World of WarCraft *TAKE 2* (BlizzCon Coverage!)

[Yog]

Last week was great for us, because we killed both Ragnaros and Hakkar for the first time ever, and they were long overdue.

But wait.. what took you so long, you ask?

Well, since we are a medium / small sized guild, we depend on a coalition of other guilds to pull these raids off. Our earlier raid coalition spawned a lot of drama, and it was run in a way we really did not agree with. For weeks we did not even touch MC. In the end we had to ally with some new raiding partners. This set us back in MC, a lot, because we had a bunch of green /blue geared people who never seen past Luci and their FR was low (like less than 50!). So we had to work all our way up again... >_<

Still, I am most impressed by our new raiding partners. We get along with them really well, and they worked hard to up their FR and learn the encounters. Before the the coalition, they spent like hours just to get to Luci, and then wipe constantly. Aided by our know-how (and gear), in two weeks, we went from Luci to Geddon. And several of the kills were first or second try. Up to majordomo in month. Last saturday we finally killed Rags, and we took him down quite handily with few deaths.

The amount of progress is outright astonishing with these guys. From trash mob glasschewing to MC farmers in a couple months. Sure there were moments of frustrations, but also many moments of hilarity, and in the end it will be all worth it. A good raiding atmosphere is important. Now were thinking about BWL again finally, in particular Razorgore.

Here are a couple Molten Core videos with us!

MC clear (all bosses up to majordomo):
http://files.filefront.com/SFMCwmv/;5031662;;/fileinfo.html

Our first Rags kill:
http://files.filefront.com/RagsDownwmv/;5062602;;/fileinfo.html

and here is a group shot :D
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v153/Iori73/ragsdead.jpg

[Zasz Grimm]

Grats Yog! My guild is still on Cthun; we've been having some problems with people learning P1, now we have that down we're so close to downing the fight. Our first invuln the other night we took him down to 66%, and then we get him to 33% and wiped. Ugh, so frusterating.

[Zasz Grimm]

Update: Cthun down 28th, Sunday.

[Yog]

Congrats! :)

Wish I could report similar for AQ40, but we have not even started there yet. We had a just for kicks attempt at Prophet Skeeram without success. Other than that, we downed General Rajaxx and will work on AQ20 first I think. We tried Moam but we were low on warlocks (for banish), so it was kinda of a pain, although he did go down to 30%. Trying Moam again tonight.

Other than that, I believe Ragnaros is on farm status. We get him down to 40% before sons, and have very few deaths in that fight in general. We also had no wipes in MC for weeks.

Well, there was this one wipe the other day. Someone fell off the bridge at the end, and agroed Golemag. Next thing we knew, we had all kinds of adds rushing at us. That was the most hilarious wipe ever :D

We also started working on Razorgore. Last week, we attempted the kiting strategy, with everyone shaman, hunters etc kiting trains of dragonkins and legionaires around, and assemble in the middle for AOE taunt. Unfortunately, that was kind of messy and chaotic, so we only crushed about 10 eggs. This week were going for the more brute force approach, with the raid split in each 4 corners, and DPSing down all the mages and legionaires that spawn. Meanwhile, two warriors kiting dragonkins around the platforms and the controller doing nothing but crunching eggs.

Any comments on this strategy, Zasz and Figrin? Basically, were going for the tactic displayed in this video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6213360136751199469&q=razergore

[Figrin D'an]

That strat is pretty solid. There's lots of variation to that general idea, but most strats that I've seen use the same basic principles.

Really, the main keys to fight are keeping the dragonkin busy, keeping DPS on the mages/legonaires high to keep up with the spawn rate, and getting the eggs destroyed as fast as possible. Make sure whomever is chosen to be the Controller knows a good pattern for taking out the eggs quickly. Use your druids and warlocks to assist with crowd control on the dragonkin too... sleep and fear are just as useful as warrior kiting, and using them reduces the risk of your tanks getting beaten down from too many mobs. Also, make sure you have an MA for each corner, and focus DPS to his/her target, and you'll easily be able to keep with the mob spawns.

Once the eggs are dead and the mobs vanish, get your tanks in on Razorgore right away and just have them build aggro, then DPS him down. Healers need to be quick to heal tanks that get conflaged.

Then, after him, you get to farm more FR to be able to kill Vael. :p

[Pierce Tondry]

Tip: It's important to keep one tank in front of Razor and one tank behind him to pick up aggro after each conflagration.

Tip: The next fight, Vaelestraz, is a gear fight so prepare your raiders with appropriate FR.

Tip: A priest, a paladin, and Varimathras walk into a bar...

[Zasz Grimm]

My guild has always done the warrior kiting. 2 warriors in 3 waves, each getting 2 dragon kin and running around the room, usually with a paladin healing 2 warriors / a druid healing 2 warriors. Mages / rogues kill spawning BWL mages, and our 8-9 priests we have, 2 are on lego tank healing duty (usually myself.)..And the other 5 are randomly MCing lego's and having them hammer mages/other lego's.

Hasn't failed us since first kill.

[Figrin D'an]

So Naxxramus is live now... we've been trudging through it since the patch last week. Killed 5 bosses so far. There's some things that need to be tuned, but overall, it's a big improvement from AQ. We know that Blizz had been working on Naxx at the same time they were working on BWL and AQ, and it shows, being that it's much more polished right at live release than either BWL or AQ were.

Although, I'm not going to be surprised at all if Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzzad will both end up being completely unkillable until some "fixes" are implemented, just like Ouro and C'Thun were impossible until they hotfixed them. Can't have guilds moving through the endgame content too fast now, can we? :P

[Figrin D'an]

Rie... if you still read this thread, do me a favor. Find the designers at Blizz that came up with the Patchwerk encounter, and stab them in the eyes with a rusty spoon.

[Vega Van-Derveld]

I just got a free 10 day trial to WoW, so I am in the process of downloading the client at the minute. Looking forward to seeing what all the fuss is about :)

[Droo]

Join Bloodfeather as alliance. Executus as horde, and I'll see you online. :)

[Lady Vader]

Originally posted by Figrin D'an
Rie... if you still read this thread, do me a favor. Find the designers at Blizz that came up with the Patchwerk encounter, and stab them in the eyes with a rusty spoon.

A) I'm not sure what this Patchwerk encounter is you speak of.

B) A rusty spoon will be hard to come by, though I will gladly to the stabbing with any other objects I find lying around.

[Byl Laprovik]

Why are you up, woman?

[Lady Vader]

Good question! And I have an answer too...

I was actually asleep. I fell asleep on the couch. Joe was on his computer. At about 2am he wakes me in a frenzy and starts babbling about the character transfers. Well, duh, character transfer have been operating since the end of June, which he knew about. But what he was babbling about was that Elune had FINALLY opened to allow transfers to it as a destination realm, and being as how he had a 60 and 56 on another realm, he was really excited to get to moving them to Elune, which is our main realm.

So, at that point, I was awake and moving some of mine as well (which means our respective character lists in the first post of this thread will be changing). So, hence, why I was up at the ungodly hour of 2am. (And I happened to make a quick stop here just for the helluvit. :) )

[Figrin D'an]

So, now that you're not comatose Rie... get to that stabbing with the rusty spoon. :p

[Dasquian Belargic]

Originally posted by Droo
Join Bloodfeather as alliance. Executus as horde, and I'll see you online. :)

My char on Executus is called Hiach.. an Undead Warrior :) Haven't created one on Bloodfeather yet, but will soon.

[Pierce Tondry]

Fig (and anyone else out there still playing): I'm considering picking the game back up in the near future and transferring to another server since everything familiar on my old server died and I'm curious about a lot of the latest content/changes. Would there be any room for one of my characters to join your guild? I have three alliance 60s (pally, warrior, mage) and one horde 60 (hunter) if that makes a difference.

[Figrin D'an]

Content-wise, things are pretty much the same as at the beginning of the year, except on the high-end with the addition of Naxxramus. Cross-server battlegrounds are coming up in the next patch, which I'm guessing will go live at the end of August/beginning of September. LHC in Eastern Plaguelands is a full quest-hub now, relating to Naxx, with lots of quests available to anyone (some of the rewards aren't too bad, either). The next major content upgrade, at this point, is going to be The Burning Crusade, which probably won't be released until November.

My guild is probably gonna be closing off recruiting for a while, since we just got flooded with applications once paid character transfers opened up. Of course, things can change at any time, but right now, the waiting list to even get tagged into our app guild is kinda long.

[Figrin D'an]

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3152830


Not sure how to respond to this, other than there will likely be a lot of really good end-game raiding guilds that will break apart because of this. The elite, best-of-the-best guilds will still exist after the expansion, but they won't be the same membership-wise. Either guild leadership will have to evaluate members and cut people, or some will just /gquit or quit the game entirely if they see that they'll be relegated to being a backup player or on the "B" team.

Some of the changes that will come with this will be good in the long run, but it's going to cause a lot of problems in the near future. For 2 years, end-game raiding in WoW has been based on a 40-man group. Now, that entire model is getting scraped, and I have to wonder how many good guilds and players are going to get scraped along with it.

[Lady Vader]

Just remember, Fig. Things are always subject to change. That being said, what that aricle has stated may not be entirely factual.

I'd wait until it's actually stated officially by Blizzard in one of their press releases or news articles on their websites. :)

[Yog]

IMHO, the move away from 40 man raids is absolutely necessary for survival of the game. Many guilds struggle to field a balanced team of 40, and are thus losing out on end game content. Every day I see friends quitting the game cause they have nothing to do, except grinding faction or honor. They can only dream of setting foot in Naxxramas, and probably never progressed much in AQ40 either. Heck, Im sure less than 5% of the game population cleared BWL. Often, its not a question of skill or dedication, the opportunity is just not there.

Personally, I have been through 3 raid alliances, 1 guild reform and a crap load of guild drama mainly because of the way end game content is structured. Its very demoralising to have signups for BWL and when it comes to gather time, have it all fall apart because not enough people are online. One month ago we decided we had enough of raiding alliances (there were just too much drama) and departed to form a new raiding guild. Previously, we had just been a guild that raided. Problem now is, even though we are recruiting like mad, quality people have been leaving in droves for hardcore raiding guilds because they are fed up of waiting to get into 40 man content again. I can't blame them. We were at one point able to 26 man MC up to Garr, but after that, we had 40 man raids cancelled and not even be able to fill a 20. Because of this, lot of people don't even feel like logging in nowadays, including me. Its very depressing.

So now, once again, we have to start all over again. We are looking to do a full scale merger into a high core raiding guild. Specs are forced and attendance rules are at minimum 80%. If it goes through, we will never again have problem with the 40 man cap, and its all run very professionally. But its been very tiring spending all these months going in circles. I feel bad for the guilds who had it even worse. I seen so many guilds fall apart the last few months.

As for the level of challenge, I strongly believe you can make a 25 man dungeon just as difficult as a 40 man, if not more. A smaller sized raid is more vulnerable to an individual error. I bet you the Black Temple will make Naxx look like a cakewalk.

Guilds which run 40 man raids today will likely be able to run 2x25 raids in the future. We also don't know how instance reset timers and such will look like.

Basically, this interview has reignited my faith in the game. The core issues that have bugged the majority of players are being adressed:

- Medium size raids

- 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 Arena Battlegrounds

- Revamped Honor system without degrading Honor

- Shaman buffs

- Other classes that can Tank

- Level scaling dungeons

Not to mention, there will be tons of new content for the expansion pack. Im getting really excited about it for the first time.

[Yog]

More info at these links:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofwarcraftexp1/news.html?sid=6155696&tag=topslot;action;1&page=1&q=&q=

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/world-of-warcraft-expansion/725327p1.html

[Droo]

I agree with absolutely everything Yog said. Couldn't have put it better.

[Figrin D'an]

Rie, Blizz GMs have been posting about it on the WoW forums, they've confirmed that this is the direction that the expansion will take. Could that change? At this point, it's unlikely. With the expansion due to hit near the end of the year, they'd have to delay it for months if they were to decide to retain the 40-man raid design. They've clearly been designing raid instances around groups of 10 or 25 people for as long as the expansion has been in development (what, a year now?)



This is little more than a way to slow down progression through end-game, and to cause the player base in elite guilds to diffuse into the gaming populous more. The following sums up my thoughts pretty well:





The following things are going to change for "casual" players:

1. Nothing.

This is because the hardest 25 man content will require hours upon hours of work, both inside and out of the instance, just like 40-mans did. It requires dedication to a raid guild, one focused on spending time learning difficult encounters, even though you cannot guarantee your time to them. They are introducing 5 and 10 man content, like they should be doing and like they should have been doing for a long while. Some of us have been sympathizing with you for months now about this, don't get all up in arms against everyone who raids.



The following things are going to change for "non-raiding" players:

1. Nothing.

You still won't like the structure and seriousness required to do the most difficult of the difficult. They are not hereby nerfing content to current 20-man level, they are simply designing the same thing as MC/BWL/AQ40/Naxx for fewer people. It requires 4+ day/week raiding to learn, hours of wiping and picking the best and most devoted players in order to accopmlish. I'm not sure what the difference between a casual and a non-raider is besides time spent playing, you both make the same arguments against raiding. The "feel" of 40-man raiding that you hate so much is still going to be there. It is still a hardcore, massively difficult raid. Unless you're some kind of nerd socialite and can invite 24 of your closest WoW playing RL friends, it's not going to be what you think it is.



The following thing are going to change for "Hardcore" players:

1. Established guilds splitting up
2. Impersonal large scale recruitment
3. Alienation of former raiders who are not selected for the top 25
4. Guild management failure: trying to accurately schedule 2 groups of people to consistently fill out raids each with seperate raidID locks
5. Splinter guilds trying to build themselves up from broken remains

Please don't get me wrong when I say all of this; I like the current 20 man content too, I think it can provide an equal challenge to 40-mans if raised to the epic level. However, by spending the last 2 years building up 40+ people to tackle the hardest content Blizzard had to offer, and then cutting that nearly in half, they're screwing up a lot of stuff for us. It's not about what it will be that's so bad, it's about how it's going to change for the raiding community.



Don't punish me for enjoying the company of 39 other people, don't make me pick between them.

[Figrin D'an]

Admittedly, I was rather angry and reactionary when made those last couple of posts. I know my guild will make the adjustment and find a way to maintain our structure and operation, I'm confident in that.

I guess what really still upsets me is that this paradigm shift is going to have the unfortunate affect of speeding up downsizing of guilds via attrition. It's going to cause a LOT of added drama and angst beyond what already exists, and do it in a relatively small time frame. I don't envy the headaches that guild leaders and officers will have once TBC goes live, even with several months of warning about the changes.

That said... scaling instances should be fun, and the prospect of setting an instance to lvl 70 difficulty even when my group is only at lvl 62-63 in order to get better loot drops is really appealing. It seems they've taken a cue from Guild Wars as well with the revamped PvP system.

[Zasz Grimm]

I'm not going to enjoy A team and B team, or even C team type of stuff, and alienating guildmates. I think it was a poor decision...

But on another note, my guilds up to Gluth now, with 7 bosses down in Naxx. ^_^.

[Yog]

Originally posted by Figrin D'an
Admittedly, I was rather angry and reactionary when made those last couple of posts. I know my guild will make the adjustment and find a way to maintain our structure and operation, I'm confident in that.

Thats cool. I understand guilds will have to make adjustments, and that it may be difficult for some.


I'm not going to enjoy A team and B team, or even C team type of stuff, and alienating guildmates. I think it was a poor decision...

Do / did your guild have B and C teams for ZG and AQ20? Did the 20 cap cause alienation?

I guess my perspective of this is heavily influenced by the fact I have seen how the 40 man requirement for raids being the #1 source of drama in many guilds and raid coalitions, both by personal experience and viewing from the outside. The 40 man cap is not something I 'think' is having a bad effect on the game, its something I know is bad. Its not something that I worry about in months, its something that allready heavily affected my enjoyment of the game. My guild got destroyed by this. Good friends and guild mates that I have known since the beginning of the game, and before, have splintered off in different directions. I have no reason to log in with my main any more.


That said... scaling instances should be fun, and the prospect of setting an instance to lvl 70 difficulty even when my group is only at lvl 62-63 in order to get better loot drops is really appealing. It seems they've taken a cue from Guild Wars as well with the revamped PvP system.

Yes, I agree, and I think 40 man current instances like MC, BWL and AQ40 will have that difficulty slider with 70 loot too, eventually..

Also, something else I have seen no mention of in the debates on WoW forums, was how two parallel teams pretty much doubles the rate to gear up your guild. I thought this was something that would appeal to the more elite raiding guilds.

[Yog]

On a more positive note, here is a preview of the upcoming talents and spells in Burning Crusade :)

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/townhall/talents-and-spells.html

[Park Kraken]

I play several characters on WoW, mostly on the Llane server. Right now I'm exploring the wonders of being a Rogue and the fun pick-pocketing people before I stab them in the back. I'm getting more into going after Horde, but I like to do it more on the maps then in the battlegrounds. Thirty honorable kills in two hours, repedatley killing a Hunter from Goldshire to Redrige and back. Fun Fun.

I was heavily addicted from March to May of this year, then slackened off and only moderatley play now.