Doing away with raid lockouts
by Mike Schramm 
Sep 24th 2007 at 6:00PM
Over on the Subcreation forums, Alcaras calls for the death of raid lockouts in a well-written plea to the Blizzard devs. He makes some really strong points-- he calls raid lockouts (or raid cooldowns, as I usually call them) just fake barriers to keep players playing, and lampoons Blizzard for keeping people from playing together the way they want to. Keeping players confined to just one raid per week helps contribute to "the Karazhan Mistake"-- guilds are split, whether they like it or not, and gaps are created between the folks who can raid one night and the folks who can't.The point of raid lockouts is simply to keep raid farming from happening-- guilds could farm Gruul over and over again, or run into Serpentshrine, down Hydross, and just keep it up for the whole afternoon, picking up Epic after Epic. But as Alcaras points out, guilds already farm-- the 5mans (including Heroics) are already farmable, and no on is arguing that Heroic gear is too easy to get. Plus, things are getting pretty silly-- some groups are running three or four Karazhan groups weekly. How much more would they really run it if lockouts were removed?
Of course, eventually, Alcaras will get his wish. Blizzard has a habit of eventually tuning down and opening up the lower dungeons-- that's what happened in UBRS (originally a 15 man dungeon), and Scholomance (originally a 10 man dungeon). Sure, it likely won't happen anytime too soon, but eventually, Karazhan is going to be nerfed, and the lockdown removed. But I tend to agree with Alcaras, at least for the first few high end raids-- the only real consequence of opening up the lockdowns is that more players would get to experience raiding content more often, and in my mind, that's a good thing.
[ via Tobold ]
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Instances, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dave Sep 24th 2007 6:12PM
This has to be the most ignorant thing I've ever read.
Blizzard has raid timers so you're stuck farming the content for a mathematically longer period of time than would be necessary if you could hop in a raid with 5 different guilds 5 days out of the week if you were so inclined. The timers exist AS roadblocks to progress ON PURPOSE because you're paying by the month. Blizzard has absolutely no incentive to remove the progress points that keep you in the game. The old game perhaps was not designed as specifically and rigid as the game right now is designed. Old world stuff was kinda thrown in there without any future planning, tiers or anything like that.
There's no precedence to having Epic loot go off a timer. ZG would be off a timer by now if that were the case, but it's not so why on earth would Kara ever go off its timer? (realistically a 10-man party can clear ZG fully in an hour or so and even though almost all the loot is entirely worthless, it remains on a timer... because there are purple loots that drop from each boss).
Blizzard intends for you to spend a certain amount of time on average farming an instance. otherwise every player would get a token from each boss and everyone would gear up simultaneously. Loot drops could be weighted in favor of people who don't have their drops if they wanted. There are all sorts of ways that Blizzard COULD increase the speed at which successful guilds progress, but they have absolutely no financial incentive to do that. They're making you farm kara for a month to gear everyone up, in order to make you take another month to farm the next raid, etc etc.
It's 'working as intended'. The fact that most guilds are unsuccessful only works in Blizzards favor since most of them will also keep plugging away at the system.
What's next, people bitching that it takes 3 months to get a full set of Arena gear?
ericcst Sep 24th 2007 6:22PM
I would only like to note that scholo and UBRS were actually made more difficult by decreasing the group sizes.
It was for the better though. Scholo, LBRS, and UBRS were just a zerg fest. Imagine doing Karazhan with 20 people. That's what the old instances were like before that change.
Argent Sep 24th 2007 6:24PM
scholo was always a 5 man zone (in theory.)
UBRS was basically a 40 man raid zone at first, but was doable with 15. the raid caps came in a bit later and both strath and scholo were more properly tuned (or nerfed) to be 5 man zones.
old school scholo in a 5 man was a protracted affair (to say the least). i remember a 5 hour runs to gandling...
Razhlok Sep 24th 2007 6:41PM
Wow nothing beat revisionist history. Ummm... Scholo/Strat "originally 10 mans?" Uh... no originally you could enter any of these dungeons with up to 40. But, they were tuned for 5 man. But, people went in with 10 to make them easy. If they were not tuned for 5 man then please tell me why every quest inside Strat and Scholo could only be completed by a 5 man group?
As far as "lock outs": In addition to being a lock out it also serves as a save mechanism. Kind of hard to go through all of Karazhan in one day when you are first starting out.
The biggest mistake was not having seperate progression paths. There should be a progression path for 10-mans that is somewhat seperate from the progression path for 25-mans. But, they made it so you HAD to run Karazhan if you wanted to run SSC. They also made it so you HAD to run heroics if you wanted to run TK. Lifting the attunements for SSC/TK was a step in the right direction. But, Karazhan level gear is still basically a requirement if you wish to have any success in SSC/TK. They made Karazhan the MC of TBC. It looks like 25-man Naxx will be the MC of WotLK, which should be a step in the right direction.
rick gregory Sep 24th 2007 7:14PM
Of course, if there were no raid timers, people would farm them faster... and then bitch that there's nothing to do.
I wish you could move between raid IDs within a guild so that, if my group is short a dps due to a last minute drop, someone from the other group could come in an help us out. But I can see why that's hard, so meh.
ZA will help - we'll have two 10 mans which will mean that every Kara raid can raid ZA too... mmm more gear. Now if there's a MH sword upgrade for my rogue in there...
Mirrabbo Sep 24th 2007 7:36PM
I'd rather live in my happy bunnies world and think that the week-long timer is to allow the less "uber" groups of people to clear the instances over the course of a week, and not because it's engineered
to get more monies.
Nadiar Sep 24th 2007 8:17PM
They need to remove the raid timer's, and tie them instead to Boss's. For example, you could right click your Portrait Icon in Karazhan, and choose "Looting->Disabled" which would make you ineligible for any epic drops just as if you weren't even there. If you have Looting->Enabled, if you are present for a boss kill, you are tagged for that boss for the exact same length of time you are currently flagged. You can not loot any items from that boss until the timer is reset.
In General, your RaidID would remain the same, its just that you would be able to reset it at will and later rejoin the same RaidID.
Pros:
*If you're doing multiple runs, but are short on required classes, you can just stagger the runs and get everyone through.
*If you've done your guild run, and a friend asks you to help, you can still run along.
Cons:
*BoP Zone Drops could be farmed easier. (Although this is still the case if anyone had the patience for it)
*Faction Gains: Groups could get together and clear entrance mobs for reputation in zones like KZ.
*If you're able to do 2-3 KZ runs per week, you could save your
*It allows end-game guilds to sell rapid KZ runs. Say 3 people per run, you three get all of the loot you can use.
Personally I don't think the Con's are detrimental enough to outweigh the Pro's.
Remi Sep 24th 2007 9:08PM
I thought heroics have a 24-hour cooldown??
Razhlok Sep 24th 2007 9:18PM
@8 they do have a daily reset. Otherwise you'd have groups who farmed heroic underbog for 3 hours at a time and get all their badges in less than a week.
Dean Sep 25th 2007 2:16PM
They'll never remove the lockout on Kara for the simple reason that it's too big, and the fights are just too complex. While it seems initially comparable to UBRS, it really isn't. It's about twice the size (12 boss events rather than 7, and much more trash) which means that doing it one go would be extremely difficult for most guilds. Sure, there's stories of guilds in full T5 burning through it in 2-3 hours, but it takes a long time to get there. It's not just a matter of gear either, but the fights are so much more complicated than in UBRS. Almost every UBRS fight was tank and spank, with a bit of kiting for Drakki. There's not one fight like that in Kara, outside the animal bosses. And fights like Moroes, Netherspite and Aran need a degree of co-ordination that requires a bit of practice.
You mention that a removal of the lockout would also come hand-in-hand with a nerf of the dungeon, but Kara would need to be nerfed so much you'd take all the fun out it if you were to make it do-able by the average guild in one night. The fights are just too complex it puts it in a whole different ballpark to UBRS.
Caleb Archon Sep 26th 2007 4:24AM
UBRS was never 40 man. Why do people keep saying that? It had a raid cap of 15 from launch.
Iain Sep 25th 2007 10:16AM
One point, if everyone can enter any Kara raid at any point how are they going to know which doors are opened, what boss you've reached, etc ? Are they going to tie it to raid leader ?
It's all very well proposing that people should be able to move between raid groups but from a programmatical perspective they need some way to work out what boss you've reached.
The idea about turning loot enable on and off isn't a bad idea but if you remove raid ID you need some way of working out how far you've progressed and therefore which door/boss you can tackle at a given time.
Burkkake Sep 25th 2007 10:30AM
I remember the one time I disagreed with an author on WOW and all the fanbois got on my case for being derogatory. Good luck with these posts above.
Anyway, this is what I have brought up with my guild but have chosen not to take the time to present to Blizzard.
For Karazhan (and maybe SSC and beyond, but I dont know cause I haven't gotten there yet) the week raid ID reset is fine. However, a little tweek would probably solve much of the gripe.
The raid ID should ALSO RESET when KARAZHAN IS FULLY CLEARED. Unless you are a really hardcore guild its still going to take 2-3 days of 4 hour raids to clear Karahzan, especially if you are taking people with you who need the gear. If you manage to get through the instance in 2 days then it should reset on the overnight timer for the next day. The Tuesday reset should a be a hard day always. So if you clear the instance on Tuesday and Wednesday and part of Thursday the raid ID would reset for Friday. Then you can go again on the weekend once more.
Clearing should include every boss including Nightbane and the trash boss. I think if you can do all this in 3 days then there is nothing wrong with going again.
My guild has recently lost members because we just have not been able to gear up enough of our 25 man team to have the DPS to kill Gruul. We have the number of players required, but its taking months to get them all gear. In turn the game is starting to suck for our most hardcore who love our guild, dont want to leave, and don't want to do Kara anymore. If we had 25 guys be able to get the gear a little easier I do not think it would make it any easier for us to then learn and kill Gruul, Magtheridon, The Eye and Serpentshrine Cavern. It would just make it possible for us to actually run them with chance of success.
The saddest part is that I know Blizzard is losing players on my server because they don't want to leave the guild they love, but they really want to progress. Eventually its going to cost them and I think Kara is a huge part of the hurdle. Theres nothing better than trying to get 2 or 3 Kara IDs going and then not being able to run any of em later in the week because too many people are locked to different raid IDs. This has happened to us too many times. The only thing worse than having to wait 4 days for the instance to reset is to not be able to shuffle players between IDs and then having neither group get past Curator because you are short a healer a tank or a warlock.
Maybe a more agressive player would like to present the KARA RESET ON FULL CLEAR idea to Blizzard. I don't care about credit. If you can get something changed with it then you did the work and we all reap the reward.
John Sep 25th 2007 1:26PM
Wow, this might take the cake for the worst post on wowinsider ever. What a complete waste of space from a nub casual player.
Argent Oct 2nd 2007 10:42AM
sigh.
there weren't ANY caps in the game upon launch.
you could take 40 people and have a zergathon in deadmines if you really wanted.
as for UBRS, a quick consultation with my guilds dkp site shows that in early '05, when we were busy running that infernal place 2-3x a night for onyxia keys, the lowest recorded attendance was 16, the highest 31.