Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Wrath's current raids and their difficulty
by Alex Ziebart 
Nov 18th 2008 at 11:00AM
Today's edition of The Queue is a little raid-centric with a heavy splash of opinion, just as a warning, starting with kevin's question...
There are currently only four raids in Wrath: Vault of Archavon, Naxx, The Obsidian Sanctum, and The Eye of Eternity. Later on Icecrown Citadel. Is that all? What other raids are to be include into Wrath?
Blizzard has laid out the basic framework of their next few content patches for us, so we know a little bit. Patch 3.1 will bring us Ulduar, a raid in Storm Peaks using the Titan motif. Patch 3.2 will contain a new raid instance, but Blizzard hasn't announced what it is. My money is this raid will take place beneath Azjol-Nerub/Ahn'kahet and focus on Yogg-Saron and the Faceless Ones. Patch 3.4 will, most likely, contain the Icecrown raid, and that will have brought us full circle on Wrath of the Lich King and prepare us for the next expansion. Sunwell Plateau was in 2.4, so it makes sense.
RMCEACHI said...
What's going on with Shadowmeld? Is it broken?
I have no idea what you mean, you're going to have to be a little more specific. Every Night Elf I asked about a Shadowmeld bug didn't know of one, and are really excited about the ability. A racial Vanish when you're out questing is pretty freaking awesome.
Omnishinzui said...
People have been saying Naxx is easier then Kara when it first came out. Can you or someone compare the two? Is it easy as kara after the 3.0.2 hit or is it just not like what Zul'aman was where you had to wipe about 10x before getting the entire raid to understand how to survive a boss fight (pre-3.0.2 patch)?
The best comparison I can come up with is that 10-man Naxxramas is a lot less like Karazhan and a lot more like UBRS, if you're old school enough to remember that place. It's not really a raid so much as a 10-man dungeon, if that makes any sense at all. The bosses have their gimmicks, but you hardly need finesse or team coordination to pull them off. You can blunder through it with a PUG, and you don't need to really gear for it at all. Are you level 80? You can kill Kel'thuzad with 9 level 80 friends.
I really think they're all a little too easy. I completely agree that the intro raids in The Burning Crusade were too hard in the beginning, but they swung around to the other extreme. That's not much better. If you could still zone into raid instances before top level like you used to be able to do, I have no doubt level 78s would be clearing the places. The Obsidian Sanctum is the first raid that will pose any challenge, and that will be with 3 drakes up, the 'hard mode' of the raid.
This is all made worse by the fact that... if you were a high-end raider before, you're probably really good at learning/following strategies and adapting to things going to hell. Raiding does hone your PvE skill, whether people like to admit it or not. If you're going from something like Black Temple or Sunwell... or even Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine, going into Naxxramas is a massive step backwards in difficulty. That's how it should be for new players, but it's jarring for everyone else. The new Naxxramas is perfect for people who have absolutely never stepped into a raid before in their entire lives, but I'm willing to bet that most people who plan to do Naxxramas have done at least a little raiding in The Burning Crusade and this content will be rendered trivial. A little challenge would have been nice. I don't think anybody expected it to be a step up from Sunwell Plateau, but we also didn't expect the new raids to be done in PUGs with greens. That's too much.
Players are going to run out of raid/dungeon content really, really fast early on, especially those people that play specifically for that. Patch 3.1 is going to need to arrive fairly quickly, and I hope Ulduar is more of a challenge.
Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 8)
Jane Gray Nov 20th 2008 11:26AM
Maybe, maybe not. If you only hit 60 two weeks ago you dont know what hard earned progression means.
The bickering, the fighting, the "who do we need to kick out of the guild to finally be able to clear vashj".
There's a lot to be said for teh relaxation of doing old content. And if you're on the right server, people pug a lot of it for the achievments or to complete their tier sets.
Alex Nov 18th 2008 11:26AM
I think it's great that these dungeons have been tuned down. If you want hard mode do a 3 drake up OS. Having done Gruul's, Mag, and SSC a few months after TBC released I can say at the time they were completely unfun. Going in and just getting your ass kicked over and over again gets old after the first 30 or so tries.
Wiping over and over again on Gruul and Hydross in their initial state and literally having only Kara to do wasn't much fun. It shouldn't take a year for most guilds to be able to do the first few instances in an expansion. More people should be able to play the game, not just the top 5%.
I don't have an issue with the very top tier dungeon being hard, but at least leave something for the rest of us to play too.
Shardrell Nov 18th 2008 11:51AM
I'm Shardy the pirate, and I approve of this post. :)
I enjoy a good challenge, but I also have a lot of friends who are fairly casual, and/or who prefer laid-back grouping and socializing to the kind of knife-edge white-knuckle raiding that you had to do in early BC. Heck, I'm pretty happy when I can relax a bit, myself. I never got past Hyjal in BC because I decided I didn't want to make the kind of time commitment to the game that the "serious" raiding groups wanted their members to make.
I'm really happy that I'll be able to raid with more of my friends, and not need to look to groups of "hard core raiders" just to see content. Since many of the Achievement challenges require you to have smaller numbers of people in your party anyway, I'll tackle those with my subset of "raider" friends while still being able to see the same instances with my full group of friends. I think overall it's a positive change.
Debesun Nov 18th 2008 11:25AM
Is it me or has Tribal/Elemental/Dragonscale specialisations for leather working seem to be lacking some love in WotLK?
Although the sets were rather lackluster (in comparison to frozen shadoweave and other Tailoring goodies) it did offer a little feeling of individual uniqueness among leatherworkers.
Dunwich Nov 18th 2008 12:51PM
It seems like that for most profession specialisations.
Look at Engineering. Gnomes get some fun goggles that have no practical use, Goblins get another explosive that's only really useful in battlegrounds with buildings that can be demolished.
That's it. Not even another teleporter.
Asswipe Johnson Nov 18th 2008 11:27AM
I'm one of the casual gamers for whom the early, "easy" raids are designed. WoW is literally the only computer/video game I play, and I assume that with as many subscribers as the game has, there are a lot of us. I was lucky enough to be part of a small guild of RL friends who were more hardcore than I am, and they held my hand through Kara to help turn me into a skilled raiding tank. I imagine that if I'd joined up with a guild of true gamers, it would have been more difficult to adapt to the challenges of raid coordination. Blizzard is right on in scaling back the difficulty of at least the early Wrath raids. They're expressed regret that casual gamers missed so much of the content and lore that was so carefully designed for TBC, and they want the casuals to see more of it this time around. I'm extremely please with their new philosophy. I understand why it's frustrating for hardcores, but the game is too popular for Blizzard to cater to hardcore needs alone. They simply have to be populists.
GrayElf Nov 18th 2008 7:32PM
Please consider, Asswipe...
If they "dumb things down" so much that EVERYONE, including the casuals, can finish it within 6 months, what will you do for the year and a half until the NEXT expansion? As you admit, you're in a Guild with more serious players - don't judge everything by your personal experiance/approach, but by the Guild as a whole.
Ok, some Guilds with nothing but casuals might take a year to get through this ridiculously easy stuff - but that'll still leave a year to the next expansion (since we know they can't manage their 1 xpac per year plan), time to bring up another toon and gear them up and clear all the raids, or work on achievements...if you can be bothered, that's more like what hardcore players do, not casuals.
I don't think anyone is opposed to the basic concept - but to how far Blizz went.
The content needs to be tuned to a level where it actually lasts until the next expansion pack, and nothing we've seen so far suggests that it'll last even half that time.
..... Nov 18th 2008 11:28AM
No surprise that blizzard manage to break that too. Making raids too easy will undoubtedly make even casual raiding guilds storm through everything with little to no effort thus making the game pretty useless until the following content patch. I'm really hoping they make the next set of raids more of a challenge.
krisby Nov 18th 2008 11:31AM
I love the quests so far. I am loving the entire feeling of the zones. But hearing how easy naxx 25man would be kinda puts a hamper on those feelings. I understand making 10 mans easy but making the 25mans easy too is kinda crazy. I worked hard to make it into BT/Hyjal pre patch and I hope they give us the option between hard and easy modes. I want a challenge.
Lastly I wonder if they will open up Kara 2.0 the bottom half of that place would be awesome to do in one of the patches. Especially if its made into a 25man!
PLEASE BLIZZARD give us a heroic mode 25mans if your going to have it so easy!
Aigarius Nov 18th 2008 11:35AM
Question: How a level 70-76 char can get to Icecrown Citadel (for Ebonweave creation)?
john z Nov 18th 2008 11:38AM
Being older (50s) and a bit slower with the fingers these days I'm all for easier raiding.
Killchrono Nov 18th 2008 11:42AM
This is the kind of precident I worried the patch 3.0.2. nerfs would set. I'm a bit disapointed to hear Naxx is easymode. I understand that it's the entry level raid, but if any scrub in level 78-80 greens can walk in and clear it, I'm going to be very vocal towards Blizz in future discussions about dungeon difficulty.
I agree that Kara was tuned too high for an 'entry level' raid. That said, I did enjoy the challenge it presented. Even if they don't have that kind of diffculty right off the bat with Wrath, I would like to see the difficulty ramp up as the dungeons get higher.
Also, I would like to see that apply to 10-man raids as well as the 25-mans. My guild currently doesn't have enough people to do 25-man raids, and while I'm sure 10-man will be fun, I would like us to earn our purples, not have them handed to us on a silver plate.
sannald Nov 18th 2008 11:44AM
I'm not a hard-core raider by any sense. Hell, my main is only getting close to 74 atm. My concern is getting the most bang for the buck tbh. While this expansion has a very 'epic' feel to it, it kinda seems like it doesn't have as much instanced content as TBC had.
To me it almost feels as though Wrath won't be around for very long before the next expansion is announced. That kinda makes me a sad panda. I always thought that the road leading to Arthas would be epic in length, the news about what 2? more raids before we get to Icecrown itself puts a damper on that. = /
AJAlkaline Nov 18th 2008 11:49AM
Wait, do we have confirmation that there will only be 6 raids in WotLK (not counting the Wintergrasp boss), as opposed to the 8 in TBC, or is that just speculation? I really don't want to see them skimp on the endgame content, I want to have something to do for the next two years :P.
Also, do we know for a fact that TwentyFifthNovember killed the black dragon boss with all the drakes up yet?
Liel Nov 18th 2008 11:51AM
Blizzard said they were changing the difficulty ramp ups for dungeons for this expansion. Raiding is more about getting people to show up and having the right class balance anyways. I remember the constant recruitment of raiders pre expansion because you were always loosing players to real life stuff.
I play the game for fun and my own self advancement of my character. I don't use the game to elevate my self esteem because I can see/do things others cannot.
ginka Nov 18th 2008 6:31PM
Statistically speaking, keeping raid content cutting-edge has not improved the play quality of the average player. So Blizzard did what all companies, particularly entertainment companies do -- they ran the numbers and decided to let their players play their game -- even the ones who aren't tactics-minded.
I enjoy challenge, and I enjoy working with a well-coordinated group of thinking people. Unfortunately, that's not most of the WoW community. And they pay for the game, too.
So in the end, high-stakes raiders might feel let down until new bleeding-edge comes out. In the meantime, clearing content will be possible for everyone, even if they aren't so smart.
While I miss having to work hard to clear content, the middle-aged working man in me is happy that I can log in, get down, clean up and get out in time for work.
maddmax Nov 18th 2008 11:57AM
People will just need to get used to the fact that you dont need to raid 5 or 6 hours per week m-f to make progress anymore, yes people will clear this stuff really fast if they go into the new raids with that BC raiding mentality. Its just a matter of easing back on progression really, there is plenty to do now, more than a years worth of things to do in my opinion. I am a pretty aggressive raiding, but the expansion has helped me step back and take my time and enjoy the ride for once, when I cam into BC, I just bum rushed to 70, now I think im gonna take my time. But maybe we will be surprised with the future patches.
GrayElf Nov 18th 2008 7:44PM
Let's see, a year's worth or raiding at ~3 hours a week?
For a serious raiding Guild, by your own estimation, that's only a few months worth of content. You do realise how stupid it is to have 2 years of development work finished in a few months don't you? And that's not by a world leading, or even server leading Guild...do the maths any way you like, finishing everything in a year @ 1 night a week works out with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, letting their accounts lapse long before the next xpac comes out because they've done everything.
For the really hardcore - done everything on 2-3 alts and sick to death of the whole thing.
Aigarius Nov 19th 2008 6:41AM
Good raiding guilds raid 3-4 times a week for 4+ hours each time.
Deadly. Off. Topic. Nov 18th 2008 12:03PM
I haven't had a chance to do raids yet, still at 74 atm, but the Nexus was pretty fun. Only wiped once on the last boss and that's because people were stupid and didn't move when they had the debuff on them. I had a group from my guild which means we had people who knew what they were doing for the most part.
I think Blizzard succeded in two things. The beauty of the expansion - it's breathtaking to explore and be a part of and the fun level. There's A LOT of fun happening here. I enjoy doing the quests and look forward to doing them on alts. I actually am enjoying myself to a fuller extent than I did in BC and Vanilla wow.
However, I am left with a nagging doubt that there needs to be more things players can work towards. I want a little more time sinks - NOT the kind that make you required to get something like a key (something central to quests etc) or whatnot, but for the more frivlous stuff like a pet or mount. I would like a time sink that shows, "I didn't need to do this, I just wanted to do it for the item" kind of thing.
I will go off on a tangent - they nerfed fishing. It's sad how fast you can level it now. Should they change it back? No, it's too late for that. Just wish this had been in effect 3 years ago.