In original wotlk, ICC was released wing by wing over 8 weeks. As a somewhat casual player, I absolutely loved this. It gave my guild plenty of time to prog through the content without requiring more than our 1 raid night (2-2.5 hours) initially, and then 2 raid nights as more wings were released. Getting through the prog part of the previous wing before the next came out took the pressure off and really made it so you could enjoy the content more.
From the little speculation that I’ve heard or read, people are saying that this will not happen in classic, citing the original gated releases of sunwell or togc to how it has been done in classic = all at once. And likewise, that heroic will not be locked behind a normal lich king kill for each raid size.
I think this is a HUGE mistake. While I understand that the average gear level and skill and strategies for all of these bosses has come a long way since its original release, we aren’t all super sweaty parse lords rushing for world first, and gating the release over a short period of time lets us enjoy it more, and I for one would really like to savor my first few weeks in here leading up to an eventual lich king kill on heroic 10, and later 25 possibly many weeks later.
I’m not saying it has to be over 8 weeks, but even in retail, raids are often released a week after the patch drops; the mythic raid a week after that, and I think its a very good idea. It lets us all enjoy some of the rest of the patch’s content at a more relaxed pace.
What I think is more ideal is something like this. Week one we get the 3 new dungeons + whatever else we get, battered hilt quests, rdf, class changes, etc. (you could call this the pre-patch if you want). Week two we get the first wing of ICC. (This could all happen week one but I think it’s better to have the raid the week after the patch drops so any other patch related bugs can get sorted.) Week three (or three and four) we get plague and blood wing. Final week we get frostwing halls and lich king. I do think heroic should also be gated behind lich king but I don’t think that’s as important as gating the wings over 3-5 weeks.
I’m guessing more people than not just want it all released at once, but I’m interested in everyone’s take on this, and for each, if you are a more hardcore or casual player.
I don’t believe they do this anymore. People don’t like it, if they gated ICC you’d see an eruption of angry forum posters once again berating Blizzard for their lack of insight. I’d be included in that forum mob. Your guild can raid at whatever pace it wants, don’t force everyone else to wait for you.
Opening it all at once also opens up the raid to be less linear. You can choose which wing to progress on after the initial four bosses.
Gating it like OG would be neat, I’m a fan, but as others have said, the outcry would be horrendous. The only thing you’re going to hear is, if you want it gated, then gate it for yourself and only fight the bosses you want to.
Most of the changes are good but they’ve made some terrible out of touch changes like the RDF fiasco.
The change removing Arena teams was good.
The change to remove batching was good.
The changes to Shadowmourne are absolutely amazing. You’ll only understand if you actually play the game.
The updated graphics options were all great changes.
All the little fixes they’re doing like the AoE heal stuff are great.
Heroic+ dungeons are fine, plenty of people like them.
Removing timegates on bosses/wings in raids is absolutely a good thing.
The group finder is actually great for finding raids.
etc, etc. They could have avoided the few absolutely terrible changes they’ve made or were thinking about making if they actually talked to their playerbase. Overall, most of the changes have been good but have been overshadowed by RFD.
I’d say removing spell batching which was more of a technical limitation than a design decision was a good change. Kind of like the debuff limit.
The rest were Wrath design decisions, and Wrath classic should be authentic to Wrath design, not an algamation of whatever the modern devs want to change.
i haven’t played since dragonflight, but played all the way thru shadowlands, and they did this every raid patch. its a very smart idea, and i dont ever remember anyone complaining about it either.
It’s not a question of speculation. It’s been stated outright by Blizzard. No gating, no Heroic unlock requirement.
Deal with it. Like 2/3 of guilds won’t ever SEE LK on heroic. A lot wouldn’t even be able to unlock heroic if it was required. The gear required to get through ICC successfully is enough that I highly doubt we’ll see any week 1 or 2 HLK kills.
There will absolutely be week 1 HLK kills, he’s already been down by a couple guilds on the first round of the PTR. It’ll just be significantly less than the other releases so far.
Remasters don’t include changes. They’re just visual updates and bug fixes.
Remakes have changes.
if every three bosses takes you and your guild 20 minutes on 25 heroic week one then grats, you do you. I dont think this is the real world reality for the majority of guilds. this is why i asked if you were casual or more hardcore. trying to see the perspective from both sides.
in my guild, we arent doing 3 bosses in 20 minutes week one on 25 heroic. we will get there after a few weeks, but by then the rest of the raid will be out as well.
very true. it’s almost as if they didn’t want everyone to burn out on the content immediately.
i tend to agree that some changes are acceptable. be it class balance or quality of life.
while these changes + shadowmourne change is kinda major, i don’t have a problem with these either. they feel intuitive and actually change very little compared to how wrath felt. the heroic+ options are just more filler for my mains or alts where i might otherwise just be lvling another toon or something.
this however to me is one of the biggest differences from original to classic. in original the anticipation was building constantly, leading up to the final raid and the final boss. a 2-month release schedule does seem a bit long, but having no time gate at all and flopping the whole raid 25 heroic available day one is to me just an insult to the slow burn and release schedule for the raid originally.
a three week release schedule would be enough to capture at least some of the magic of the original release of one the best raids this game has ever put out.