Breakfast topic: Are manually extended raid lockouts a good thing?
by Lesley Smith 
Jul 21st 2009 at 8:00AM
Hands up who remembers running Karazhan back in the days when it took a week to clear and you needed every one of those nights to do it?
Are you currently spending your evenings raiding in Ulduar? Is Ignis taking more time to down than you anticipated? I think we've all been there, you're in the zone but just can't kill that pesky raid boss before the raid timer goes ding and everything resets. I've once did an early morning raid (we're talking like 2am here) through Kara, powering through all the bosses, because the timer was due to set that morning and it was fun, even if we didn't quite clear Medivh's tower out. I think we stopped after Prince as none of us could keep our eyes open. But there's something heartbreaking about getting down to that final boss and calling it a day, knowing that you have to start all over again the following day. It's kind of soul destroying.
Patch 3.2 finally offers an answer in the form of a raid lockout extension. If you're mid-raid and haven't a hope in hell of finishing by the reset, you can manually extended it for another week. But I wonder, constant readers, are you going to use it? Will it motivate you to finish a raid or do you think it slow progression down?
Are you currently spending your evenings raiding in Ulduar? Is Ignis taking more time to down than you anticipated? I think we've all been there, you're in the zone but just can't kill that pesky raid boss before the raid timer goes ding and everything resets. I've once did an early morning raid (we're talking like 2am here) through Kara, powering through all the bosses, because the timer was due to set that morning and it was fun, even if we didn't quite clear Medivh's tower out. I think we stopped after Prince as none of us could keep our eyes open. But there's something heartbreaking about getting down to that final boss and calling it a day, knowing that you have to start all over again the following day. It's kind of soul destroying.
Patch 3.2 finally offers an answer in the form of a raid lockout extension. If you're mid-raid and haven't a hope in hell of finishing by the reset, you can manually extended it for another week. But I wonder, constant readers, are you going to use it? Will it motivate you to finish a raid or do you think it slow progression down?
Filed under: Patches, Blizzard, Breakfast Topics, Instances, Raiding, Bosses
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
andyjay220 Jul 21st 2009 8:06AM
This will definitely help since my guild can typically only raid 25 mans 2-3 nights a week. We continually get 3/4 keepers and cannot go further due to time constraints. This also leads to the raiders being very good at strats for early bosses and terrible for the later ones due to fighting them less frequently.
Josin Jul 21st 2009 8:17AM
This is precisely my thoughts on the matter.
Talwynn Jul 21st 2009 10:09AM
What happens to people who decide to PUG this and their original Raid Leader decides to extend the Raid Lockout? Does that mean the person who pug'd the raid instance is still saved to this ID, or does it reset on a per character basis?
If it saves the person who pug'd the raid, I see this being a huge problem... especially for people who are part of guild that take off-weeks. You pug during your off-week, and on your on-week, you go with your guild, but if the pug extended the raid lockout, then you are screwed.
Talwynn Jul 21st 2009 10:13AM
Ignore this comment. I found my answer later in the thread.
Clydtsdk-Rivendare Jul 21st 2009 8:06AM
More options is better.
Option to keep regular lockout or increase its length is therefore good.
Clockwork Jul 21st 2009 8:11AM
There is absolutely no downside to this. For those people who WANT to play every night and barrel through content at light-speed, there's still nothing stopping them. For those of us who don't want to or simply cannot afford the time to do so, there's now this option.
I'm looking forward to it quite a bit.
pfunkmort Jul 21st 2009 8:12AM
This is like..."if there's a cheesecake in the room...what do you do?"...if you don't eat it, fine, you don't need it. If you do, you can either really enjoy it, or you can get totally, morbidly obese. This is a great idea for forward looking guilds trying to clear new content, but has a very real-world danger of keeping guilds from gearing, as the loot pinatas of the first half of a raid are forgotten, for the zealous drive of some aspiring GM or RL. Sounds good (definitely making the whole thing a little more idiot-proof - which is a different discussion) for guilds that are just at a wall for time...but, also a real danger for groups that aren't getting stuff because they're undergeared, or underexperienced and just don't know it. Expect the next "stereotypical startup raiding guild name" to waste a ton of time with weeks of wipes on stuff they're not ready for, instead of keeping the fluidity and practice of raiding a full raid instance every week.
lilham Jul 21st 2009 8:51AM
Agree with you completely. Casual guilds with little raiding experience might keep extending the raid lockout for stuff they aren't ready for. The loot pinata of earlier bosses is there for a reason -- to gear your raiders up. Never underestimate how much gear can improve you. You have the choice of either 1) keep wiping on a boss and not getting new gear, or 2) re-clear the loot pinata and be better geared for your progression. Don't blame your short raid week. Are the bosses you've killed actually "on farm"? Do you actually 1 to 2 shot them week after week? How long do you think it takes to clear Ulduar if things are on farm?
Haqien Jul 21st 2009 9:19AM
@pfunkmort
Your point makes sense about the whole loot pinata thing and the lack of getting gear, but you might be missing something. Don't forget that all the heroic dungeons drop Emblem of Conquest, which players can use to get their Ulduar-25 equivalent gear from the vendor. And then you have the two dungeon dailies giving a total of 3 emblems of triumph, meaning people can get their Colliseum equivalent gear as well.
Personally, i'm looking forward to the lockout extension. My guild has cleared 3/4 keepers in 10-man and we got to mimiron last night, wiped a couple times trying to get used to him. And now we have to clear everything up to him again. Not so bad, I suppose, since we basically are at the point where we one shot each boss and only wipe when the game bugs (like the water spirit on Freya not dying during his charge, making the other two allies respawn. Or the big guy coming at the same time as the allies of nature) I'm just not relishing the fact that we have to do it all over again.
Mordockk Jul 21st 2009 9:32AM
@ haqiuen
interrupt his charge so he doesn't get too far away from melee and throw your raid all over the place!!!
Rob Jul 21st 2009 9:50AM
No, actually. You equate casual with unskilled. Casual means we don't take the game seriously, it doesn't mean we suck. It often means that we already beat the game in a previous expansion and cant go through the headache of raiding 3-4 nights a week.
So, for us, this is like cheesecake where you can eat it or not and its all win. There is no downside to this at all.
If you are in a guild that's not ready for that boss, then sometimes the gear is the issue, but alot of times its not, its about positioning and execution. I remember a guild that went from kara to illidan in a month or so, and they downed him with some people in blues. Its about skill and hard work, not gear, as there is no way to field 25 guys/gals to T6 in a month (or really just a few weeks) of trying. Yeah, your tank needs to be geared, and the healers need to have something, and the dps can not slouch, but SO MANY of the bosses are 'don't be stupid and do X' mechanics (ie KT); when you master that, the dps isn't critical.
dawnseven Jul 21st 2009 10:24AM
I don't think anybody should worry overmuch about guilds extending their lockout for stuff they aren't ready for, and wiping repeatedly rather than getting new gear. You never know what you're capable of until you try, and I can't imagine that people would actually wipe for weeks on end on one boss without facing the fact that they aren't ready or geared. Intelligent groups (and while I admit this doesn't encompass ALL, I'm an optimist and would like to believe that it does encompass MOST) will use the ability to extend to buy a little more time (and by that I generally mean a couple of days) and not as a bookmark. For any raid leaders considering the latter, I imagine all of the raiders jumping ship in short order once they get frustrated will wake them up.
Bronwyn Jul 21st 2009 12:54PM
I could not have put it better. I think it is a good thing for the most part, as long as the raid is not getting extended multiple weeks for one or two bosses you can *barely* down. Those little bits of extra better gear are really important for guilds that are just starting out on this stuff.
Retropally Jul 21st 2009 8:13AM
I choose to remember the times where you could roll through kara with less than 10 people in a night.
Good times :P
jtrack3d Jul 21st 2009 8:21AM
It is wonderful!
In a guild where all the players are family guys, you can't stay up late and you can't get on early. You have to limit the play time to only a few nights a week. Extending the lockout will let you stretch out a plan over a longer period that others can do in one night or a few nights in a single week. We still take 3 2-hour sessions to clear naxx and there just isn't always 3 a week. Now we'll make it.
Burntpepperoni Jul 21st 2009 8:26AM
I think this is great. As the above have stated there really are no down sides.
As for my 2 guilds (yeah I know too much too much) our progression in raids will be greatly helped by being able to push the lockout.
My "boy scout" guild is very earnest but has a extremely hard time with Grob, and have never downed Saph or KT because they only raid 2 nights a week.
My slightly more progression oriented, social guild only raids 2 nights a week as well, and this will help us to learn Freya and all her bullsh*t.
So being able to push this stuff back so as to concentrate on those harder bosses at the end when we probably don't need any more loot from the beginning bosses, will be spamtastic.
Marvelous Jul 21st 2009 8:27AM
We're just starting Naxx and could really use the extra week to get through it. I'm sure the same will apply to Ulduar if we get to see that as well.
Cheese Rations Jul 21st 2009 8:27AM
I think that this is a great change. My guild isn't doing badly in Ulduar but there's only certain bosses that we can down during our lockout, and that's what we do just week to week. It'd be nice to have some more time to at least *try* to get some other bosses down, and 3.2 will do this for us.
Tom Jul 21st 2009 8:47AM
Same here, we get to Vezaxx, usually on our second raid night.
We try a couple of times on him, but the raid is coming to an end for that night by then.
We never quite find time for the third night for a concerted effort on Vezaxx. So inevitably as we get further and further into the instance our progression gets slower and slower. Not solely because the bosses are harder, but rather because the chance of us getting there and having the time to learn the fight goes down.
Good change.
Isax Jul 21st 2009 8:36AM
I know it's a slow news day, but discussing a feature that was discovered 22 days ago does seem a bit like scraping the barrel.
Ironically you link to 3 other articles your site has written on the topic. So a complete rehash.
It's a good feature that has been implemented in a way that can only benefit the player base. You know it. We know it and most importantly your 3 other articles on this subject also have come to the same conclusion (once full details of implementation were known). Now please go write an original article.