it over time on purpose. My incentive for wanting to attempt a boss is to challenge myself and the raid to beat that boss. This ever expanding policy of 'we want everyone to experience every boss' makes more and more raiders just lazier, opening a gap even further in 'family' guilds between those of us that want a challenging fight and the ones who just want to play mario brothers and don't really give two craps about challenge. The challenge for them is staying interested long enough to get a kill. lol

I really miss the challenge of beating bosses that are just set at a certain difficulty and you're either good enough to beat the guy or not. End of story. When you make something that people desire so accessable that everyone has one of these items, it becomes much less desireable.

Let's expand on that. Last night my guild was bored (nobody logs in for Uld anymore, even though we haven't killed Yogg yet - Why should they? The encounter is too hard for the loot that drops - WTF?!), so we decided to kill Maly as many of us weren't raiding to our current level when that content was new. We killed him, big surprise, because many of us have close to full 232+ gear. 8 out of 10 or so of us got the Champion of the Frozen Wastes achieve. I didn't even put the title on. Everyone has it. I kept my EXPLORER title on, because I think less people have that than CotFW! lol

So who cares now if I beat the lich king? Everyone has.

[Bashal]

So who cares now if I beat the lich king? Everyone has.

When is still important. The achieves come with a date attached.

It still matters to me if I manage to get something sooner rather than later. Even if nobody else give a damn, I still do. That's an entirely subjective stance on my part, but it's mine nonetheless.