Excluding the Slime Cat from LFR is not Okay

Community WoW Community Council
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I run an AOTC guild and we’ve been trying to figure out what to do in this unusual season where there is no new raid and no AOTC to earn. We polled the guild asking what people’s goals were for Season 4 and the response we heard over and over again was “slime cat,” so that is what we’re targeting as a guild this season. So while we’re normally a heroic progression guild, this tier our goal is just finishing all three raids on normal difficulty, and maybe we’ll do a bit of heroic for the currency, but the “we win the tier!” button for us is going to be slime cat.

If the slime cat becomes obtainable in LFR, I think we’ll lose half the raid team. There’s no new raid content and no AOTC, and for many of us, the dopamine does not flow if there’s no goal to aim for. I think a lot of people, especially those whose WOW experience centers around raids rather than m+, would get the slime cat on day 1 of week 3 from LFR and then unsub until pre-patch.

The mythic+ folks will be fine, as there’s plenty of new content for them. But for the people who are here to raid, slime cat is it.

I am sympathetic to those who don’t have time to raid outside of LFR, or have social anxiety or disabilities. I have a disability myself and it does limit what I can do in game. I think where Blizzard dropped the ball was not communicating this in a clear and timely manner. But if the slime cat mount is changed to be obtainable in LFR, it’s not like that won’t hurt anybody. I think that change would cause many AOTC guilds to skip this season entirely because they cannot field enough raiders (and don’t want to go crazy recruiting right before Dragonflight hits and everyone comes back and you have too many raiders and have to split into two raid teams. Been there, done that, hated it!). I have no idea how the change would affect mythic raiding guilds.

For those who really want the slime cat mount and don’t usually raid normal, consider joining a guild. I know for some this is very intimidating or they’ve been burned by toxic guilds in the past, but there are a ton of really nice and helpful people playing this game. There are also some great cross-server communities if you want a raid team without joining a guild. You may just have to put in a bit of effort to find them, as usually these folks are not real vocal in public channels. Look for guild advertisements on reddit or wowprogress or wowguilds. I personally would avoid guilds that recruit by spamming trade chat. An application process for joining, while intimidating, is a good thing, because when used properly it keeps the mean people out.

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I’m actually quite surprised that no one from Blizzard has addressed this topic in any fashion whatsoever. It’s actually quote disappointing to see zero communication from them on this subject. I don’t get a sense that they truly are listening to player feedback, as this is one of the hottest topics and debates of the summer. Normally I stay away from these, but this one I actually agree on.

The wording on the achievements will override anything anyone tries to comeback with and explain it away as far as I’m concerned. It says on any difficulty you can achieve the new Slime Cat mount. It’s a decision I see no merit behind and cannot understand it under any circumstances.

Disappointing.

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I’m going to bet that the moment you get the slime cat, people will stop anyway. I still don’t see how making it available in LFR would change that. Whether they quit after 1 day, or 1 week because you’ll steam roll through normal as AOTC guild.

Such a shame many people are okay with LFR raiders being caught in the crossfire.

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I’m not sure what Blizzard could even say. They’ve explained why they wanted it from normal already and LFR has from my memory never rewarded unique cosmetic rewards tied to achievements so the precedence is there. There’s also a chunk of people who’ve from wording believed the mount was from normal since mythic has portals heroic has a title and normal would have the mount.

I think there is room for a discussion on if things like this are good or bad. Most people I spoke to are looking forward to getting together for 3 weeks and clearing the raid for the mount.

Blizzard also made it significantly accessible. Mythic gives portals that will see no use since the seasons out for 4 months. Heroic is a title and normal is a sick mount. So the amount of the reward for effort is extremely player friendly. It’s very disheartening to force single player design on a cosmetic mount in an MMO. There’s a lot of solo player content and this isn’t even a content patch it’s a rehashed season.

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Except every PuG normal I’ve ever joined has less socialization than LFR.

I’m sick of Blizzard and non-casual players acting like LFR is just something people ignore and afk through - a lot of people enjoy it and enjoy socializing in it, and this was something a lot of people were looking forward to reinvigorating LFR. (NOTE: Socializing =/= Coordinating. I enjoy having casual conversations with people in the LFR, as do a lot of people.)

The ironic part, is probably 90% of the people I See afking in LFR are the endgame players who think it’s below them, and if you call them out they bring up how high their ilvl is.

Then you’d lose half the raid team the first time you clear normal.

At that point, it’s not even supporting socializing, it’s supporting using your friends to meet your goal - which should not be something that Blizzard supports.

How about adding incentives to raid Normal and LFR, instead of yoinking a nice treat that was incentive to do the raid in any difficulty, and then claim it was always meant to be Normal only?

Then they should have made it clear THREE MONTHS AGO when wowhead and many others reported it as any difficulty - we know dang well the devs read these sites, so they KNEW players expected it from LFR.

At this point, the only acceptable compromise is either telling us it’ll be available from LFR later in the season or outright adding it back to any difficulty, including LFR.

To reiterate - the issue is the devs knowingly let us expect it for the last 3 months only to yank it out from beneath us less than a week before the season started.

This is the issue. Not the fact they want something special for Normal. The fact they knowingly let us believe it would be in LFR for 3 months. They had 3 months to tell us it would be Normal Only. They didn’t.

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I don’t disagree there was a very serious lack of overall communication about season 4 from the start. But it wasn’t just the LFR group that assumed things. There’s a chunk of players I even spoke to who thought it came from normal so I wouldn’t go to far as to say Blizzard knew and purposefully made everyone believe this when it wasn’t really a popular belief until this moment when people jump on a bandwagon.

My circle of friends is definitely different but I also have a lot of people I know who take this game more casually and even they thought it came from normal. I don’t think blizzard sat there watching people believe something because for all we know it was a very small portion of the playerbase who expressed and believed that. That being said their communication was poor.

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I agree with your purpose. As a casual player, it’s hard for me to find a guild or a group do to raid in different difficultes (but I do LFR for all raid). And I was disanpointed when I learn that the Jelly Cat will not be abeld wit LFR fated raid…
I find that not fair for casual players.

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I’d like to point out that someone being a “Solo” player does not necessarily mean that they are a “Casual” player. It just means that for whatever reason they either can’t take part in organized regular group content or have what is likely a very compelling reason why they choose not to.

As an example I’ve collected all 13 class sets and weapons from Sepulcher LFR. Thats 13 level 60 toons all running at least 8 bosses every week for at least a few weeks until toons can start to drop out as the collection is fleshed out. Ive also collected all 4 armor type sets for the prevous two raids along with weapons for all 13 classes, as well as all 4 of the covenant sets for all 4 armor types. BTW, there are no achievements for accomplishing that during the current seasons but if there were I would have them.

The point is that LFR isn’t casual content for everyone that does it. If you think what I’ve listed above is easy to do give it a try some time.

Running 3 weeks of LFR, 3 weeks of normal, 3 weeks of heroic or 3 weeks of mythic is just 3 weeks to get the reward. Groups that are already clearing it at whatever level they do will at least be pretty close to that. It took me over 12 weeks to collect everything from just sepulcher…

I’d love to hear what some of these “elite” people would have to say if there was a highly desirable reward gated behind an achievement for doing any of what I’ve listed above.

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Sure, a good number of our people probably will stop raiding once they get the slime cat, but I’ll be real surprised if we kill all the normal bosses by the end of week 3. We only raid 4 hours per week, some of these raids are pretty long, and we’ll have to re-progress a number of fights, even on normal. We’ve got one person in our roster who has never raided normal on any tier, and several who got their first AOTC on the Jailer and have no experience with Nathria or Sanctum. We’ve also got the new affixes to contend with.

Unless the tuning makes the raids far easier than expected, the fastest we can probably get the slime cat is week 6. That’s if we hold lockouts, which we probably won’t, because until we finish the three dinar quests, reclearing has huge value. I think we’ll probably get it on week 9, and then we may or may not have enough people to keep raiding, who knows.

The thing is, we like raiding. We love having a reason to get together and hang out and kill bosses together, but there still needs to be some kind of tangible end goal for us to have that happy feeling of being on a shared mission, doing this thing together. If one can get the slime cat in LFR on week 3, raiders are going to do that even if they don’t enjoy LFR, because they’d rather have the cat on week 3 than week 9.

If the Fated version of LFR opened up in stages, like one new wing each week, so that it took longer to get the mount from LFR, that would be fine. It would impact us minimally or not at all. But if it’s available week 3 from LFR and it’s gonna take us 6-9 weeks to get it from normal, people are going to take the fastest route to the mount even if they enjoy the journey less.

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So you want others to not be able to get it on LFR, so you can keep some members playing for a bit longer on normal because you want to raid? This feels more like a hostage situation tbh.

If you want the cat mount and want it to be a challenge, do it on normal or heroic instead. If your members get it on LFR and quit playing, well then they weren’t really in it for the raiding in the first place :wink:

Look, either it’s going to be a difficulty thing or not. If it’s supposed to be difficult → mythic only. If difficulty doesn’t matter → LFR or higher. I get that normal is the best option for you, but that’s extremely unfair to people who don’t want to do normal raiding. Difficulty is not the reason because normal isn’t difficult. Compared to heroic and mythic, normal is just like LFR: a steam roll.

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I think you didn’t read my last paragraph.

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I did, I just don’t think it matters.

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It should be available on LFR, Normal, Heroic and Mythic. There should be zero debates about this. There’s already an AOTC mount for organized content, the Slime Cat doesn’t fall under that purview.

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For those replying here and in GD that it’s our fault for misinterpreting it. Please, tell me how we were supposed to interpret this:

The achievement that rewards the mount requirements are “Fate of Nathria” “Fate of Domination” and “Fate of the Sepulcher”. What happens when you look at those achievements? On, that’s right, it says any difficulty. To add further to it, the 2 achievements after it specify on heroic or mythic difficulty.

There’s no misinterpretation here. It says any, not Normal. Any.

THIS is a Normal or Higher Achievement:

Notice how it actually says Normal or Higher?

This isn’t misinterpretation. This is Blizzard stringing LFR players along for 3 months to get more subs, and then pulling the rug out from under us.

If the blue who announced it was not in LFR made a mistake, that’s fine, but he needs to tell us that. The radio silence on this is horrible.

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I really thought Blizzard had turned the corner and were really starting to listen to feedback. No, they don’t have to listen to every thing, but when you have large swathes of people saying something isn’t fun, doesn’t feel right or is plain wrong, maybe you’ll want to listen to your actual player base instead of saying, “We tested it internally and found…” no one cares what you found by internal testing. Your internal testers don’t pay you money to keep your game afloat.

it’s decisions like this from previous Alpha/Beta feedback that constantly is falling on deaf ears that lets me see that not much has changed.

VERY, VERY disappointed in their lack of communication on many hot topics, feedback offered over the last 5-7 days. It shows me that nothing has changed and you can expect their vision to be the only one that matters no matter what.

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I have yet to see anyone against this on the council. That should be the biggest hint honestly

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but when you have large swathes of people saying something isn’t fun

I mean is a few hundred people really large swathes? Realistically, the communication was poor but it’s also a cosmetic reward that a player can work towards getting or not get at all. I’m sure some people think it’s cool and some don’t. There’s a lot of criticism to be had but this is such an odd hill to die on.

Not to sound condescending, but it’s sort of apparent the issue. But such an issue doesn’t merit a reward. The same issue comes forth with PvP and PvE rewards. Them having poor communication doesn’t mean we just get rewarded a mount. I personally know more people who assumed it was normal from the beginning, and some people assumed LFR.

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Honestly I have no issue with it being tied to normal or higher. The reward structure for the raid is
Normal - mount
Heroic - title
Mythic - portals

IMO LFR exists as a gearing and storyline avenue, but is not a genuine raiding experience compared to Normal/Heroic/Mythic.

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It also brings the community together. Like archimonde moose runs, etc. It’ll bring communities, events, etc together. Allowing people to get it from a format where it’s completely void of social interaction is not healthy for an MMO that already has so much solo content cosmetically. WoW needs more aspects like this that will bring all different types of players together.

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Completely agree. Yes, people will buy boosts for it, but many other people will do a weekend normal fated run for the community.

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