Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsIcecrown raid access progression
by Adam Holisky 
Nov 18th 2009 at 12:25PM
- Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live.
- The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. "Several weeks" until the next encounters become available.
- Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. The same goes for 25 mans. This means no heroic Icecrown until after the Lich King is defeated, which will apparently be, at the earliest, in a couple of months.
- The four most difficult bosses have a limited number of attempts on them each week. Once those attempts are gone, you have to wait another week to try again.
- There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).
- In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available.
- Over time, after all bosses are defeated, players will begin to get a buff, making defeating bosses easier.
The full statement after the break.
The full statement from Daelo:
Icecrown Citadel testing has been progressing very well over the last few weeks, and this has been a huge help to the encounter design team. I want to thank everyone who has logged onto the PTR and tried the encounters there.
As we're now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, I wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point I can't give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I'll update the community so they can plan appropriately.
The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. Progress beyond that point will be prevented for several weeks. Then the Plagueworks will open with Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide becoming available. After another period of time, the Crimson Hall will open and you can then fight the Blood Princes and Blood-Queen Lana'thel. The final Frostwing Halls unlock then occurs after that, making Valithria Dreamwalker, Sindragosa, and the Lich King available. We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace.
There are other elements that gate access along the way. Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. Similarly, players must defeat the Lich King in a 25 player raid before they can attempt a Heroic 25 player encounter. So players must master every normal difficulty encounter in Icecrown Citadel before attempting Heroic difficulty.
The Lich King may not be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, and Sindragosa are defeated. Furthermore, the Heroic difficulty of The Lich King encounter may not be attempted in any week unless the three aforementioned encounters have been defeated in Heroic difficulty that week.
The Ashen Verdict provides reinforcements and material for players to assault Icecrown Citadel, but this support is not endless. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week to defeat the four most difficult encounters in Icecrown Citadel: Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. As these boss encounters are unlocked, the number of attempts available per week will increase. The initial number of attempts provided for defeating Professor Putricide is only five. When Blood-Queen Lana'thel unlocks, the amount of total attempts remaining will increase to 10. Then when Sindragosa and the Lich King unlock, 15 total attempts will be available to defeat all four bosses. After a raid has exhausted their attempts for the week, the Ashen Verdict must withdraw their support and the four most difficult bosses all despawn and become unavailable for the week. The limited attempt system is a feature of both Normal and Heroic difficulty.
There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).
In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell's effect if they so wish.
Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.Filed under: Patches, News items, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 6 of 9)
jhoover Nov 18th 2009 1:42PM
@A Slave Obeys: So, if I get what you are telling me is that because a guild chooses to spend weeks on the PTR, you know, unreleased content, that means they DESERVE to be able to finish the content weeks to months before us normal folk, right?
And I'm glad that you have figured out how long it takes *any* casual guild to finish off content. I'm sure if you turn over your data to Blizzard so they know, it'll make this tuning process go so much easier now they know it'll only take a month to finish Yogg.
And yeah, just because they are slowing down how fast the content is release is showing how much they are ignoring their playerbase. I mean, if you can't clear it in a week, what's the use of doing it, right?
Of course only guilds like Ensidia should have the chance to have "humbling challenges" on the first day. The rest of us? We deserve to be in our easymode content not bothering the hardcore people, after all, we don't count, right?
And it's amazing that you compare a PvP content, which, by definition is competative, to PvE content which, if you don't *cooperate* with 9-24 other people you just can't do it. I guess, not being a hardcore raider I just don't get to understand that thinking, right?
Wolftech Nov 18th 2009 2:56PM
@ A Slave Obeys -
I have to disagree with your poorly thought out points. First of all you are emphasising the wrong word. The word you should have emphasised is game. This is a game. Period. Second, the other thing is that this is a game we pay for. This is a business decision. A good one at that. It slows down the progress of those that spent time on the PTRs not for the reason of testing the content, but to go as a guild to learn the encounters beforehand simply for epeen purposes of trying for the world or server first. If that is how they wish to spend their time, then that is their right. However, what is NOT their right is the right to dictate to the other 95% of Blizzards paying customers. To quote Spock, the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few... or the one.
And as to your comments about trade chat. While I agree that it is normally a vial sewer of those at the low end of the gene pool, I happened to be in a city when one of my servers top guilds happened to get a server first major achievement. While there were some boneheads, there were also lots of grats and cheers (not to mention alot of people sent whispers to the guild members as well). Now I don't know what server you play on, but Proudmoore has a better class of folks than that.
Shrike Nov 18th 2009 6:38PM
@A Slave Obeys:
I actually pity you, that you think WoW is a competitive game. At least on the servers I enjoy, when someone on the server accomplishes something, then YES, there ARE a large number of people congratulating them for their accomplishments, and when possible, helping them.
Besides, with your claim that WoW is competitive, you completely hamstring any argument that other people's gameplay should not affect yours, by voluntarily allowing other people's gameplay to affect yours. However, other people are not as interested as you in allowing YOUR gameplay to affect theirs, so they downrank you here and appreciate the more structured, fair and complete gating system Blizzard is doing in ICC (as opposed to the artificial, clunky and incomplete version they used for SWP).
Zanathos Nov 18th 2009 7:02PM
There is a competitive Meta-game amongst the top guild, but that doesn't mean wow is a competitive game. It might be one to YOU, but in reality raiding competition is a game outside the game, you get very little inside the game benefit for killing so and so first. The benefit is largely prestige, which isn't regulated by game mechanics.
As WoW is an MMO, it supposes many types of games. You can raid and not be competitive. You can be competitive without raiding (arenas, particularly). You can opt out of both of those entirely and play lots of alts, go after wierd achievements, or never level and just RP. To declare WoW is a particular type of game is blindness.
jealouspirate Nov 18th 2009 1:10PM
I like this system because it discourages spending too much time raiding.
I think we'll be seeing much more of this style approach from now on. If you remember Blizzon, it seemed like their new favorite phrase was "Gated, not grindy".
From the perspective of my personal life schedule, I much prefer shorter play sessions on a regular basis compared to heavy progression schedules, which seems to be what their new philosophy is catering to.
Charlie Nov 18th 2009 1:16PM
[[TL;DR: Although this seems like a blatant ploy to maintain subscribers through the "lame duck" lull of pre-cataclysm (which, well it is.), this is actually a good thing for the raiding community as a whole.]]
We'll this won't be controversial or anything. XD
I'm torn on whether this is a good thing or not. Parts of it scream "We need to keep people from beating Icecrown and canceling until Cataclysm". While others seem to be legitimate, and albeit helpful ways to restrict access.
The staged unlocking of the instance I have no problem with. It's worked before, and works now. I also love the limited number of tries idea. It worked well in ToC but seemed awkward as to why you only got a certain number of attempts. This time it fits perfectly in with the story.
However, what irks me is the combination of the staggered unlocking and no heroic versions untill Arthas is defeated. That means that a heroic version of any boss won't be defeated untill at least february, probobly march (Say 3.3 drops late december, + 2 months to unlock Arthas, and therefore hardmodes). Thats a long time for guilds to wait around to kill the content.
But on the flip side, you have to consider. Is waiting to beat the content better than beating the content and having nothing to do?
The goal of this (besides keeping subscribers =D) is obvious however. This is the best way blizzard has come up with of shrinking the gap between the #1 guilds and the lower tier guilds, while still allowing progression 'bragging rights'.
Firstly (and most obvious) the top top tier guilds (ensidia and the like) won't be able to tear through the instance and start killing hardmodes in the first week like Ulduar. This will give a normal top 5 on the server guild the chance to start on hardmodes the same time that Ensidia does, with quality gear. Ensidia may not need that gear to do some hardmodes, but many people do. This levels out the top end.
On the other side, lower tier guilds will have a long 'catch-up' period. Even if they don't get into ICC until Arthas is released, they will have had a good 2 months to heroics/raids for triumph/frost badges. Many of the people in these guilds will have 1-2 pieces of t10 without even stepping foot inside Icecrown (assuming there's no token requirement for t10 like the low end of t9), not to mention full t9. This will bring the bottom end guilds up.
But the two together and you have alot more raiders accessing the top tier content at the same time. Which is exactly what Blizzard wants. While it still keeps the top tier guilds happy because they can push for hardmodes when they are released.
Erin Nov 18th 2009 1:20PM
I'm all about having elite content for elite guilds, and gating progression, but I feel like Blizz is doing it all wrong this time. The staggered release I can understand... they don't want players to clear the content in 1 week and then have to wait 9 months for Cataclysm... but this whole "you have x number of attempts before the boss despawns" is complete garbage in my opinion. I'm in a pretty decent raiding guild. We have TOC 25 on farm and have been dipping our toes into Heroic modes. It can take us 30 attempts before we're able to down the beasts simply because we're still learning the fight in heroic, not to mention that there is a random element to every fight, what if the snowbold hits a healer twice in a row just when they got a fire thrown on them?
By limiting content in this way I feel like Blizz is hampering the guilds that do progression bosses but aren't the elitest of the elite. It takes us far more than 5 attempts to down a boss when we're learning the encounter, and it's no fun to set some time aside for raiding only to have the encounter despawn after 5 measly attempts.
I'm glad that it will increase overtime. I get the lore behind it, and I understand that it will give elite guilds a chance to shine, but I've been waiting since Blizzcon '07 to raid ICC, and I don't like being told, now that it's nearly out, that I can only attempt certain bosses so many times. Not fun.
Jon Nov 19th 2009 12:26AM
This 1000 times this
Sinthar Nov 19th 2009 6:51AM
Excellent point - and well made
gabeharrison Nov 18th 2009 1:17PM
I'm perfectly happy with gating content. That's nothing new and shouldn't really shock anyone. I would hope that it was tied to some server event like Sunwell, but no mention of that is made in the post. That's somewhat discouraging as well. I had hoped the Ashen Verdict would open a new daily hub because I'm dreadfully tired of the Argent Tournament. I don't like the limited number of attempts, on any boss, ever. I hated TotGC with a livid passion, which is why I was very excited about Icecrown, but this announcement was very discouraging.
Neirin Nov 18th 2009 1:22PM
This is a great way to end the expansion.For those complaining about it being dragged out: of course they want it dragged out - this is the ultimate raid for the expansion. If ppl downed Arthas in the first few days, we'd all feel less excited about what should be an epic experience. I also really like the gradual easing of the instance. This allows the hardcore players to get their glory, but there's also no reason semi-hardcore players can't see Arthas die (since we've been playing for over a year towards that goal, it'd be kinda sad if only 1% of players got to see it happen). Yes, by the end they'll basically be giving away gear, but since Cataclysm will be coming out any day by then, it's really not worth complaining about.
shockologist Nov 18th 2009 1:23PM
Havent read pg2 or 3 so sorry if Im repeating here.
This tells me that 3.3 is ready to drop. Dec 1st marks the launch of several MMOs and expansions and I think blizz is strongly wanting to get the LFG function live to counteract that. Staggering IC this way allows them to do that. So instead of a 3.4 we get 3.3.1 3.3.2 etc.
Im guessing the patch will drop on Dec 1st (Dear lord lets hope not the 24th....Do we really want such a major and possibly gamecrashing feature to be launched the week of a major holiday?)
STARF Nov 18th 2009 1:23PM
Na, Blizz might be dragging 3.3 out, but really who does it hurt? Just because some guilds are going to have to wait to beat down Arthas, doesn't mean the end of the world. What happens when the guild who gets world first on this guy, are they gonna say, ah screw it not gonna play any more till cataclysm? You have got to be kidding me. Progression like this will at least give people something to look forward to. I speak with the voice of a person who mainly runs heroics, and after running them a few hundred times it gets a bit tedious, it would be nice to have some progression, and have dungeons open up at different times, or after certain acheivments. Anyhow, one big advantage to this is going to be guilds getting maxed out on gear with a wing before they need to worry about going to the next one. I guess there are worse things that could happen. Btw the new raid isn't even the most exciting part about patch 3.3, LFG, weekly raids, and a new fishing tourney. Now we are talking.
sephirah Nov 18th 2009 1:29PM
5 tries are really bad, it seems we'll have to spend our time on TotC for many weeks more... :(
Mash Nov 18th 2009 1:31PM
My take on this is that Blizzard is making efforts to ensure that more people experience endgame raiding content, and it is WORKING! Remember Black Temple? Sunwell? What was it, like 1% of guilds ever saw Illidan or even the first boss of Sunwell (pre-nerf)?
Some of us reading are seasoned raiders, yes. But the large majority are either not, or are new to it, as of Wrath. A lot more people are raiding now than in the history of the game. The more egocentric of the bunch are bound to slam this concept but I'm happy that more players are able to experience these raids, even at least on easy mode.
Sqtsquish Nov 18th 2009 2:20PM
But the question is even though you get to "see" the content do you truly enjoy it like you would if it truly challenged you to do better? Instead of ramming your head at the raiding wall until ur attempts are up and then go grind MORE heroics, how about making it challenging enough that you can't just aoe everything in sight? I am not happy with where raiding is currently. Toc from what I have seen is simply an exercise in staying out of the fire and focus firing on targets, what kind of fun is that? Now I haven't done the ptr because I don't like the idea of ruining content for me before it even comes out, but is it going to be more FUN then ToC? This game isn't the center of my life but if I am going to spend time on it I would at least like to enjoy the time spent. I'm not talking about quitting......yet. As of yet, the game is still enjoyable enough for the time and money I spend on it for me to continue playing it, but if ToC is any indication, then it does really seem as if Blizzard is just trying to appear to appease people who don't enjoy questing anymore and have run heroics until they start to do it by muscle memory. Even in Cataclysm I see this type of ideology: they are encouraging you to reroll more and more alts so you spend less and less time in the endgame content, so they can get away with shallow raiding content.
Dragoth Nov 18th 2009 1:30PM
I have wondered, and haven't seen the answer anywhere, what is the deal with boss encounters being limited to a certain number of attempts per week? What is Blizzard trying to do with these restrictions? Is it a way to prevent people from burning through the content too quickly or is it simply a way to make it more 'challenging'?
SaintStryfe Nov 18th 2009 1:33PM
Q to anyone who's testing on the PTR:
My guild leadership and I are at a tiny loggerhead. Two of them assume that we will need TotGC25 year to even have a fair attempt at ICC25 normal. I do not see this. It seems silly that Blizz would require that level of gear. We didn't need U25 hard mode gear for ToC.
Can we go in with a strong core raid team in ToC25 gear and see success?
Charlie Nov 18th 2009 1:42PM
Yes, you can.
If you look at ilvls of gear they are ussualy arranged as such (with minor increases in higher level content)
Naxx -> Ulduar -> Ulduar Hardmodes/ToC -> ToC Hardmodes/ICC - > ICC Hardmodes.
It would kind of be silly to get all the gear you can out of ToC hardmodes and then go into ICC normal and get mostly side-grades.
Show your other officers the ilvls of gear in the instance and they'll understand.
And you know what? It's new content and exciting. There's no reason not to try it. If you go in and get your ass beat, then you prolly need to go back to ToC. No harm in trying.
Muse Nov 18th 2009 1:51PM
You're the right one. Normal gear for normal progression, heroic gear for heroic progression (straight out of the box, they'll probably be able to upgrade to normal gear then to heroic as well) And 10 man gear for 10 man raid. Going from ToTC10 to IC25 will hurt a bit.