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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsTop guilds want Blizzard to take out the trash
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Mar 29th 2007 at 9:41AM
There's been a low-level murmur for weeks in the Raids and Dungeons forum about the amount of trash in Serpentshrine Cavern. Words like "nightmare", "soul-destroying", and "worse than Twin Emps-C'thun trash" were bandied about. The problem wasn't just the amount of trash, but the respawn time -- with 45-minute respawns, guilds were literally watching trash respawn behind them as they cleared. And as more guilds check into early Tempest Keep, they're finding the same situation.
This week, the wave finally crested, with members of Death and Taxes, Curse, and other top guilds arguing that the trash situation has become unbearable. Selected comments from the threads follow:
- Guass of Ret, Mal'Ganis: "I personally enjoy when trash respawns in the middle of a boss fight because it isn't linked to anything. It's things like this which make me feel like I wasn't meant to be raiding this zone yet ... nor was anyone else."
- Marolla of Crimson, Greymane: "Since typically one dungeon is being started while another is released, I can only assume that the crew that did MC, AQ40 and SSC is a bunch of sadists and needs to be burned at the stake. Please let the crew that did BWL and Naxx be in charge of all hiring decisions from this point forward."
- Mek, raid leader of Curse, Vek'linash-EU: "Trash should be killed once in a night of tries on a boss. Fine, it respawns on a soft reset or a 6 hour timer, but not this garbage we have now. If you do not fix this you are eventually going to kill off high-end raiding because we just do not want to do this anymore."
- Cherrie of Death and Taxes, Korgath: "I personally love hours upon hours of trash. I especially enjoy having to kill it multiple times because the respawn is so quick. I enjoy it ALMOST as much as fighting untuned bosses. THE SARCASM, IT'S OVERWHELMING!"
- Plastique of Death and Taxes, Korgath: "As much as I know you need us to play-test all of these new instances, we might not volunteer for it anymore since it's threatening our sanity ... please don't release Black Temple. It's too soon." (Italics added for emphasis.)
- And finally, Clockwork of the reformed Overrated, Korgath, wins the thread and the entire internet with: "Wow, what a bunch of whiners. Stop crying and just clear the trash, OK?"
I haven't seen much of 25-man raiding in TBC beyond what a rogue, a mage, and a quick portal to Shattrath can show you, but the trash situation sounds like it's really wearing on the top guilds. When a member of Death and Taxes asks Blizzard NOT to release new content, something is not right. It also looks like there's near-universal hatred of the trash clears, inasmuch as every guild that's posted in these threads has decried them.
Have you seen the trash in SSC and Tempest Keep? Does it sound excessive to you, or is multiple trash clears the price you pay for being on the cutting edge?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Instances, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Maedhras Mar 29th 2007 4:28PM
Double post possibility. sorry if it happens.
What Blizzard should do (and, fortunately, often do) is stop worrying about what the minority of its player base - namely, "high-end" guilds - wants.
Holy crap guys, stop whining! Don't like the game? Stop playing! You are so few, and we are so many, why should Blizz tailor it's development time to your needs?
Halicante Mar 29th 2007 6:40PM
Guy from overrated talking about trash clearing? COMEDY GOLD!
But yeah. Kara trash sorta stinks to clear the first time, and the subsequent times people get more and more irritated with it. I can't imagine it gets better with the other instances. Blizz seems to get a kick out of mindlessly torturing us like this.
Pritchard Mar 29th 2007 7:13PM
I love douchebags who say, wow, if you don't like the game, don't play!
Who said suggesting they do something about the trash mobs inherently means you hate the game?
Rather, they love the game so much, they want to make it better. And Blizzard wants to hear how to make it better. Hence--forums. WE are who they are making this game FOR.
Sorry...not all of us roll over on our backs like you.
trankillity Mar 30th 2007 4:10AM
We're a small guild working through Karazhan and we're already feeling the respawn pinch. Our first night in there we took our time clearing trash on Midnight and had repops before we got to him which (of course) all added once we engaged.
I personally would like to see harder/larger trash pack pulls but with only the soft 6hr respawn.
Maedhras Mar 30th 2007 9:39AM
To Pritchard:
First, I have no idea what "rolling over on your back" means.
Second, the reason it'd be nice to stop hearing High-End Complaining is because Blizz sometimes has a nasty habit of putting way too much time in content that no one will ever see (Naxx was a perfectly designed raid, which makes me believe a lot of time and effort went into it, and the latest number I've seen is 5% of WoW players ever saw it). During that time, casual players got bored and canceled their accounts until BC came out.
This is due to the fact that High-End Complainers will bloat up the blizz forums (their main way to get feedback from the players) with issues that really, no one but they give a damn about. While the vocal minority is up in arms about pointless things, the big majority gets bored knowing it will never be able to see the cool stuff.
Personaly I am somewhere inbetween, having had my hardcore days and now taking a more casual approach. I can see how frustrating it is for casuals to know they will never access this content, and I now witness how tuning content to High-End Complainers is misled. I am seeing that vocal minorities are distracting the feedback we should be giving, and I try to voice the opinion of the casuals: stop tuning high-end for a handful of fanboys who will play anyway, make the game fun when a casual hits 70.
Pritchard, if you really want to make WoW better, then stop complaining, and learn what most of the players really want.
Burning Adrenaline Mar 30th 2007 9:47AM
@24 I can see your point, and I agree that they should listen more to the casual players. On the other hand, I don't see how reducing trash mobs that give elite guilds trouble, is going to do anything but help casual players. One day they might face dungeon trash inspired by the same philosophy in game design, and encounter similar problems.
You make a good point, but this issue is worth bringing up.
Retcon Mar 30th 2007 2:18PM
The Magtheridon trash is pretty stupid. Granted, it's three static packs and a patrol, but clearing it is going to take 20 minutes or so.
Then you have time for maybe three attempts on Magtheridon before all the trash has magically respawned.
What that means is that our guild (which is currently learning Matheridon) is constantly getting irritated. Each failure on the boss edges us closer and closer to having to clear more trash.
We don't even get reputation for this instance. At least in Kara, you get Violet Eye rep.
Maedhras Mar 30th 2007 3:50PM
Burning Adrenaline:
Whether or not there is too much trash or too short respawn timers is obsolete. My few Karazan tries have been interrupted by respawned trash and I did find it frustrating.
My beef with the so called "High-End" is that they are much more vocal then the big majority of players. The bleeding edge of content steam-rolling does not give you the right to complain. It means you should wait until everyone's there. Go write a UI, or find a job as a game tester if you think your opinion is worth something (it probably is!). If players will never get there because it's too hard/requires you to farm to succeed (a stupid concept imo), then really, no time or effort should be spent in fixing something for what, a thousand players? ten thousand? that's still short of 1% of the total player base.
Shiver Mar 31st 2007 2:42AM
this is simple, instances should never respawn EVER. It makes no sense from an RP perspective and this is a mmoRPg after all.
It makes zero sense where these mobs came from, why they are able to "un-die" or what the point of them respawning is. If you killed all the people in an area... they should stay dead. There is no good reason to do anything otherwise, other than make us all look for a game to come out in the near future that does not showcase such annoying traits. Pay attention blizzard... and learn.
Frogs Apr 1st 2007 9:47AM
I've only been in Karazhan, but I agree that the trash is a bit excessive. When my guild was first trying to down curator, we'd clear all the way from opera house (which is pretty long,) get in.. 3ish? attempts, and then the mobs would be back and we'd have to spend another 30 minutes or whatever clearing. And with shade of aran, respawns generally would mean we were done for the night. Sure, it slows down progression, but nobody likes it.