The Weekly Marmot - What if MoP Released Without Raids?

[Mwawka]

If you look at the life of an expansion there is always going to be raiding downtime. The majority of it falls near the end of the expac when there is absolutely nothing left to do. If they could shift a month of that dead time to the start of the expac when there is lots of new things to do and experience, I just don't see the downside. Especially if it resulted in an earlier release.

[captanmurdoc]

Everyone is talking about the ease to gear up from the extra 2 weeks and it relieving pressure from the mad dash to raid but I personally find that to be one of the most fun parts of an expansion release. Seeing how fast you can get to max lvl and start raiding and just trying to down a boss you know youre undergeared for but are trying to push through it anyways. I personally plan on hitting 90 before the end of the night and will be hoping my guildies are as quick as I am so we have a few days to grind the heroics and be able to step into the raid on monday before release. I'll take my time with the quests my next 10 times through when im leveling my alts but the first time is all about speed and the race for 90 and boss kills for me.

[Geach]

Honestly my 1st thought with just reading the title is by the release of MOP people will really want a new raid from Dragon Soul. So doing having a delay doesn't sound really all that great.

After hearing it out honestly it depends on how they delivered a delay. If the delivery is like Dragon Soul LFR was the 1st week or so I don't view it as badly. Though I think a month is a bit much and think 1-2 weeks sounds much better. If the delay gets delivered as the raids are not ready. I view it just being similar to what happened with the ZA/ZG 5 mans and saying releasing content faster. That didn't turn out as great delivery. Since in my view I don't feel like the content came out any faster after the release of the ZA/ZG 5 mans.

[Spotnick]

I'd rather have that than waiting an extra month of 35% Dragon Soul for sure.

But as somebody said, they would also have to delay the pvp season.

[Tarvox]

i want to reroll monk so i cant help but find this idea of a 2 weeks delay amazing since i would still have a chance to be part of the raid group, and for all of the people complaining about having raid later think about it this way if mop release mid july without raid cause they dont have too test as much thing in one shot or early august with raid we still end up having raids at the same time but at the very least we dont have to stay in 4,3 spinning around because there is nothing else to do for 2 weeks. I would rather mess around in mop for 2 weeks than get my raid than just 20man ds for such a long a time

[Lore]

You can trot right back to Mr. GC and tell him you fronted the idea to the community and that we ain't buying it.

Several people seem to be disagreeing with you :P

I don't think this is something they'd actually do regardless, but it's interesting to think about.

[Gregasaurous]

I don't think this is something they'd actually do regardless, but it's interesting to think about.

At times like these I wonder to myself if Blizzard pays a few people to keep tabs on fansite forums just too see what the publics opinion is on things outside of the qq troll filled Official WoW Forums.

[smokes]

tbh, i think it'd be a good idea to delay the raids a couple of weeks

it gives people not only a chance to explore the new content and gameplay options, but also, levelling a monk from 1-90 is gonna take a lot longer than anyone levelling 85-90.

in my guild for both wotlk and cata, we had people who'd hit max level in a day or 2 and others who took months, everybody has different levelling speeds and it's hard to expect anyone (in an average guild) to hit 90 in 3 days and be geared for raiding in the first week.

giving everybody some breathing room to level up, gear up and get some sleep inbetween would not be a bad thing.

[Ruin]

2) I don't care about any of the worthless crap they're adding. Challenge modes might sound interesting to kill some time, but those are very much a "between tiers" sort of thing. But pet battles? If someone in my raid is wasting time doing that instead of getting ready to raid they won't be raiding with us. They WILL be replaced.

My emphasis.

Wow. Dude, you need to relax. Are you planning on monitoring "your" raiders' armory pages and then insta-kicking them as soon as they get an achievement that isn't directly related to raiding?

"What?! You did something that was fun?! In a game?! Get the f*** out of my guild!"

Frankly I think all the alleged raiders that claim they wouldn't buy it until the raids come out are all mouth and no trousers. No hardcore guild is going to handicap their progress by not using the build up time to gear up for raids. They might moan but they'd still buy it.

Also Ion old boy, I can't help but notice that your main has got 10195 achievement points. All from raiding eh?

[Zetro]

I also think it will be alright to let the raids wait for some weeks. that way i have time to grind some profession gear be four i look for a new raid guild.

[smokes]

to the hardcore crowd:

if they delayed raids for a couple of weeks, but then allowed you to go straight into hard modes, would that balance a delay?

you'd be able to spend the couple of weeks gearing up through heroics and valor gear, maxing professions for food buffs, flasks, enchants, shoulder enchants and crafted gear, then dive straight into hard modes bypassing normal mode entirely.

[Neepall]

As the same as just about anybody I had that same reaction, like wtf is this. After some hard thought I am currently starting to want this to happen. And, yeah sure, it wouldn't be an ideal situation for everyone and many will moan and whine. That is to be expected, but from my exp in mmo's (raiding since 99 in eq1) this has some chances to make it really good. This xpac is kinda a controversial one, it is making a good deal of changes, and if this was to pass as a fallback could be beneficial to the player most noted the raider.

Again not having everything is not the most ideal setting for a release. In our current situation of the game though to do this is a good option. The really focused raider will complain because he or she won't have the raids immediately.That same person would take all that time prepping for when they become open, so that they can hit the gates running as hard as they can. But they still would play it at the first chance to get in. A big lure at the beginning is always the initial push to the end as fast and hard as possible.

A slight delay wouldn't take away from this feeling as hard as people are passing it off as. In fact this could actually improve the raid experience for us, if you really think about it. And remember us as the raiding community is actually the minority; there are a bunch of new shiny things to touch. Sure, not everyone is going to want to play with them right away; some of us will want to spend every moment trying to gear up as much as we can. If this would happen, this kinda becomes a way to gate the raiding, if it was delayed 2-4 weeks at most the encounters wouldn't get the over-tuned feeling that most get in the first tier of an xpac. No later than 4 though, as that would just feel like a slap in the face.

Everyone still can be on the same page but when the gate is open the ones who really put the effort in will fly forward and others not so much. This would make that initial rush to world/server first even more exciting too. When that light turns green the games can begin.

This does come with some drawbacks though such as the pvp season. When will that start? Right away or when the raids launched? If it was right away that could feel like the raider would be forced to pvp more. The need to pursue this isn't as great, but still feasible since they are making some changes to the pvp/pve gear situation too. Which isn't a bad thing, and that would also keep raid gear out the early pvp. We all know that there tends to always be some kind of OP pve item that gets heavy use in pvp. *cough* Vial of shadows.

On the other hand, if delayed that would make the pvpers suffer too, and sure there are some overlap between them and raiders. Many of us pvp often as well, and having to wait for both legs of the monster would suck bad. Doing this would reduce the amount of arena gear in early raiding, but honestly at this point it matters little. Certain pvp items are occasionally better than some early pve gear and if done properly can do the job needed whether people realize this or not. Other than that, just waiting a brief period to allow people to get 90 so it is gated a bit are the only reasons I see them waiting. Even then I do not think that outweighs just starting it from the get go.

There may be some media backlash they would face for releasing game without the raids, but who cares as a player if someone rags over a choice like this. Honestly I would rather have the game and wait a bit in mop before I raid. As opposed to waiting to play mop until raids come out, because lets face it DS just doesn't cut it. I've not even stepped foot in ds since 15%, progression was done, and nothing to do other than stand on my fence post in valley of honor chatting. Them going this route may actually keep a larger player than waiting as well. The longer we are only left to farm ds the more chances they have of losing more players. More will stay if they are somewhat happy and waiting than hating what is still there and waiting.

[Ayrybyn]

sir,

you said .

I'm sorry if you think that's somehow uncommon, but I'd venture to say with a bit of confidence, that there is a good number of people that share the same or at least similar sentiment.
[/COLOR]

You're picking out only part of what he said and using it to validate your complaint about his arguement instead of reading all of what he said. He said, "So you don't like LEVELING, you don't like anything other than RAIDING, and you don't like FARMING gear (which is a core component of raiding)." What it sounds like to me that he's trying to say that WoW is about leveling your toon to farm gear so that you can raid to farm MORE gear. I'm sorry but that is a key component of WoW and what Lore was trying to say is that if you don't like that aspect of the game then maybe WoW's not the game for you. Sure one could probably say that they only raid to experience the content, however you still need to level your toon and gear up in order to experience said content and that's just how it works. If you don't like that part of the game then maybe WoW's not for you. I'm not a huge fan of leveling, nor do I like grinding anything, let alone gear. However I understand that it's all just part of the game and I'm not gonna complain about it.

[warriwarri]

hello lore,

I think post-poning the raids for 2 weeks or more won't work out as good as you think and you yourself have given the arguments why. the majority of the wow players don't watch tankspot or read mmo-champion or wowhead and some don't even know a new Xpac is comming out till they suddenly can't login and the warning message comes you need to buy the MoP espansion to play(you said this is a weekly marmot or PST a couple of weeks back.
and your second argument was also said in a weekly marmot or pst couple of weeks back: at the start of the expansion a lot of people that are not in a raiding guild can suddenly join a good raiding guild just because they leveled fast and the good guilds might need a 10th or 25th spot desperately. the people that get replaced by this will still have a pretty large raiding history so joining a different raiding guild will be no problem once they reach lvl 90 but the guy that leveled fast to 90 now might not have any good heroic progress and was never able to get that because no1 wanted to invite him.
so post-poning the raids might actually prevent the raiding community from expanding which is a bad thing right?

[Flashlight]

First of all, long time video watcher, first time poster.

This is sensible. You're going to have to farm gear to clear the content regardless, if Blizzard implements fights that are pure gear checks, then you're going to brickwall on those fights anyway.

Having time to farm your BiS heroic dungeon gear would be a good thing, it would level the playing field somewhat too.

If all you care about is raiding and you're of the mindset that you absolutely have to start raiding as soon as you hit 90, then you're completely forgetting that you're not a special snowflake. There are over 10 million WoW players, not all of them are hardcore raiders. I'd hazard a guess that most of them are casual players, and will have a ton of fun playing with the new features, levelling, exploring etc.

So what if the raids don't come out when the game releases? Blizzard is releasing a product for all of their subscribers, not just a group of them who only want to raid.

You'll have to farm gear anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

[jijo0068]

I must say I like the idéa, I like to just "hang out" in the game doing "grindy" stuff that does not require me to think a hole lot. Stuff like farming ore or doing dailies, leveling professions etc etc. Just as a way to get my mind of work and as a way to relax. When I raid I do that as a healer and it can be quite stressful sometimes = not at all relaxing.

Don't get me wrong, I love raiding but it can many times be stressful, like the start of Cata it was fairly brutal so a "grace" period at start could be a way to get into it in a more relaxed way.

It will never happen though, it would be an total flame war that could easily spiral out of control.

I do like the way you think though Lore

Regards

[Theotherone]

I don't care either way, since it will take at least 2 weeks for our raid group to level up and gear up - work, RL, vacations (if MoP drops in August), start of school if it drops in late August early Sept all work against us getting into any raid for 2 weeks at the earliest. Plus, I like other aspects of the game, I'm hooked on the Darkmoon Faire these days. I'll most likely have 12 toons to take to 90 of which three are "must haves" for me early on; but I usually at some point take my time leveling one toon to see the questing and live the story. One of the problems with Cata was that the story sucked and was non-immersive; from what I've done in the beta, I really like what they've done with new zones, the art work is, as usual, fantastic and the story seems to be comming together.

Now, all that said, Blizzard has a credibility problem; DS was supposed to be the epic end of expansion raid - it sucks for all the reasons mentioned 1,000 times. We never got the Vash'jr raid, but got trolls for 6 months; ToC (no more need be said), and the list goes on and on. If they released without raids, I'd wonder if we were going to get DS redux quality as the release time slips and slips and slips and they have to get something out the door; or if they release late are we going to get short changed on raid/dungeon content since they're now cutting into the dev time for the next expansion, etc.

I don't view Blizzard as some evil empire that does things to ruin the game or ruin some class or does something else that incites the window licking conspiracy theorists on the Official Forums. They have a product and are interested in doing what's in the best interests of their brand; it may not always be what a vocal minority of the community wants, but in the end they have a plan and they know what they are doing. They don't always get it right, but more than most companies they will admit their mistakes. So if they promise raids 2 weeks after launch and don't deliver, it's not becuase of some evil plot, they just didn't hit the target, but it will stir up a shit storm.

The smart move, after pissing off the community with the reskinned unimaginative disaster that was DS, 6 months of trolls, too few raid bosses, stupid hard 5 mans at release, lfr loot issues is to release a polished X-pac with all the bells and whistles including raids.

[Fetzie]

We never got the Vash'jr raid, but got trolled for 6 months

Fixed that for you

[Ayrybyn]

I personally disagree with waiting 2 weeks to release raids and here's my 2 cents for why. MoP is supposed to be an expansion that will have something for everyone, at least that's the impression I get, this way everyone has something that they can do. More options to choose from so that they will be occupied, at least, for a while. If they postpone raids, then they're cutting out one of those options, even if it's only for a little while. Sure it'll give them more time to improve upon the raids so that the encounters are more lively and interesting, however I've learned this about many of the players in WoW... they're not the most patient of ppl and are not willing to wait any amount of time for content even if it would be to their benefit. Sure it would give many raiders ample time to get geared up for when they do release those raids, however many of said raiders would be too impatient to wait and would want to go in there asap, even if it were in questing greens (and that's why I love gear check bosses). If you're in a raid in questing greens, then; imho; you have absolutely no business being in a raid. I've seen ppl try to get into raids in questing greens and blues from reg dungeons and on my server, such ppl get kicked from the raid... and that's if they even get invited in the first place. That's what the heroics are for so you can get ready for raiding, however many ppl aren't so patient as to run heroics to get the gear necessary to raid. Now I can understand if some of a person's pieces of gear were green or blue do to nothing better dropping for them, it happens, I don't think that really matters so long as they meet the required ilvl of the raid. Where I'm getting at though is this, if there are ppl who are too impatient to wait however long it takes for Blizz to get the raids just right, then let them have their raids and smack their heads up against that brickwall and wonder why they can't get passed a certain boss that they could've gotten passed if they all had the proper gear. Some ppl are thickheaded and have to learn their lesson the hard way and I feel such ppl really should smack their heads against that brickwall and pay an expensive repair bill.

This doesn't mean that they shouldn't have that content available to them if Blizz is trying to sell an expansion that has something available for everyone. If this is what this expansion is about, then Blizz needs to try and make good on as much of the content as they can, they also need to make sure that as much of it; as they can manage; is ready for the expansion release.

[Theotherone]

Fixed that for you

Rofl, thanks.

Holy crap Lore, you made it to he Official Forums (both Dungeons & Raids and General); now we can get some learned insight into the idea.


http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/5568806276