Essence of the Immortals gone from the Test Server
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Mar 7th 2008 at 7:00PM
While we reported a while back on the use of the Essence of the Immortals as a method to unlock the Sunwell Plateau 25-man, progressive patching has continued its march, as Tigole explains to us in a recent forum thread.
The Essence of the Immortals itself is now gone, and instead, all gates will open automatically over time on each server. Tigole explains that although they like the idea of cross-server competition, and plan to implement in the future, The Essence of the Immortals concept wasn't working out as well as they'd hoped. Of course, servers can still compete to unlock the daily quests the fastest.
There's a few explanations as to why they could have decided against using the essences. The most obvious would be that on low population servers, or servers without a robust raiding population, there might be trouble getting the whole sunwell area unlocked before the release of WoTLK, which is honestly probably a legitimate concern. This will also allow raid groups who are interested in world firsts to compete on a bit more equal footing, without having to worry about whether their server has enough other raids going to help boost them to timely gate openings.
Of course, the other question is why they're leaving in the individual gates, and simply opening them over time. Why not just leave the whole dungeon open to whoever wants to take it? Is it because the gates are an important part of the storyline? Or is it an attempt to "trickle in" content so that raiders can have a steady stream of "new" content until WoTLK comes out?
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Events, Blizzard, News items, Instances, Quests, Raiding, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Charlie Mar 7th 2008 7:24PM
that stinks. I thought it was a really cool mechanic. Oh well.
And as for why, id place my money on option #2. Giving everyone something to chew on while waiting for WotLK should keep more subsrcribers around.
Of course does that mean that they are thinking that WotlK is going to take a long time? Giving the hardcore raiders something to do, without having to release a new patch? Thats what it hink. I think Wotlk will be about 1.5 patch cycles (4-5 months) away from 2.4, so they dont want to release a new patch, but they don't want to leave a void there.
Thats my estimation at least
Charlie Taylor Mar 7th 2008 7:53PM
Just wondering, since I started playing only three months before TBC came out, but when was nax released in relation to TBC?
BenMS Mar 7th 2008 7:57PM
About seven months prior to BC.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_1.11
Pingping Mar 7th 2008 8:08PM
People (super high end ultra nerds) had enough time to fully clear Naxx before burning crusade was released.
The major problem with Naxx and now the Sunwell is at the time no one knew how extensive the "gear reset" was going to be in burning crusade. At the time the general thinking of high end raiders was how much better off they would be leveling in the expansion with Teir 3. They figured everyone not decked out in purples would instantly die to the new level 61 hellboars.
Naxx raiders soon faced the dirty non-raiding masses in outlands with green and blue gear on par or in some cases better then gear they had slaved away for. The gear reset in burning crusade was very real.
Now we already have confirmation of another gear reset. That means the very first Frozen Boar you kill in your shiny new WOTLK expansion will drop loot better then all the stuff you have slaved away to get in Burning Crusade. I think a lot of raiders are going to run sunwell for awhile and end up quitting the game until WOTLK releases. I firmly believe this timed opening of sunwell is to help extend this for awhile at least. Racing to the end of sunwell would have just resulted in people quitting faster.
Another thing you will start to see is people dropping off the face of the earth as soon as an actual WOTLK release date is announced. You know that Teir 6 decked out tank your guild spent months on? He won't log in anymore, all your healers? They are gone too. This especially hurts casual guilds and guilds MONTHS BEHIND LOL! They tend to harbor many casual players who would rather wait for the gear reset then raid for obsolete gear.
I think blizzard is wise to this and will be holding off any official WOTLK date announcement as long as possible. Blizzard also faces some stiff competition with AOC and WAR releasing this year. Blizzard will try and posture their release date to either shutdown one of it's competitors OR mop up the unhappy players that switched to new games. With AOC releasing in 12 weeks and WAR coming at the very end of the year this could mean a late 08 release for WOTLK. If I were to put money on it I would say around November.
Zarzuur Mar 7th 2008 8:32PM
They have said early Wrath gear will only be better if you have T4 or less, though.
I guess end-TBC stuff may last all the way to 80?
Kesh Mar 7th 2008 8:37PM
Honestly, I think you hit the nail on the head here. The gear reset is probably going to draw raiders away from this and they may or may not come back after they've geared up on world drops.
nav Mar 7th 2008 9:06PM
Depends on the kind of raider. If you're a raider like me, you want the gear so you can see the content, not the content so you can get the gear. We'll keep going, and enjoy the upgrades along with everyone else.
matt Mar 8th 2008 2:43AM
Heck no dude. Lvl 60 nax gear was good all the way up to 70. It was on par with 70 blues and this was exactly what blizz originally promised. Of course the set bonuses were way better, and the hitpoints and AP were lower but the crit difference was big at first.
I very much disagree that you'll replace sunwell or BT gear with lvl 71 greens and blues, absolutely not. That would be an insult to everyone. We all know a gear reset will happen, but if it were on that level nobody would care to go to sunwell/BT in the first place. That is a really harsh gear reset you're thinking, and not what blizz has ever done (or stated that they intend to do for that matter).
theRaptor Mar 8th 2008 4:36AM
No, everyone knew what the gear reset in TBC was going to be like. But because so many guilds just stopped raiding in october/november 06, hardly anyone actually had T3.
And you are exaggerating the gear resets. Generally the Hellfire greens where only T1 at best, and (at lest for casters) you don't get enough to them to cover every slot. I had T1 last me to 68 simply because there was no quest reward replacement.
Also given how much easier it is to gear up in WoTLK the gear reset is not going to be that harsh. Lots of people (even in raiding guilds) where stuck in iLevel 40-50 blues/greens before the expansion because loot did not drop like candy. I raided ZG hardcore for several months before TBC and still had heaps of greens up until I ground to rank 9 right before the PVP patch. Now days nearly everyone is in T4 or equiv, so they will not need to gear people so quickly.
Most T6 will probably last you into raiding, with the dungeon sets maybe getting close to it in power. But if you have full T6 now you will be able to smash through levelling and start raiding while most people are running Utgarde for dungeon set 4
Necrous Mar 8th 2008 12:33AM
No offense to #4 Pingping, but I really feel sorry for anyone who has "slaved away" for any items they have in this game. Pre-BC I raided fairly hardcore on alliance (we had about half of naxx cleared). Did I feel cheated when BC released with it's gear reset? Not at all. I had a lot of fun raiding with friends and the epics I had (mostly T2/Aq40) lacked stamina compared to BC loots but were still very effective.
As a matter of fact, the gear reset was a blessing for me really. Shortly after release I decided to switch to horde with a group friends, walking away from a fully epic'ed out toon was easy thanks to BC gear being on par with what I was used to. When WoLK is nearing release will I continue to raid/pvp? Absolutely! I'll log on as usual and ask my friends and guildmates what they feel like doing, if they want to do a raid even though its going to be obsoleted in a week or two, count me in. If they want to just mess around in bg's and roll some premades, awesome sounds like fun. I don't really care what I'm doing in this game as long as it involves company I enjoy.
Carrie Mar 8th 2008 1:10PM
Obviously one of the reasons for this is to indeed "trickle in" content until Wrath comes out.
However, I think perhaps someone at Blizzard went back and looked over the AQ gate openings and rethought the whole thing.
On our server I could honestly see a certain high-end guild that transferred in *just* to be the "top" guild on the server playing a game that goes like this:
1. Get their best raiders together for a strenuous 3-day weekend of boss-killing.
2. Push almost non-stop for those 3 days, and each day thereafter, until they have the 80 essences saved up in their bank.
3. Screenshot the 80 essences, and post it on the world forum with a demand of X gold, or X amount of "resources" (think AQ war effort, but on high-end raiding consumables) before they will turn the essences in all at once and unlock the gates for the server.
On servers that don't have more than 1 or 2 guilds pushing BT content, a server "gate hostage" situation like this would have been commonplace had Blizz moved forward with the essence turn-in idea.
While full of good intentions to get the server's inhabitants working together, some things are just left open to far too much exploitation from folks with no sense of community and far too much "I am elite, bow to me and pay me for even gracing this server with my presence" ego.
Good_Idea Mar 9th 2008 3:35AM
I guess there's no reason to go back to Kael/Vashj now, without the cache.
StopPokingMe Mar 26th 2008 9:21PM
I like to play Tekken, I spent a lot of time learning all the moves, and how to anticipate attacks. Whenever a new game comes out I'm happy because there is new content, moves and dimensions to the game. This is no different. Yeah, YOU spent a lot of time playing a fun game with your buddies. You got all the best gear and now better gear comes out and your upset about it. I think you should be happy you don't have to run the same raids over and over again. Who wants to do that? This game is fun because it's challenging. Don't you want to be challenged again?!?! Of course a lot of different games are gonna come out and the community will dwindle but there is one thing for sure. Blizzard knows how to make sequels, ie. Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, Diablo, Diablo 2, Starcraft, and finally Starcraft 2. What makes you think World of Warcraft is going to be any different. Once they lose to many players, then low and behold World of Warcraft 2. What are you gonna do, cry that you have to start from level 1 again. NO! you're gonna level up so you can be at the top looking down just like you're doing right now. What it boils down too is, ARE YOU HAVING FUN IN THE GAME OR IS IT WORK TO YOU? IF YOU'RE HAVING FUN THEN WIPE THE SAND OUT OF YOUR WHO-WHO GET UP AND KEEP GOING! IF IT'S WORK THEN FIND A NEW JOB!