Recently on the forums a guild member posted in the twenty-five person forums about raids and player’s attitudes towards raid bosses.The statement was:
Progression fights used to take three or four weeks, now, if there are three or four wipes people start leaving.
This statement is fairly accurate in today’s raiding environment, especially for the PuGs and casually formed groups.
I, personally, didn’t do much raiding in TBC (only Kara and Gruuls) and hadn’t even started playing before the end of vanilla WoW, so all of the “hard content” of yesteryear (Kael’Thas, Vashj, Illidan, Reliquary of Souls etc) is very foreign to me. The mere thought of spending three or four weeks attempting a kill horrifies me (looking at you, Putricide). That’s not even mentioning the stories I have heard about Razorgore, the first “guild breaker”. Whilst I am an advocate for being in your raid until the allocated raid time is over, I am definitely a part of the generation of raiders that has lost interest in a fight after ten or so wipes. I have found that, in PuG ToC’s in particular, if we wipe three or four times on any given boss that I am at the point of leaving. Saying that, I am not as bad as those five PuGs that I did a ToC10 with who left after one wipe on Faction Champions.
The new generation of raiders are very spoilt by how obtainable gear is and how beatable bosses have become. I don’t really like the Icecrown “gating”, but I think that it is a necessary evil given that some fights feel quite easy, only containing three or four mechanics and a single phase. Once you have “figured out the trick” it becomes a walk in the park, especially now that raiders have become “more professional”, working together far better than all the newbies at the dawn of raiding in vanilla WoW. That’s not even mentioning the copious amount of reference material available to players in regards to the boss fights, their mechanics and how to beat them (videos, strategies, diagrams etc), which is often available before the fight even goes live to the servers!
Are the fights easier, or are we just much better players? Is the gear too good, or do we just have a better understanding of our classes? Has the game been simplified too much, or do we just have a better understanding of its mechanics?
At the end of the day I am really hoping that Arthas and Ner’Zul, the Liche King, is one of those fights that you really feel like you’ve earned. I would hate to have killed the Liche King within three or four weeks of the encounter being released. This doesn’t seem particularly likely anymore, given how long we have been stuck at Putricide. Then there is always the Heroic version…
I’m one who will stay for weeks of wipes. In fact i actually ran up my shaman to create flasks for my druid and switched my hunter to the gold farmer to pay for repairs in BC.
I love guild firsts, the sense of guild achievement and dynamic.
Don’t get me wrong, i love loots, and in pugs I’m happy to walk away from pugs if they annoy me or can’t do content. But some of the most fun I’ve had is being in guild firsts in ES and Nitewatch, and when bosses/guild firsts were achieved without me, i felt a sense of loss and missing out on a good party.
My first Vashj kill after weeks of wiping was epic fun! with heaps of yelps.
Stuff you guys might laugh at, our first Saph, KT, Kologan kill and Cat Lady etc was epic joy for us, then we started to die out because people would leave when we wanted to go further because it was too hard, and jealousy at the achievement of the other group (in 10s)(people selectively ignored the fact the other group wiped for hours on end to get a progression)
I think the dynamic and achievement of some groups is great. I know that plate wearers bear an unfair burden for repair bills, but that’s the class you chose to run, wiping for 2 weeks is a burn, however it makes the win that much more satisfying.
If we become a progression 25 guild I would love that, we all know how hard it was for guilds and officers to keep 40 people in line through progression in vanilla, however people have to commit to flasking, following instructions, and being prepared to learn and wear a repair cost.
Same for the 10 mans.
In a pug, i’m happy for a loot run, unless otherwise stated, i’ll assume guild runs in ICC are progression runs
definitely more down to impatience and how easy it is to get gear now, in the days of raiding 40 mans it used to take months and months to get a complete set, seeing as there were so many people in the raid and only like, 2 or 3 pieces of gear per boss fight. the bosses were more complicated and it definitely depended on people knowing what to do a lot more. it may be down to people knowing their classes etc better, but i definitely remember longer clears and bosses being intensely hard to beat.
Naxx 40 man when it came out was especially silly like that, Raz was the first boss that most people would do, and the level 80 version of him is definitely wayyyy nerfed. Another boss that I remember as being complicated was Nef in BWL, he had a buttload of abilities that you had to look out for.. and you also needed an Onyxia Scale Cloak if I remember correctly. People also used to go through a lot of effort getting proper resistance gear and attunements and stuff for those instances, so maybe that contributed to them sticking around a lot more because just to enter the instance was a lot of work.
RE Hitmeagain’s post above, I remember 40 mans were easier to get people for because people had to be more dedicated and because gear wasnt as easy to get, PVP was hard as hell back then with the ranking system and such, it was really very hard to get decent gear through that so people actually had to attend raids and pray for their class items to drop.
One thing in 40s we (barra, isla, stefion and others leading) cleared to Domo with about 25 to 26 people. We used to do ony with 25 to 30 people.
Why?
We were not an over powerful guild and there were many socials in the runs.
Once we started clearing stuff, getting into the guild runs was hard.
Same at 25s in BC, struggled for numbers, people would come, gear up and leave for the more progressed groups.
It was the core of the group that stuck fat through wipes, repair bills etc that made it worth while turning up.
As for PvP I burnt out of pvp at rank 12 when decay at 20% would rip out your honour
I concur, we would go weeks without a gear upgrade. It wasn’t the gear that differentiated players.
I think bosses are as complex today as any other time. Firefight? Yogg? Kael? Vashj? Same same.
Everything from before was “bigger, better, harder”. I don’t believe it for a moment
Vok, I disagree.
The old world content (Vanilla wow) was longer and more complex. BC content is quite similar to Wotlk content though. Vanillar wow, you needed large number of people, and certain class make ups. I never played my druid on Razorgore for example (was always a pally healer, and our raid consisted of only pally healers for that fight!) (for the remainder of BWL though I played druid). The trash was a lot more, certain pulls you had to time perfectly with a hunter etc. Even the 5 man dungeons were longer / more interesting than the 5 mans these days. I miss some of the old content too. I was reminiscing in one of Hitme’s posts on a different topic about UBRS for example. I remember always getting lost in BRD, and you could only ever do certain parts of BRD in a sitting.