I understand all that but I really think more people would have been able to get into Naxx and get some progress done had we had enough time to do it before BC. When they announced BC a lot of people didn’t even try.
I agree with your points but I’m saying the release of BC was the biggest factor in Naxx not getting run by more people.
There are a lot of people who seem to think that had we not had BC on the horizon people still wouldn’t have cleared Naxx eventually.
I think that they would have, but we wouldn’t be seeing clear times of 90 days. That raid was a meat-grinder for everyone but the extremely hardcore.
Well you can go on youtube right now and put in WoW PTR and find out everything you want to know. If you want to be a progression raider you are pretty much required to go look those things up ahead of time. I remember the first time I went into MC not knowing what to expect. Even outside of raiding I had to figure things out. I even had full wildheart as a druid back then and was still a successful raider. Obviously we know wildheart is useless now. A lot of the mystery is taken away before we even step foot into the content.
Yeah I’m def not suggesting we would have been through it super fast. I did go into Naxx in vanilla but we didn’t get very far. We gave up because BC was right around the corner and you could go farm mobs outside Kara and get netherweave cloth and some greens in the pre patch.
Same deal here. Then I bailed on my gnome and rolled a blood elf Warlock the night of BC’s release, because I liked the tragic lore much more than any of the other races. Also, Arcane tap/torrent required more skill to apply correctly at the time than any other racial.
On average, this is because they were. Most people didn’t know what gear was actually BiS, or what the best rotation they could do was, or what specs were the most busted. People would go to raid wearing pirate hats. Oh, and the whole standing in fire thing on terrible PCs where you couldn’t even see the mechanic.
Dude, one of the biggest complaints about Mythic Raiding over the last three years that there has been way too many mechanics that if it kills one person, it’s an instant wipe. This may be true in normal and heroic, but 100% not true in Mythic progression. Have you ever done real mythic progression?
This is very true. There was 5 months between 1.11, and 2.0. With all that extra effort of being AQ40 geared, getting all those consumes, a LOT of people just decided to wait until BC launched to raid again.
So you ARE talking about testing?!? Try looking up exactly what you have to do in Mythic Crucible of Storms (the next retail raid), you’ll find this information doesn’t yet exist, and never will on the PTR (you’ll be able to find some info regarding boss testing, but I refer you to my previous post talking about that, you have no way of knowing if the mechanic you’re dealing with on the PTR will even be there on release). These bosses are not dying in a week and a half because of testing. You’re not answering my question.
It still seems to me that you’re talking about beta/ptr testing, and the information that comes from it, and I’m trying to tell you that if that testing existed or not, Method would still kill the boss in less than 20 days. They would still stream it, and all that info would be out there regardless. What could Blizzard possibly do to control that information?
I completely agree with this. Sometimes, I miss it.
I’m not talking about the testing part… the fact that the information is out there. Obviously testing must take place. It’s solely about how easy it is to get the information.
Right, I’m with you on that. As you said with youtube and PTR, this information comes directly from testing, and I don’t see reasonable way to keep that information from spreading.
Now, please, if you wouldn’t mind answering my question.
What exactly could Blizzard possibly do to control that information? I’m genuinely curious, because if there is a way, I’d want to do be done.
A few things have definitely happened over time in raiding that are not insignificant.
I don’t think raiding was the “game” in early (2005) Vanilla, certainly not like it is today. Up until BWL players could get a similar level of power from crafted items and blues from the dungeons. As Kungen put it (paraphrasing), people weren’t really that interested in raiding until the gear became so good that you basically had to raid to be “geared”.
Competitive raiding really started in late Vanilla. AQ40 and Naxxramas. We know that is true because such a tiny fraction of the player base could even do those raids. On your average server you maybe had half a dozen guilds that were even trying.
Raiding really became “hardcore” in BC. I don’t find it at all surprising that the guilds that cleared AQ40 and Naxxramas were the ones clearing SCC, TK, BT and Sunwell. Meanwhile… the rest of the game was stuck on something in SSC or TK which the original pre-nerf versions of those fights are brutal.
WotLK says it all. The guilds that could clear all BC raid content obliterated Wrath raids. It is far and away the easiest expansion in WoW’s history. With the notable exception of Sarth+3 (basically impossible for most guilds in Tier 7) and Ulduar (again, basically impossible for most guilds).
I believe in late-Wrath the world first caliber guilds started to consolidate. Faction/Server transfers were easily available. This made it easy for someone with a pile of excellent raid logs to transfer to the very best guilds and get a spot.
Cataclysm is notable because Blizzard wanted to make the game “challenging again”.
My Mists of Pandaria it was common for players to have multiple characters for a role jocked up and ready to rock in raids. Among the very best guilds a healer might have one of healing every class. Now you have 25 raiders who are ready to log into the very best class for the job at hand. If a Paladin is the very best tank for this specific need, the tank just logs into their Paladin.
Now almost everyone has stuns, CC, interrupts, Shield Walls, self healing and some kind of berserking skill.
Personally I am going to be very interested in what the Vanilla reboot raiding is really like. While the private server information is very interesting, it isn’t up to Blizzard’s standards. Hell, we didn’t even really know for certain (as a player base) how exactly spell power works in BC. These are things Blizzard simply didn’t tell us.
100% incorrect, the number is much higher than 20, I believe the real number is closer to 60.
So much this. This guy knows what he’s talking about. I agree with every single one of his points.
This. The number of both US and EU guilds that killed Kel’thusad before 2.0 was, is currently confirmed to be 97 guilds.
I don’t have an answer. I don’t know what they can do. I just wish there was a way. I wasn’t suggesting anything could be done… I just prefer going into content and discovering everything for myself. Maybe they could hire the guys from guilds like Method or people of equal skill? Then have them be their test team and make them all sign NDAs or something so they know high caliber players tested the content and they don’t have to hotfix later.
They seem to be really good at keeping all other information from us like Classic info for instance. I understand its different before you tell me that it is lol.
The great thing about Classic WoW is that guilds will still be running Onyxia/MC 5+ years from now.
Yeah, non-disclosure agreements was the only idea that came to mind, along with severely limiting how many people actually get to do testing.
They have tried to hire truly skilled players for their QA team, and they do have a few, just not an entire roster of Method quality players. They also can’t think of everything, unfortunately.
Yeah, I go back and forth on if I personally want a beta for Classic. With no beta, there would legit be a lot of stuff we’re not sure about. There would also undoubtedly a lot of bugs and things that were wrong, like on the Blizzcon Demo. We already have a lot of information, that may or may not be correct. I personally haven’t played private servers lately to keep it as fresh as possible.
I have indeed done Mythic raiding, albeit on my DK, and not since MoP. Believe it or not, I LIKED the mechanics, although they usually break down thusly in each phase:
I think a stress test my be cool but the only things I want to know about classic don’t involve gameplay. Server information etc.
Mythic raiding is on a higher level now, especially since the launch of Legion, even in relation to the hardest difficulties in MoP. Especially because Blizzard can actively design fights way better because of a solid 20 man roster, instead of having to do a 25man version, and a 10man version. I for the most part agree with your points.
I’m not entirely sure on BfA as this is the first tier I haven’t raided since t12, but from what I’ve been told in short, Mythic Jaina is extremely interesting.
Yeah, a stress test would be really nice, I do wonder how many Blizzard expects to try it? I suspect two million, but I’ve seen estimates as high as five million.
My selfish paladin self does want to know a few gameplay things. Mainly, seal stacking, because if that’s in, my guild is going all in on it. The Holy Crusade Raid Comp is going to be GLORIOUS.
D E U S V U L T
No disrespect to modern raiders intended. I know the game has challenging mechanics and I am not questioning that in any way.
I’ll give the example of Patchwerk 1.0, the most simple boss in the history of WoW. He is literally “the” tank and spank.
The main mechanic of Patchwerk is Hateful Strike which hits for nearly an entire health bar on a very well geared tank every ~1.5 seconds. More avoidance extends it out some, but not much because the attack speed is so high.
It is entirely threat based (he is taunt immune). So while he is beating the hell out of the main tank, he is also nearly killing the off tank about every ~2 seconds and once in a while will decide to hit the #3 on threat instead which is almost always a DPS Warrior or Rogue, pray that it is a DPS Warrior or Rogue, seriously. They might die, but what you absolutely cannot recover from is Patchwerk going into a caster group. Good night lol.
Dead simple, no movement, not clicking things. I haven’t raided in a long time but I’m pretty sure that is the ultimate and if not, the original, Healing/Threat/DPS race in the game. If any one of those falls apart, you wipe.
Everyone has to go all out all the time or he either enrages at 7 minutes and just wipes you, or he methodically just hammers the crap (1 shot) out of the #3 until you don’t have enough to even bother.
So fun, can’t wait to do it again!
Everyone who had any business entering Naxx was attuned on its release.
All of our mains had Argent Dawn rep. Not everyone was exalted, but basically everyone was at least revered.
Were you on Earthen Ring back then?