The marathon raid day?
by Allison Robert 
Sep 22nd 2008 at 8:00PM
A friend and I were idly wondering about the possibility of tackling all Burning Crusade raid content the way you'd watch the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy on a rainy weekend: doing it all without stopping, intent on a glorious finish. Nobody's arguing that the point of such a marathon is to have fun every second while you're doing it; I'd say this is the classic undertaking where it really is about the destination and not so much the journey. But let's say you had an enterprising bunch of raiders sitting around bored on a weekend and your choices were either raiding Tarren Mill again or trying something adventurous. Or if you had Wrath coming up the next week and you wanted to conduct a triumphal tour of the content your guild had conquered, stopping only to relish the wholesale slaughter of bosses who'd given you so much trouble (here's looking at you, Gurtogg). Would it be possible to cut a swathe of destruction across the BC raiding landscape all within the space of a day?Assuming a bunch of experienced raiders, we came up with the following figures:
Karazhan: 2-3 hours
Gruul's Lair: 1 hour
Magtheridon: 45 minutes
Serpentshrine Cavern: 3-4 hours
Tempest Keep: 3 hours
Zul'Aman: 1 1/2 hours
Mount Hyjal: 2 1/2 hours
Black Temple: 3-4 hours
Sunwell Plateau: 4-5 hours
On the low end, that's 20 hours and 45 minutes. On the high end, it's 25 hours (and I have to pause here for a moment's respect over just how much raid content Blizzard programmed for BC). If you lopped Kara and ZA off the marathon in the interest of doing only 25-man content, an experienced (albeit insane) raid that stomped each site and methodically proceeded to the next with no wipes along the way (probably not likely in Sunwell) could probably wreck BC raid content in maybe 18 hours start to finish (giving them a little extra time for travel and bathroom breaks). Has anyone been crazy enough to try this? Should anyone be crazy enough to try this?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Expansions, Raiding, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Eternalpayn Sep 22nd 2008 8:05PM
18 hours... We could be like FF Online players.
Eternalpayn Sep 22nd 2008 8:06PM
Also, gruuls doesn't take an hour if you can clear sunwell...
Taytayflan Sep 22nd 2008 8:09PM
Meh, I'd rather do it in LvL 80 epics, for nostalgia's sake.
Dvl Sep 22nd 2008 8:16PM
If you can do sunwell in less than 5 hours, Gruul will take you less than 10-15 minutes, ZA 30-40 minutes, Karazhan about an hour, Magtheridon 10-15 minutes, Hyjal 1.5 to 2 hours.
Sean Riley Sep 22nd 2008 8:16PM
Y'know, if anyone DOES do it, and has proof, Blizzard should introduce a title and feat of strength just for them.
Manatank Sep 22nd 2008 8:27PM
I think you'd find that a guild that can clear Sunwell would finish the other raids quite a bit faster if they really tried.
VSUReaper Sep 23rd 2008 1:34AM
As epic as it would be, and no doubt, the DPS/Heals would be up to it, I think that some tanks might have trouble producing the rage/mana for it all, refering mostly to the T4 content. I know that when I am running kara, I have to swap some of my gear around for pure DPS gear because if not, then I get rage starved and screw up.
Gotta remember: you can only go as fast as your tanks. If they are oom on every pull, or struggling to stay mad, then they are going to go slower.
Manatank Sep 23rd 2008 3:04AM
My guild runs kara farming with a bear in cat gear and we don't really ever have to stop. The gear > content issue is easily overcome for all flavors of tanks by replacing a few pieces with DPS gear.
BenMS Sep 23rd 2008 6:14AM
As they say in the classics. Man up, and tank pants-less!
Evangelin Sep 22nd 2008 8:28PM
Yeah, some of those estimates are high if you consider a Sunwell-geared group.
Consider ZA. 1 1/2 hours? Really? ZA was cleared by Nihlium in 26 minutes. Not just a bear mount. Cleared. Kara? 3 hours? 1, maybe 2.
Gruuls? 1 hour? I think 20 minutes is much more reasonable. So on, so on.
Gaelen Sep 22nd 2008 9:01PM
My guild used to do all-day raiding on Saturdays back in vanilla WoW, full ZG runs followed by MC or BWL. It took a lot longer that it should have. Our guild was not good.
dean Sep 22nd 2008 9:22PM
That post really added no value to the context of this article. Thankyou.
Eternalpayn Sep 22nd 2008 10:07PM
Same to you, Dean!
Wulf Sep 22nd 2008 9:20PM
Hmmm, me and some friends are planning to do every Heroic Dungeon in one day, but every raid.... that would truly be a worthy feat!
Trig Sep 22nd 2008 10:31PM
Every heroic would take longer then every raid
hoviboy Sep 22nd 2008 11:47PM
then != than
Debricashi Sep 23rd 2008 3:41PM
I have a friend whose guild is on the last boss in Sunwell. Back when they were starting Black Temple (i.e., right after it came out), he and some of his guildies used to run every heroic every day. It still left him enough time to farm so that when they raided he could bring in the several hundred g of consumables required for high-end progression raiding.
finnith Sep 22nd 2008 10:23PM
One would be in the same if not worse state as those FF players after completing this.
Desanduin Sep 22nd 2008 11:24PM
I really think this should be done! Not only do I believe it can be, but it must ;). Actually, such guilds as SK Gaming should really consider this, since they have taken down Sunwell.
It would be an excellent way to end the first expansion to this awesome game of WoW.
Carbon Sep 22nd 2008 11:45PM
My friend tanked all the heroic instances (sans MGT) in one sitting. I think it took like... 16 hours? I only healed for about a third of them.
He couldn't play WoW for like 3 days afterwords. IT was like an OD.