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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsHard Mode raiding is here to stay
by Matthew Rossi 
Feb 18th 2009 at 4:00PM
In a thread started by Lightsnight, who argues that hard modes in a dungeon are 'a stupid gimmick', Valnoth counters with what I think is a measured response (keeping in mind that I'm very sarcastic) - " Hard Modes are intended for people that want additional challenges and rewards. You might view them as a gimmick, but I assure you that hard modes will test the mettle of the most seasoned raiding guilds. The choice is yours, my friend. " This is a relief for me heading into Ulduar.
Now, I dislike the mechanics of the Sartharion with three drakes up fight (don't stand in this, run away from that, are you standing in that), but that doesn't mean that it's poorly designed, and I think it does exactly what Blizzard set out to do. It creates a means for anyone who can get 10 or 25 people together to experience raid content while simultaneously giving guilds that like challenging content a way to pursue that without making some content simply inaccessible. There was a lot of complaining in the past that superlative raids like Naxxramas 40 and Sunwell Plateau simply weren't accessible to the majority of raiders due to their difficulty. With hard modes, raids can choose to do this content at its most basic setting and get to experience the content, or they can opt for more difficulty and get better loot and bragging rights.
Honestly, I don't really see Lightsnight's problem here. But I am glad that Valnoth confirms that not only are hard modes not going anywhere, but that they will continue to provide some of the best loot in the game. Now all I need is for them to remember to put a 2h weapon that can be used with Titan's Grip on a hard mode boss next time around.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, News items, Raiding, Bosses, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
Jeryia Feb 18th 2009 5:15PM
I like the idea of the hard mode content, however I feel blizzard has taken it to far. As it stands the only boss that constitutes a challenge is Sarth + 2 or 3 drakes. That is one boss. Essentially one mechanic.
When you progress from looking at 2 to looking at 3 drakes, it's the same fight with a new thing to worry about. What I'm looking for through progression is to get a new boss fight, a new mechanic(new in terms of being different from the last boss in progression), and seeing visually, something different. With this system, I get none of those. Working toward killing a boss was motivated by seeing those three things. I have no motivation for the new content.
What's the point in the game when you have already completed all of the content?
Knid Feb 18th 2009 5:42PM
My opinion is that Ulduar should probably have the same feel that SSC/TK had when you entered and learned the bosses. By themselves they weren't that difficult and definitely some were harder than others. However, you knew that the encounter had some teeth which required some form of execution and balance.
The current incarnation of Naxx is very simple and often takes some severe screwups to wipe a raid. As part of a raiding guild that devotes very little time to raiding (we run 2 nights a week), I like the idea of spending several weeks to learning an instance. I'm not in a hurry to pound through the content. While I'd like to get the hard mode achievements, it's not a priority for me and I don't ever intend to be the best in the world at WoW.
Nadril Feb 18th 2009 5:27PM
For you guy's who only want the dungeon hard, well, only do the hard pulls. Don't even start on the "easy mode". However I still think that most of these raiders (even ones who are complaining about stuff being too easy) will do easy mode first so that they themselves have an easier time learning the fight. Of course, then said players will QQ about laziness or whatever they're doing.
Hard mode is the best way to move WoW forward. Even better Blizzard has stated that there will be an (optional) boss that will be a "hard mode" ONLY which gives these raiders something to brag about.
Also I have a feeling some of you are jumping to conclusions by thinking that all of the fights will act like Sarath 3D, by just not pulling trash. Perhaps for one boss there is a beam empowering him, and if you keep it on him then he gets all sort of new abilities. I assume that blizzard will do things such as that, not necessarily just make it so that you need to kill more stuff at once.
So really, it's too soon to be QQing about Ulduar. You don't know how the vehicle combat in the 1st boss is, you don't know how hard it will be (hard mode or not) and you don't even know all of the bosses yet. I know it sounds odd but some of the hardcore raiders could at least refrain from QQ until they've actually seen the content.
Oh and be ready to have the "OH NO CASUALS" clearing the same bosses as you. I don't know why some won't consider "hard mode" a challenge, or an acomplishment, considering that games have had difficulty settings for years and years now. You can't tell me that it's the same beating Contra on "easy" as it is "hard", or beating Doom and Doom II on "don't hurt me" as it is "Nightmare".
Hard Mode for these encounters is the Nightmare of raiding. Have fun.
Rage Feb 18th 2009 5:31PM
Hard work pays off, right??? Well with 3 drakes it does. I’m hoping that they will visit the idea of adding difficulty to existing 5-Mans and hopefully creating new ones.
I would love to enjoy doing 5-mans again. I shouldn’t say I don’t now cause they are still kind of fun but with gear have gotten really easy and repetitive. Making things worse is the fact you could spend your time grinding and make lots more money. Badge gear is a joke right now. Maybe they could add extra wings to current 5-mans with better loot or that drop lots of gold.
Wow I just got a great idea. A new daily five man gauntlet, it would require you to run a series of H 5-mans in a short period of time to unlock a random boss from one of the 5-mans that is enraged or with added difficulty. The gauntlet should change daily and the unlocked boss should be really hard and have great loot. This would revitalize 5-mans IMHO. However this maybe need to be broken up into 2 different things as it could be really hard to find 5 people to do 3 or 4 Heroics in a row and if someone had to leave then the other 4 people would be stuck. Maybe it could be if you complete dungeon x, y, z then you get extra badges/gold and then they add extra bosses to each dungeon for completion under a certain time. If 5-mans had been built around this sort of idea they could make it advantageous to have rouges with lock pick or to use different cc abilities to skip mobs instead of aoeing everything. CC is what made playing different classes really fun and interesting. Vehicles are a kewl twist to the game but bring back the magic of being a rogue, mage, hunter priest, druid etc…
Rage Feb 18th 2009 5:36PM
Wow, just thought of a great example of using class abilities. How many people have use a rogue and a druid to stealth past several rooms in Kara to the room right before chess then have a lock kill themself, druid rez's him on other side then you summon everyone over or have everyone get naked hunter md to the group and rez a priest or pally on the other side to rez everyone else. It was a great way to save 15/20 mins and I always loved skillfully stealthing past everything. I made things interesting by having some options. Thats what makes a good game great!
TheChao Feb 18th 2009 5:36PM
Almost anything in Wrath that is new can be considered a "Gimmick." PLEASE stop using the word.
Hard mode is not a "Gimmick," it makes SENSE. I doubt you have forgotten where the phrase comes from, such as FPSs or other games. If there was only one setting for the game, it immediately loses any replayability, and there will be those who say it is either too easy, or too hard.
You play it on regular to get used to the fight, to gear up, and to see content. Once you get into the groove of things, you turn up the difficulty to get the immediate reward of better loot, but also the satisfaction of defeating one of the most difficult encounters in the game. I think everyone can agree that you cant say you're badass at a game like Halo when youve only played it on the easiest setting. How dissappointed would you be if that was the only setting?
The difficulty of a raid shouldn't be gathering enough people, thus the 10/25 raid mentality. Once everyone has had the experience, the more Hardcore players can play the more Hardcore setting.
As said before, if Sartharion HAD to be done with 3 drakes up, very few raids would be succesful. People would complain, and we would be in the same place we were 3 years ago with old Naxx.
Oh, and 25 man does NOT mean harder than 10 man.
Stormsinger Feb 18th 2009 5:42PM
Hard modes do two things. First it allows blizz to release more diversity of encounters (or more experiences at least) without the weight of modeling, art and story. Each encounter can have 3-4 variations (10, 10 hard, 25 and 25 hard). They don't always take advantage of that fact of course (would have loved more changes between 10 and 25 in naxx). But they can offer Sunwell complexity/difficulty and Kara difficulty with the same resources.
The second thing these modes do is open the content to the smaller, friends guilds. Pre-WotLK if you wanted to even SEE Alar or Leo you needed 25 people. That's a lot of coordination for the small "group of friends" guilds. People that got to do the Illidan fight in TBC rightfully had bragging rights about it. With the hard modes and 10/25s you can split the base experience from the bragging rights. My (small) guild clears OS10 no drakes for example. Cool! Go us! Not exactly bragging rights material though. Harder core guilds clear OS25 3D. That's a lot more impressive, we get to see the same stuff, but their experience of it is a lot wilder. And they get much more bragging rights (titles, drakes, and 226 items being the manifestation of that).
This second thing still allows ranking of guilds without locking the low end guilds out altogether. There are the OS10 3D guilds and OS10 1D guilds. People that want to be in the top guilds on a server still know the ones they need to app to. At the same time my low end guild gets to see a lot of the content we would have been denied pre-WotLK (with just the guild, ignoring pugs and all).
High end guild have every right to complain though. From their perspective the stuff they worked wicked hard in TBC to get to see can now be seen by everyone one the server. They do lose a sense of exclusivity. I hope that Blizz will create a vicious curve for the hard modes in Uldaur. Ones where some encounter modes won't be beaten for months even if the instance is cleared the first week. People that want to put in a lot of effort and time should get a bigger reward. But as someone who isn't one of those I love that I can at least see the stuff even if I can't brag much about it.
Aldheim Feb 18th 2009 6:26PM
My only problem is that my guild is way too conservative about the hard modes. I know for a fact that we're good enough to attempt some things... Doing Sartharion with drakes up, for example... But the whole "raid Kara for easy badges" mindset screwed us up, I think, and the guild (or raid leaders) pretty much means we will never end up doing the hard modes because we already know the easy ones and nobody wants to try it the harder way...
...except for me... Sigh.
SaintStryfe Feb 18th 2009 6:40PM
I'd suggest looking for a new guild. Be gentle, be kind, but tell them you're looking for more. Since Sarth +3 is a one-night clear event, you don't need a hardcore guild, just one that's willing to gear for it
That said, I know that's not a full answer as there's a lot more to it then just your lust for lewtz.
Chamual Feb 18th 2009 8:13PM
I think that people have totally the wrong idea about what hardcore raiders want.
So many times have I heard (I could quote several from this thread alone) people saying that hardcore raiders want stuff that sets them out from others, that casuals or 'scrub' raiders shouldn't even be worthy of looking at.
It's not that hardcore raiders don't want others seeing the best content at all. It's that they, themselves, want innovative, fresh, challenging content to pit themselves against.
It has abosolutly nothing to do with the fact they are raiding stuff others 'aren't worthy' to raid, its 100% to do with wanting to see new exciting content themselves.
Sinthar Feb 19th 2009 6:55AM
Wanting to see new content is not exactly unique to Hard core raiders you know. I am fairly confident that that applies to 98% of all WOW players.
Im sorry you think that this is a misconception, but im my experience the so called hard core, usually are very disrespectful of anybody not upto their standard, very intolerant, and have an inflated ego based on their game abilities (your post oh the other hand was polite and respectful - hence my genuinely trying to show you how others think and react). Your experience may well vary from mine, but judging from posts and other peoples experiences in game, i think you have been very lucky and found some 'good' raiders.
But there are many HC raider who do want something unique and shiney to boost there epeen (and that could be quoted from this threads comments alone too). And yes that unfortunatly means that they want somewhere where only THEY can go/see/do. Personally i dont care a fig for epeen either(the same as you i guess). So im happy that everyone CAN see the content (we all pay for the oppertunity - glad they make it so everyone can at least see it even if they cant DO it). And personally i feel a bit of pity for the HC raiders who so badly need a boost to their epeen, mostly cos i think it hides the fact they are 'little' ppl in the real world needing epeen to stoke up their weak self esteme
DanH Feb 19th 2009 8:07AM
"Wanting to see new content is not exactly unique to Hard core raiders you know. I am fairly confident that that applies to 98% of all WOW players."
The problem is that there are two different definitions of "content" being used here.
"Content" in the sense of "shiny pixels to look at" is something everybody wants, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say Chamaul is talking about *gameplay* content, not new levels or new boss models.
Part of the problem here, I think, is that Blizzard doesn't seem to distinguish between the two (for example, they keep making it easier for people to solo old instances at 80 so that they can "experience the content").
Hardcore players want content that requires 25 people to act as a well-organized team, because that's the way they enjoy playing the game. By definition, anything that requires 25 people to genuinely work together cannot be accessible to pickups and randoms, and anything accessible to pickups and randoms cannot require 25 people to work together.
Rainly Feb 18th 2009 7:41PM
@ Clevins - #11
"Not a contradiction. Hard modes feel like a copout because it's NOT NEW CONTENT. Oops, caps... :)
Sartharion with drakes is harder than without... but it's still the same basic content. If they deliver enough content this isn't an issue, but saying "Go do that encounter you've already seen in a hard mode" isn't a good rejoinder to "there's damn little content."
The arguement may stand that they did not release "enough" raid content with WotLK; however, I do not think that Sarth with 1, 2 or 3 drakes is supposed to be considered a "different" raid. If you are hardcore - don't try it with 1 or 2 drakes - just start it with three and wipe till you get it. That is what you wanted right, just a "hard" raid? Not trying to be sarcastic, but it seems that guilds who want such a challenge should just start off with the highest lvl of difficulty.
Actually, I am really impressed with Blizz's solution to making raid content accessible to everyone. I have not compared the loot, but I hope that the loot from the "hard" modes is better enough to show off the accomplishment. It should be!
Clevins Feb 18th 2009 9:31PM
No, that's not what I want. What I want is *more content* and Sarth with drakes isn't that. I just want more content and what I fear is that Blizzard is going to do less content with more modes and I don't care about stroking myself and saying "I did it on hard mode!"
Thye just announced Blizzcon 2009. If they follow the Wrath model, the next expansion will be announced there and shipped a bit over a year later in fall 2010. Imagine if, in May of 2006 pretty much everyone who cared about raiding had cleared all of Kara, Gruul, Mag, SS and TK. That's the situation we're in if we only have Uldaur and Icecrown Citadel to go in this expansion. Without a fair amount of content Wrath will get stale pretty fast.
Basically, I'm fine with harder modes of raids as long as they don't become substitutes for content that's actually new (or if they provide new content within the same raid). If it's a zero sum thing - we can have hard modes or we can have more raid content - I'll take more content every time.
DanH Feb 19th 2009 7:59AM
On the one hand, I can see where you're coming from, on the other hand, I think there's only a finite amount you can ask people to hamstring themselves.
I, personally, love to do things the hard way. I prefer to 3-man instances than 5-man them. On the other hand, doing a boss the "hard way" frequently involves just using a less good strategy.
Blizzard's response to people saying raids are too easy basically involves saying "well make it harder for yourselves". I don't think everybody likes that solution.
I'm also not entirely sure that it's *possible* to do a raid the hard way first time, I don't know how these things are balanced but since raid progressions tend to rely on the gear from earlier in the progression, I'd guess that most people who downed Sartharion with three drakes did it using gear that was equivalent to or better than the gear you'd get from downing him with none.
Itanius Feb 18th 2009 10:02PM
I like it. You get 4 types of dungeon from the same instance: 10 man easy, 10 man hard, 25 man easy, and 25 man hard.
Aside from the aforementioned benefits of loot and complexity, it lets Blizzard put out more content in a more efficient manner, which is nothing but WIN for us, the players, in my opinion.
josh Feb 18th 2009 11:01PM
2 questions. 1) Why do all the people with such busy lifes even play. It would seem that you have more of a problem then the people that play all the time because they made the choice to do that while you are so busy but still force hours of a "game" into your life then bitch when it does not work out the way you wanted.
2) The other argument that makes me laugh is the gear argument. I raided in bc for a guild that cleared bt before sunwell came out then got to felmyst when a lot of people quit do to rl issues.It was kinda fun when i got zhar'doom and only three or four others had it on the server but after about 20 mins i could care less if people looked at me the reason I wanted it was because it was a lot better then what i had and it would help me kill the next boss to progress. I see all these people complain about the "hardcore" raiders but they need gear to kill a boss while most people want gear to stand in a city to look cool like the raiders but dont want to do anything to get the gear let alone use it for something because how could they with no time.
I quit after we cleared sarth 3 two weeks after we finally had 25 people turn 80 so that was around jan 2nd and it just seem slike blizz handed the reins of this game to people who only care about money which is great for them but bad for anyone with half a brain or anyone who like playing a game that requires more then hitting a and b buttons.
Falcom Feb 19th 2009 2:00PM
you want a game that requires more then just button mashing? Why are you even playing a video game? If you want something more involving then pushing buttons, video games aren't for you. Enjoy a free lifetime subscription to Kwitcherbichen Magazine. Its on the house. Until then, either enjoy the game you are playing, or if you dont enjoy it, dont play it. Simple.
Myria Feb 19th 2009 12:44AM
Hard mode? More like gimmick mode.
Kendrathe Feb 19th 2009 3:34AM
How come no matter what Blizzard does different now, it gets labeled a gimmick and not good enough?