Does server progression matter?
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 15th 2008 at 1:00PM
Obviously, the removal of that bit of the Sunwell Plateau isn't particularly devastating or crippling. Its inclusion could actually be crippling for the more underpopulated, raiding-light servers, holding the one or two raiding guilds back from experiencing content simply because they chose the wrong server to roll on. I can understand the removal, but my mind being the strange creature it is used this as fuel to wander to similar topics, my braincells discussing it amongst themselves.
How much does a server's progression matter? World progression is pretty universally remembered by the WoW community. Almost everyone knows world firsts, seconds and thirds. On the server level, does it matter any to you? Do you know who downed Illidan first on your server? Second? Fifth? What about Kael'thas? Will you remember who kills Kil'jaeden first?
My home server tracks all of this on our realm boards in a stickied progression thread. We have charts for Tier 4, 5 and 6 content, and we'll have one for the Sunwell. While this isn't particularly important information, it's neat to see who's where in progression, to watch raids work their way up from the ground level. As someone already hip-deep in Black Temple, it is actually very exciting to me when it's time to add another guild to the Tier 6 progression list. I love experiencing high end content, and I'm glad when someone else has a chance to see it, too.
Hm. Before I go off on too many tangents about this, do any of you play on servers that do the same? Can you name the first guild on your server to down Illidan?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Raiding, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Meingaree Mar 15th 2008 1:08PM
it definately matters for my guild. It certainly wouldn't be fair for one server to not have the same chance at a world first as another.
and yes, we know who killed illidan and kael first.
Nati Mar 15th 2008 1:23PM
Whaa? Almost everyone knows world firsts? I strongly doubt that. I don't know about them, don't care about them, and see no reason to care either. My own and my friends' progression is enough for me.
Aiur Mar 15th 2008 1:20PM
Here presents the problem. There was been as of late, a call for server-inclusive events such as the previous war effort. I personally think it's neat, to finally have the entire server participate in an event to make the game seem more fun.
But a balance must be struck. If the server-wide event ends up hindering a guild's ability to progress, then this is unacceptable. I do believe that if a guild is prevented from progressing simply because they rolled low-pop, then it is not fair at all.
Aside from the most obvious and controversial measures such as redistribution of players to low-pop servers, a possibility (but a technical feat!) would be to implement say, battlegroup wide progression. Rather than a realm being isolated in its progression, make progression a battlegroup wide event. This would even out the playing field and yet keep the feeling of everybody participating fun.
Granted, I, in my oblivious knowledge of Blizzard's technical infrastructure do not know the work involved in implementing this, but I'm simply suggesting what I believe is a suitable compromise.
Mingus Mar 15th 2008 1:22PM
I actually recall server progression over world progression. While world firsts are certainly bigger news, each realm is its own little community. While I might never get the chance to be in Death and Taxes or Nilium or other well known world first guilds, there's always the chance that I can be part of a server-first guild.
Ryanix-Arthas Mar 15th 2008 1:41PM
I think it's important. As someone who spent the first half of my WoW career as a casual, it's definitely something people talk about. Casuals take pride in knowing the progression of the top guilds and talking about it to others.
And now as a serious raider, you will find that you become friends with the other top raiding guilds. You end up PVP'ing together, PUG'ing together etc. It's almost like a class structure. The rich with the rich and the poor with the poor. It's not that people are snobby, you just tend to associate with people in your gear level because it maximizes performance. Anyway, tangent there. Being a raider, it's hard NOT to know who kills what and when.
So yeah, it's important.
Thander Mar 15th 2008 1:41PM
A lot of people see their server's progression as a way to compare it to others. While this works pretty well, players really need to decide what they want to be doing in the game and play on servers where they can do those things. If you're just playing with family, pretty much any server will do. If you're into serious raiding, you need a server with a history of good progression.
So for the average person, progression is not very important as long as they are happy with their guild.
cb Mar 15th 2008 2:20PM
I could care less about server progression, but I have friends in BT farming guilds and I don't see any need to frustrate raiders with lack of progression just because they happen to be playing on a low pop server.
Ollej Mar 15th 2008 4:07PM
I have no idea about server firsts on my server. The only progression that matters to me is my own, and even that doesn't matter too much. We only just started kara lately (started with a bang, taking down Attumen, Moroes, and Maiden in first weekend, then having problems with those same bosses since). Making progress throughout content is only fun for me if it's with friends. And I don't pay any attention to world or server progression, if I see something about it on this site or in general chat, I may throw a "gratz" out there, but basically it goes in one ear out the other.
Mathew Mar 15th 2008 2:32PM
A lot of guilds are using www.wwsscoreboard.com to compare them selves with eachother. Not every one can spend 10+ hours during raid opening days to finish content.
It's kind of like a huge damage meter, but for ranking guilds, and players across different raids.
Jordrah Mar 15th 2008 2:50PM
it was requiem on ravencrest i believe, and it was a little exciting but since im not doing it myself it was just a "thats cool" kinda thing
Shalkis Mar 15th 2008 2:54PM
On my server, kills per boss are listed as well as dates of first kills.
Some used the list as a yardstick for competition (We killed Hogger before you, nyah!), some as a guide on which guilds to poa.. recruit members from, and some as a record of server history. Many guilds have spearheaded the progression, only to crash and burn later.
Now that the "competition" is over for me, I rarely check the list anymore. However, it's nice to see other guilds progress towards the Black Temple. It's a great instance, and I do wish that more people could see it. Currently only around 160 players of 10000 can do so. I'd hate to see it end up like Naxxramas.
If you are about to transfer to a server in order to raid, checking out the progression thread is a good idea. In addition to showing the stage of progression, it also gives you a sense of the size of the raiding community. If there's only a handful of guilds listed and they're all in Black Temple, you might not want to transfer if you're wearing just 5-man/heroic blues and epics. Conversely, stagnated progression with only a few (or none) spikes in progression can be a sign of a server with a lot of infighting. If you don't like drama, transferring might not be a good option. Low-population servers are generally bad as well. If things don't work out with one guild, you might get "stranded" there, unable to do content that's interesting for you.
In my opinion, the most promising progression thread contains several guilds doing bleeding edge content, a sizable number doing mid-tier and a lot doing low-end raiding. That's usually a sign of a healthy community, and you're quite likely to find a nice guild that's on your level of progression.
TALKADIN Mar 15th 2008 3:13PM
We have a server for our realm known by almost everyone and the kills and progress is recorded very nice in a table , this one :
http://www.shadowsongeurope.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=65&Itemid=41
notsomuch Mar 15th 2008 3:18PM
Lightninghoof-US also has a very popular server progression thread/website, which tracks the progression of all the guilds on our realm. I think that tracking server progression is extremely important, because while the people on the server will rarely-if ever see a top 10 global guild, the guilds on the server still have competition, and they like a place to see where they stand amongst their peers.
the Lightninghoof Progression site is at: http://www.webrender.net/rankings3 , or you can just go to our realm website at http://www.lightninghoof.net :)
-Moonmaster
Rapap Mar 15th 2008 4:17PM
World firsts do not matter as much as they used to. Before Blizzard started putting the raid instances on the test servers it was a true race where everyone started on equal ground right when the servers came up. No one knew anything about any of the bosses and each one had to be learned. Now most world firsts go to the guilds who spend the time to learn the bosses before they are on the live realms. It just doesn't feel the same anymore to me.
I'm from Mal'Ganis and my guild and I were looking forward to the server competition to open up Sunwell. I'm pretty sure most of Mal'Ganis was but that probably has to do with us being ranked #1 on WowJutsu. ;p
http://www.wowjutsu.com/us/realm_ranked.html
I think Blizzard should have left the server competition in and just put a maximum time before things started opening automatically to help the less progressed servers.
Rapap Mar 15th 2008 4:21PM
I should have said Mal'Ganis is #1 US and tied for #4 worldwide.
Green Armadillo Mar 15th 2008 4:26PM
Server progression seems to be used somewhat as a proxy for community status - a server with six Illidan guilds and 40+ guilds with a 25-man boss kill is probably supporting more raiding than a server with one BT guild that hasn't beaten Illidan yet and only 5-10 total 25-man guilds. Beyond that, I suppose it doesn't matter much to anyone other than the people actually on that list.
crsh Mar 15th 2008 5:10PM
I happen to play on a realm that wouldn't be doing well with a server-wide event to unlock top-end raid content; while officially it's med-pop and thus should have plenty of progression-focused guilds, we have two BT guilds (one that recently started BT, the other has just killed Illidan for the first time 10 days ago or so).
Hardcore raiding population is dropping, it's been the TBC taboo that Blizzard refuses to acknowledge officially, other than by boosting casual-centric features. The AQ gate-like events would take too long on too many realms at this point; it'd just frustrate the players for whom unlocking content matters even more.
Shardistral Mar 15th 2008 5:28PM
I think to some extent your server progression has a big effect on you even if you aren't at the high end of it.
For instance, I know exactly who first killed Illidan on my server because no one has; in fact we only have one guild that's at Hyjal and less than a dozen in SSC.
This has a large effect on the economy (epic gems are almost non-existent, for instance) and quality of players available outside of raiding, for both Heroics and Arena; just clearing Kara is a major deal for a guild on my server, whereas on others I've heard pugging Kara is not uncommon.
It's thus very likely that if that one guild (since obviously no one else will be able to for a long time) wanted to go through Sunwell 25 they simply would not be able to with the requirement Blizzard had in mind, since they'd have to do all of the unlocking themselves.
I think a lot of people are underestimating how different server progression can be if they think it's not relevant.
Staggerlee Mar 15th 2008 5:29PM
None of it MATTERS.
This is why you Raider Freaks are named as Basement Dwellers and Unemployed Nolifes.
Argh.
Get a freakin life seriously.
Does it matter?
WTF?
Zghuk in vacation Mar 16th 2008 5:54AM
I am playing on a RP-PVP-server, so we have only a low/middle population and illidan isnt killed yet.
For me server progression is very important. With the server transfers you can always join the successful guilds, so is no real performance.
Real performance is when you transform your guild from a chaotic one with casuals to successfully raids! my guild is still in ssc/tk because of the many casuals and the guild leavers... is this bad?
may be, but it's still fun to raid with people you know for a long time. of course, the better third in our guild could join a real raiding guild and would have cleared BT and MH... But what should this mean?
Every encounter is playable and winable... so it depends only on the professionality of your guild and with casuals every success needs more time. simple rule.
And for what is the "I was first"-thing? Ok, for realm forum and wowwiki. But your items wont stay long in your inventory... next raid instance, next addon... nothing is absolute in the World of Warcraft, it's all relative...