So many dungeons, so little time
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jun 29th 2006 at 5:48PM
This thread in the raid and dungeons forum is not the first - nor will it be the last - to complain about the difficulty in scheduling an increasing number of raid dungeons. As raiding guilds seek to advance through higher level instances, some raids need to be cut out of the rotation - and for most guilds, Molten Core is getting left in the dust. Of course this means that players who are still missing the one piece of tier 2 that drops in Molten Core are now stuck without a way to acquire it, but it also has implications for unguilded players and up-and-coming guilds. When I joined my first raiding guild, I had part of my blue class set, as well as assorted blues and greens from Scholomance, Stratholme, Blackrock Spire, and Dire Maul. But for guild exclusively running Naxxramas, Ahn'Qiraj, and Blackwing Lair, that may not be sufficient gear to be able to contribute. As the leader of a small guild working towards gearing up for 20-player instances, I fear that this will intensify the problem smaller guilds have with players raiding for a while and jumping into guilds that have progressed further in end-game content. Though perhaps I am too pessimistic - will players soon simply be skipping over Molten Core to attempt Blackwing Lair in better gear coming from lower dungeons (dungeon 2 set, etc)? As the scourge invasion event completes on more servers we can begin to see what sort of fallout may come from this growing library of raid dungeons.
Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Instances
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Carlos Jun 29th 2006 11:37PM
"I fear that this will intensify the problem smaller guilds have with players raiding for a while and jumping into guilds that have progressed further in end-game content"
DING!!! That happend to my guild on Chogal. It was a great small group, where the 60's would drop what they were doing and help you out no matter where you were if you were being ganked. A member aproached the group as a whole about possibly merging with a larger guild, basically so our 60's could help their 60's get stuff. Us lower (40's et all) would never really see the benefit (more people in MC... getting stuff and us questing in PUG's). It boiled down to items, people did not want to say it was about gear but that is what it is all about. Me personally? I want to explore both continents and go places as a Horde I am not welcome, cause its fun. Our guild did not survive the merger, most of the 60's have gone on to different guilds ( or a second guild since then). It really bothers me that for a large number of people its all about gear.
Zweibel Sep 22nd 2008 1:33AM
This is one of the reasons why I "quit" WoW. I say it like that because come expansion I will be back to the game. I just really need a break from what I feel is somewhat killing WoW. As it is, unless one has an almost infinite amount of time, one cannot join an upper-level guild.
In my last guild, we were usually the third guild or so in beating new encounters. Because of this, we often spent ungodly amounts of time learning encounters and running instances. Because of AQ40, we were forced to do MC, Ony, and ZG in one day. Not everybody wanted to run Ony/ZG so it was quite possible. Another day was set to BWL since we had it down to five hours as long as everything went well. The rest of the week was spent on AQ40 with AQ20 on the side. I can recall spending ten hours plus on Sunday's as we attempted to get past Huhuran with wipe after wipe. Needless to say, farming gold to pay for repair bills was becoming very annoying.
Anyway, this combined with school, work, and my normal life was not very healthy. When it came down too it, I had to decide. Either I could continue this path only to have my life further taken up by WoW from new end game instances or quit and start all over. I opted for the second choice and that's where I am now. Until the gear in these first end game raids become obsolete (Coughlongtimetonevercough), many guilds are going to have these problems.
Hm, let us hope my comment made sense. ^_^
Luka Jun 30th 2006 3:44AM
That's te problem of new content. I fear that many guilds will skip MC to try BWL/Naxx (or only do it for a while), without understanding that MC is really a prerequisite to understand how a 40 men instance works. And doing BWL without having at least some of MC gear is being crazy.
And There is only 7 days per week (5 if you don't run on maintenance day and saturday), and MC + BWL + AQ40 + Naxx is going to be a tough schedule... Alts might have problems to gear themselves if nobody wants to go MC...
Brian Jun 30th 2006 6:39AM
Many guilds that raid MC, BWL, and AQ40 are already dropping MC. As observed earlier, their is only so much time in the week and something has to give. At a certain point, the rewards of MC are bo longer worth it relaative to the other instances. Unfortunately, someone will always feel left behind without their toer 2 leg pieces or their tier 1 chest piece.
Naxx will drive this dynamic further. On the upside, at level 70, 20 man pick-up groups will be able to farm that MC gear that they've always wanted. Except at that point, it will be for nostalgia's sake.
bliSSter Jun 30th 2006 10:56AM
MC should really be revamped to be 20-man anyways. Several of the dungeon 2 set pieces are as good (if not better), than tier one gear and many ZG/AQ20 bosses are equally difficult to MC bosses already. There's no good reason not to retool instances the same way that classes are reworked and tweaked to adapt to a constantly evolving world. We've already seen bosses added to 5-man zones and loot tables tweaked.
Most raiding guilds on my server are already simply striking MC from their list of zones b/c of BWL, AQ and NAX due to time and gear payout. We even have a small guild alliance that has MC on full-clear farm status with DKP that is shared between 3-5 different guilds.
Blizz should just bite the bullet and roll MC to a 3-day timer and adjust bosses accordingly.