A chunk of heroic raiding guilds and maybe some normal raiding guilds would still be working on Sylvanus Windrunner by time LFR Wing 4 opens up. Technically, LFR, normal and heroic raiding guilds could all be taking down the last boss around the same time, this is due to additional mechanics are added and become more difficult as you progress through each raiding tier not seen in LFR. World first mythic raiding guilds are another story and would have cleared SoD raid by August.
That’s fine, however if they make that choice then they aren’t entitled to the gear.
If you have no interest in raiding then you have no need or entitlement of the raid gear.
This isnt complicated.
Someone’s feelings got hurt.
Lulz they time gated LFR so badly this time around.
Do normal mode then. It’s easy enough
Its funny because in my experience between sitting in que and wiping because half the raid is afk or plays as if they all just boosted their char to 60 and have literally never killed any creature inside of the game clearing lfr takes more time to clear than normal in a lot of cases. So this excuse that “I only have 2 hours a day to play” excuse has always been BS. If it was true you’d sit in que, wipe on a boss, and then log off, because your 2 hours would be up.
I currently play 9 hours a week and was progressing on mythic Denathrius. I could clear normal fully in 1 night in under 2 hours if I really wanted to.
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For most players, LFR gear will be enough. The question is, are the resources Blizzard is spending on raid content overall worthwhile. Eliminating LFR would be an interesting experiment to show if dev resources spent on raiding is best use.
Tell that to the dev team who keeps putting raid bosses as a quest to progress content. No one wants to sit in a raid for many hours a week on normal/heroic to finish “defeat Azshara” or “Save Kaelthas” to progress a mandatory questline, hence another reason why LFR exists. Anyone who wants lfr removed spells “I was raised entitled so shape the game to my liking” and its sad that they were born with 0 sympathy for others, all about them and no one else.
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In terms of absolute numbers, LFR should show a decline mainly because there are fewer players in retail nowadays.
But if you’re doing comparisons to the Cata-MoP era, it’s probably safe to say that the % decline in the number of players doing LFR now would be overshadowed by the % decline in participation in normal+heroic+mythic raiding. M+ is drawing players from somewhere. That’s why the devs gave M+ slightly inferior gear to raiders. They needed to get people back into raiding.
Locking it behind THREE things - weekly Renown, campaign progress, AND your current equipped item level.
It’s punitive as hell, for no reason. My mage alt has been stuck at ilvl 150 for weeks, even though she is Renown 39, because I haven’t had the time to grind out the 35-of-these-and-25-of-those “campaign.”
There’s huge overlap between M+ and raiding. Also Mythic raiding is up significantly in Shadowlands over BfA. Dunno about normal/heroic.
I don’t doubt there is some overlap. Many players have the capacity to run two hamster wheels. lol
Or they could just release all of LFR. Harms nothing. There is no benefit to staggering the release of looking for raid. And even if there was, eight weeks is an absolutely absurd timeline
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As a GM and raid leader of an AOTC+ guild, I promise you that aside from the occasional evening spent fishing to make feasts, not a single one of my raiders is spending hours upon hours in the game preparing for raiding. Most of our raiders will log in to do a couple of mythic+, or some dailies, or some farming a few nights per week. Even I, as a GM/RL, do not always log on every day. The old trope that heroic and higher raiders no life the game is extremely outdated and frankly, wrong. The only folks who no life the game (outside of the gold farmers) are the World First guilds, who literally have financial incentive to play. Even these guys, after a few weeks of clears, re-clears, and alt gearing settle into a pattern more like what heroic guilds do.
All that said, I see no issue with time gating LFR. The time gate is there to ensure (theoretically) that once you get to the last wing, you have acquired enough gear from the previous wings and/or mythic+ to do the fights. That is how every level of raiding works - earlier bosses give you the gear to fight the later bosses.
As others have suggested, I highly encourage those of you who are strictly LFR raiders to find a raiding guild or pug group to regularly raid normal. Normal takes only marginally more skill than LFR does with far better rewards. There absolutely are guilds and communities out there that will fit with almost anyone’s personality and/or schedule.
Since we’re discussing LFR, I just want to say that while I understand why LFR exists, I really dislike what it has done to the game. LFR has essentially turned a multiplayer game into a single player experience, in some cases. My guild has been actively raiding for 14 years now and I’ve seen enough raiders to say with a fairly high degree of confidence that LFR has also made the pool of raiders worse in terms of both skill and attitude. This definitely doesn’t apply to everyone - I’m more speaking to the raiding pool in general.
P.S. If any of you are looking to move on to Normal raiding but are maybe worried about running into the elitist buttheads, hit me up at Cas#1113. Maybe if we can get enough folks together who are interesting in learning, we can put a one night a week Normal run together. This invitation is also extended to any higher level raiders out there who want to help putting something like this together.
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And I’m sure those 9 hours of play time always fell during primetime when “everyone” was on playing.
LFR benefits the off-hours player.
This is true. I was just stating that this isn’t a new concept, it’s how the game’s been since as long as I can remember.
Prolly just gonna LFR hero this expansion, I don’t mind the release cycle. Gives people time to get familiar with one wing before the next one drops.
Only time gating I really hate is when stories suddenly stop and break immersion, then it’s like “wait a while to pick it back up!”
Is anyone else absolutely amazed that someone is actually jonesing for LFR?
Like its usually a nightmare of bad players, 3 people who are trying like its esport, one (only one) tank that knows what they are doing, and 5 DPS who will purposely die right off the bat so they can do something else while the 1 tank and 3 try hards down the bosses for them all.
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Wow a post with out mentioning the sweat, you’re losing your touch rastlin
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You can’t schedule two or three days to raid? Normal mode exists for pugging.