Please I beg you, do not have the new raid release during the Holiday season. WE enjoy times with our families and friends outside of HAVING to raid!
18 Likes
I agree, I’d love to have the raid come out the first week in January, when everyone’s had their fill of family and parties and are ready to settle down and kill some bosses.
15 Likes
I have 3 weeks off around the holidays, it’s perfect for me to play because I don’t have to worry about work and I can take my time instead of coming home from work, quickly walking my dogs, rushing online, get stressed doing a few quests or doing some exploration, and then spend my evening raiding or doing M+.
You can raid after the holidays, you’ll have several months to enjoy the patch.
36 Likes
If you don’t want to raid during the holidays then don’t do it. I see no issue with releasing the raids around those times; anyone who wants to play then can do so. Other people can wait until it’s a good time for them to play. Honestly, I’d prefer all raids of every difficulty to be open on Launch but I know that’s not going to happen.
47 Likes
No one forces you to raid at Christmas if you don’t want to, 99.9% of guilds will give holidays. We cannot pretend that the dates of the game are adapted to a marginal percentage of players who are paid for it.
23 Likes
I think from a company standpoint, a December ish release is perfect because lots of people will have more time to play around the holidays as they are off work. I think a good compromise might be to push the release back a bit so the raid opens around or just after New Years.
12 Likes
We really appreciate this discussion and feedback.
When the time comes for us to announce a release date for Dragonflight, we’ll share details on our initial raid/season schedule.
Thank you!
25 Likes
I can see both sides, as both were already brought up here by various members.
My favorite time is when my guild is learning raids, because they do Normal, which is what I like - I don’t like heroic, which is where they move once a raid is known.
With Nathria, due to the release on the holidays, we felt it wasn’t really fair to make people focus on the game when it’s supposed to be time for family/etc.
However, we also didn’t hate that the raid was released. We did a completely no-guide playthrough. We went in without any guides being read by anyone, no dungeon journal, etc. Just learning as we played and just generally goofing off to have fun - cause, it’s a game at the end of the day.
And it was incredibly fun.
I don’t think punishing players who play during holidays in favor of letting people who do “get there first” is right? Like, what if the raid launches when you aren’t going to be raiding? So what? Why should they punish everyone else just so you can get World First or such?
I completely understand the raiders desires to get in it ASAP, but they’re essentially asking Blizzard to punish the players who don’t have friends/family to spend the holidays with, or get stranded, or just have time during the holidays, where that may be their only time in the year they get to play, all so they can ensure they get as close to world first as possible.
The raid will still be there after the holidays.
On top of this, this doubly punishes LFR players, as our content is bi-weekly locked, (Even though there’s zero reason for how long they gate it), as with a later start time, it will take even longer for LFR to be available.
TLDR; Delaying a raid release and punishing those who have time to play during the holidays and/or look forward to it is horrible if you’re doing it for the top 1% who have to get as close to world first as possible.
11 Likes
While we’re on this subject, please release the entirety of LFR at the same pace as normal. There’s absolutely no reason for this to be released at a different pace.
18 Likes
- Week of December 12: Normal, Heroic, and Mythic Vault of the Incarnates will open with the weekly maintenance for each region
This is such a heavy week 1 of content. I’m not sure what the goal is here? It’s taking all of the worst parts of Shadowlands and multiplying it by 100.
M+, Normal Raid, Heroic Raid, Mythic Raid all on the same week…
3 Likes
Yes, it will.
But if you’re in a late AOTC/CE guild, you’re being told that the Season will be one month shorter for you if you choose not to play over the holiday. That sucks.
Here’s an example: The Visions of N’Zoth patch was released on January 14th and my guild, Undaunted, got Cutting Edge about 2 weeks before the cutoff. Had Blizzard chosen to release that patch in December, we wouldn’t have raided over the holidays (we never do). If Shadowlands had also been moved up a month, the month we would have lost due to the holidays would probably have meant we wouldn’t have gotten that achievement.
3 Likes
100% never been in guild where they force raiding on the holidays but I think if blizzard doesnt force the employees to work on the holidays why am I being forced to raid on it or be punished.
Also shout out to undaunted who use to be on nerzhul, yall were legit
2 Likes
They won’t reconsider this date but it does prove they don’t care at all about what people say. Everyone complained in Castle Nathria. Let’s repeat same mistake, gg’s. Thanks for not caring.
4 Likes
We appreciate the feedback, however we are still going to have all the content released on the 12th.
If this raid lasts as long as it took to kill the Jailor then we are raiding right during the holidays.
It would have been nice to just casually spend the holidays learning new dungeons and exploring the map casually. INSTEAD grind as quick as you can and rush to gear for raid.
It would make more sense to release the raid in January.
3 Likes
It would have been nice to just casually spend the holidays learning new dungeons and exploring the map casually. INSTEAD grind as quick as you can and rush to gear for raid.
It would make more sense to release the raid in January.
I would like to voice my dissent here. The players being “forced” to raid over the holidays is a very small percentage of the playerbase. Those players typically have some type of monetary gain from those World First races too, so they are no different than the retail workers also working the same holiday. Often times, the long(er) holiday weekends are great times for most players to actually play the game. A lot of them will actually have the time to check out the raid and play the game. Altering an entire raid schedule just for the few players involved in the World First Race is not beneficial to the masses in my opinion. Personally, I’m looking forward to having the free time to explore more of the new content.
9 Likes
I’d like to heavily disagree on this point. This hurts more casual mythic guilds more than the RWF crowd.
RWF Crowd
Whatever happens, happens. Pretty simple. You adapt. Thinking any change is done for this crowd is pretty out of touch tbh.
Other Mythic Guilds
Your identity as a guild is largely set to your overall rank. This attracts people to your team as it’s the only external identifier which clearly discerns your skill level as a guild (when combined with your advertised schedule).
To put this in an easier to understand example (assuming both teams were very similar to each other in previous tiers):
- Team A raids during December and clears the raid in 6 weeks
- Team B does not raid during the Holidays and clears the raid in 8 weeks
As an external player looking for a new team, I’d much prefer to play in Team A than Team B as they have goals that better resonate with my own (wanting to continually improve). Team B took a bit hit to their overall performance metric and is therefore declining in quality.
The impact on Hall of Fame (HoF)
The above scenario is even more impactful when you add HoF into the mix, teams that opt to play over the Holiday increase their chances of getting into HoF.
We have not had any formal communication to state how HoF works with merged factions. So I’ll outline three scenarios.
Scenario 1 - Top 200 guilds.
In this Scenario, teams that opt to play over the Holidays increase their chances to get into the Hall of Fame. Additionally, teams that opt to play add pressure to other teams to play as spots close up and teams may have goals which are set to achieve HoF.
Scenario 2 - Fixed Time Period.
Here you will know the pace you need to play at to achieve HoF and can make decisions as you go if you want to raid over the Holidays or not based on the pace of RWF.
Scenario 3 - Fixed Time Period (but assumes teams do not play over the holidays).
In this scenario, the pressure to play over the Holidays is lessened, but teams that do opt to play get a higher rank comparatively but you’ve achieved the goal and it can be potentially dismissed by prospective applicants.
3 Likes
I agree with both points just kinda wish we could move in more advanced ways besides “We ArE ExTeNdInG” to actually kill bosses and get progression without locking people out of having actual fun. Id expect blizzard to have more options by now
1 Like