Classic content is outdated. The same will be true for Classic Dragonflight. Classic fyrakk will be just as easy because people will no life the mechanics to finally prove themselves. On private servers.
What I poorly described when I meant ignorance was a sheer lack of knowledge about how things worked.
I pvpâd for like 8 months before raiding because I was on an RP server with 4 guilds capable of raiding and 2 of those guild lead by full-fledge card carrying members of the toxic chad society.
A lot of players didnât even know where the raids were. Once I started raiding I was quickly promoted and ended up running attunement operations for MC because practically anyone that didnât come from one of the other guilds had done nothing to open up raids. Just getting recruits into a run was like getting toddlers ready for their first day of school.
Faux was talking about Naxx like it was just there and people ignored it. Most players didnât know where the entrance was, many of them probably hadnât even been in Strath more than a time or two. Attunement was a full on rep grind that many players werenât even in a position to easily complete.
They released it so late that anyone who hadnât already been through MC/BWL werenât geared adequately and werenât going to catch up quickly enough.
But letâs all just pretend it was easy and that people werenât afraid of joining the same way that people are scared to go dancing, or bowling, or anything for the first time when theyâre afraid theyâll be judged and ridiculed.
This statement hit my kind of funny because my guild raids 6 hours a week.
In the first week of raiding Limit did more raiding than Iâve done the entire tier. If my team had the same amount of time and commitment to spend we would definitely have the raid cleared. Sadly we do it twice a week with a 5 day gap between attempts. Not a 6 hours âsleepâ before getting right back into the groove.
Iâm not suggesting weâd perform anything like them if we did 16 hour days for a week, because weâd probably never down it at those gear levels, with less definitive strats and addons, butâŚitâs funny that you talk about no-lifing as if itâs something reserved for degenerates. Or maybe you think world first raider behavior is degenerate, who am I to disagree.
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I think play time/raid time is an interesting topic.
The rise of 2 day (6 hour) guilds seemed to really take off once mythic+ came into the fold, which made reclearing much less important after the first months or so since your raid team is gearing to similar/comparable gear levels as youâd get from your reclear.
What weekly commitment is appropriate? Itâs obviously very subjective. 9 hours used to be a lot more common. There has been more transition to 6.
Would 3 be appropriate? 1 day a week guilds? Is that too way too low? Is 6 a âgoodâ amount compared to 9? Is 9 way too high?
All subjective answers.
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I raided 22.5 hours in Sunwell, and it was considered semi-hardcore.
the raidweek went from 5 days to 4, to 3, to 2, and I can predict where it will go next.
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My point is rather current classic numbers donât relate to the actual difficulty of content.
Thereâs a competitive Tetris scene apparently.
Itâs just what time does to âhardâ games.
That touches on something else that concerns me about the raid structure in general. It doesnât really align with any traditional competitive gaming modes that I can think of.
M+ has speed, difficulty and and a world first aspect that all exist beyond the reward threshold but set the benchmark for performance within the context of the content. Clear, precisely measurable elements that give players a goal without putting the prime rewards beyond reasonable reach.
Iâm not arguing for easier loot, though my ideas would lean that way as a result, but rather for a greater reason for engagement and rethinking the way that raids works.
A raid tier vaguely mimics a marathon, everyone has the same duration within which to finish the race. There are a few prizes for the first runners and then everyone else is scored by their time.
One of the problems with the analogy is that most guild wonât even get to the end of the race. Not because a marathon is too long but because every race the distance is doubled, or tripled and so participants just keep dropping out part way through. Itâs turned into death march.
I think somehow the focus needs to veer more towards everyone getting through content at an appropriate level of difficulty, then finding a way to better incentivize replaying raids in a format that better rewards skill, but exists beyond the reward cap.
Everyone in a league sport gets to play the whole season and then teams are ranked by their performance. Nobody has to get stuck playing one team every week for months until they beat them. A lot of people just donât like that format.
I like four or five 300-400 pulls bosses but I donât think thatâs a common enough sentiment in an era where hit games like Baldurâs Gate and Helldivers 2 are making WoW players question logging back in because all theyâre gonna do is wipe for 3 hours on some dumb boss that nobodyâs gonna care about in 3 minutes.
Trapping players in a groundhog day wipefest for the sake of .1% of the population doesnât feel like a winning strategy.
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So what Iâm hearing is delete mythic raid gear.
(I question the effectiveness of this solution.)
m+32 or whatever is even more out of reach than mythic fyrakk.
I think somehow the focus needs to veer more towards everyone getting through content at an appropriate level of difficulty, then finding a way to better incentivize replaying raids in a format that better rewards skill, but exists beyond the reward cap.
Either that or delete all modes and just have normal I guess, that maybe 5% of pop can do?
Is this your âclassicâ argument again? That 5% of the population cleared raids? If so itâs too disingenuous to take seriously. Servers were opening for new players as late as a few months before TBC. Few players cared about racing to level cap the first time through. It about the experience first.
I donât think difficulties should be removed. I think mythic raid difficulty needs to be curbed just a bit, by way of design, and I think Blizzard needs to find a proxy for the challenge that world first and even hall of fame guilds crave.
I donât want to just say implement mythicraid+ and work that angle because I donât want to make raiding competitive like M+, but rather something closer to Ulduar Hardmodes that offer better, or additional drops or tmogs, mounts, etc.
I donât think we need FF14 tmog only hardcore raids, but there needs to be something that the best players can use to exhibit their skill and garner unique rewards like titles or achievements without disrupting the full breadth of the raiding spectrum by requiring that raid bosses be designed in such a way that even the lower tiers guilds have to do degenerate stuff and setting expectations for performance that arenât healthy for a thriving community.
I have spent more time in the last two tiers trying to fix other playerâs weakaura and boss mod conflicts or setting issues than I ever want to again. Thatâs not raiding anymore, thatâs IT in my off-time.
Is this your âclassicâ argument again? That 5% of the population cleared raids? If so itâs too disingenuous to take seriously. Servers were opening for new players as late as a few months before TBC. Few players cared about racing to level cap the first time through. It about the experience first.
Iâm saying if you want content âeveryoneâ can get through, that seems to be the end-result. Existence of alternative difficulty modes that people can clear is unsatisfactory for you.
Cause lowering the bar to LFR, would greatly dissatisfy me.
And ulduar-style hardmodes is just reskinned mythic.
Weâve had Yogg+0 which was rumored to be impossible.
Yogg 0 was bonus content for groups who had already mastered the raid. It wasnât a case of clear Yogg 0 or you havenât cleared the raid.
Iâm think Iâm saying Mythic Raiding is trying to cater to too broad a spectrum, in an inelegant way. Itâs why they couldnât just add one level beyond mythic dungeons and call it a day. It doesnât serve enough players well enough. Perhaps Iâm wrong.
Once more, I donât think difficulty describes the issue effectively. Itâs what the raids are demanding of guilds; the kinds of recruitment, resources and expectations are not healthy in the long term.
Back in the day you did dumb stuff like farming Tubers because someone said it mattered. So you went out into the world and played the game. Now you troll wago and u.gg trying to get UI enhancements or strat tips to acheive .01% gains.
Too much of the game is about the tools. Itâs about how much advantage can you leverage from external sources and then getting walled on bosses because your particular team doesnât meet the explicit requirements crafted into some wretched boss mechanic, so screw you guys, your whole crew and your experience. It leaves teams with the choice of abandoning their bonds for the sake of clearing a couple of bosses that in name were designed for them but gated behind organizational requirements that exceed any skills demanded by the mechanics - to an outrageous degree.
Mythic raiding got too full of itself and needs to be checked.
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M+ is the only game mode that treats Hardcore players properly, in that all of the rewards the regular playerbase cares about stop at +20(Portal, gear, aspects, and vault) and then the maniacs who care about being great at the game for epeen can push a +32s for a title that I canât even name or be bothered to care about. 
Iâd love if Mythic raiding followed that tbh lmao.
Mythic+ is like 12,000 people clearing +20s on week 1 while Mythic raiding is 60 people wiping on 1 boss 300 times week 1.
Itâs no wonder M+ is more popular then ever while Mythic Fyrakk has half as many people clearing it then the previous tier.
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Mythic fyrakk is very hard. M+20 is not. Itâs like judging LFR to mythic dungeons.
I think they should remove the mythic lockout after the first guild cleared the raid in a specific region. This way the race will not become more degenerate by doing mythic splits and it is still so early that 99% of players will enjoy the most bosses without a mythic lockout.
The lockout leads to ppl on the bench getting rusty and eventually leaving and on the other hand not being able to help a befriended guild if they are maybes short one healer or dps for a night.
By removing the lockout it would take out a lot of pressure from the 20 man requirement as it is more easy to find a replacement. I think they should do this but stick to fixed 20 man because of tuning and because a raid should feel like a raid and not a bloated dungeon group. 20 man is the minimal amount of people where it still feels like a epic group effort.
Yogg 0 was bonus content for groups who had already mastered the raid. It wasnât a case of clear Yogg 0 or you havenât cleared the raid.
Wouldnât the same be said of mythic difficulty which are analogous of ulduar hard modes?
(Blizz said that at some point.) Itâs easier to just design heroic than a new unique mechanic to activate a hardmode.
The bigger problem is that people are âon the benchâ at all.
Blizzard fixed this problem at the end of MoP when they made all raids use the flex technology and scale with raid size.
All EXCEPT Mythic, which they desperately need to fix.
The worst part about Mythic raiding isnât the stupid boss design, or Blizzard catering to Echo, or the pathetic rewards for doing it.
The worst part about Mythic raiding is having to tell some of your friends every night: âSorry, you donât get to play.â
It sucks. Let people play the game.
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Good convo, hereâs how I would fix mythic:
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Make the core storyline bosses (end boss awards CE) feasible for a 6hr/week team to comfortably finish in 4 months.
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Add âoptionalâ boss in the raid, or a separate single boss raid, for the ultra hard 400 pull boss. Midcore guilds can just skip this. It can only award cosmetics for killing it.
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Remove all raid assist addons and tune fights around this. Blizzard could manually âsignâ approved addons, to allow some like bartender and bagnon, while not big wigs or WA. Only signed addons work in the game. Addons should only be able to rearrange existing info, not add any new UI. Base game would need some work on proc/buff/debuff awareness.
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Allow mythic to flex to 17 (give or take) or 20. Then you can have 20 on the roster. If everyone shows, everyone plays. If 2 people miss, only then would 1 person sit. Not allowing full flex should make it possible to tune.
I think itâs a fair critique, but what I envision is more about the reward structure and the incentives, not the difficulty.
As an extreme and possibly unfair example, imagine if clearing +20 AD required a 4 or 5 pull strat akin to what the MDI teams could achieve. A lot of players would be upset because suddenly access to the best gear and their ability to reach a sense of completion would be positioned way out of their range. Getting 2500, or all your portals is a nice clean goal. For some of us it feels pretty easy, but unless youâre really insecure nothing is spoiled by random strangers clearing 20s.
Thatâs part of the beauty of M+. Lots of players can get in and out, reach a solid milestone and then re-engage when it suits them and those that really enjoy it the most still have space to find further challenge without creating friction in the reward structure.
deleting all the hard content doesnât do the game favors. Rather be unable to achieve rewards than have rewards stop because they donât go further.
Imagine diablo 4 that ended at level 1.
But we agree that 20s arenât hard and thatâs where the practical rewards end. Is that ruining M+?
This is what Iâm suggesting for raid content: Engineer for increasing difficulty but keep the practical rewards aimed at the masses, not the .1%. If you need to claim world first AND horde exclusive gear then I think youâre compensating for your big truck if you know what I mean.
Again, Iâm not asking for easy content, nor to take difficulty without compensating elsewhere. What Iâm suggesting is dispense with the self-important hierarchy hooey. Stop trying to make Mythic Raiding serve guilds from 8/9 heroic to the absolute best players in the world.
More precisely, donât structure power rewards around RFW levels of competition. Give them what they want but donât let that drive content for the masses. There needs to be a new way for people to get hyped about raiding. The âwhich of the 10 guilds with the resources and interest will sacrifice enough sanity to get across the line fastest?â doesnât drive interest in raiding, and itâs why there is no MDI for raiding. Cuz it kinda sucks as a game mode. Itâs a hobby mode that people have to commit to just to get a return. A lot to ask of a game nowadays.
I think they need to look at other structure, like time trials, or even The Great Push. Screw it, just make raid+, gives bosses scores like raider. io and let guilds figure out what bosses they can push the highest to achieve the best overall score.
Might even extend the interest beyond the first week. âOooh Limit killed Fyrakk +8 10 weeks into the season and now theyâre number 1 again,â or somesuch.
Iâm sure there are a million reasons it sucks, so take it with a grain of salt and all that.
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