like sunwell? :P

The problem here is that the only way to make the content gate itself is to make it so hard that even the hardcore elite guilds of the world have trouble with it, which effectively shuts out the other 98% of WoW players from every seeing it.

The Gating is there to prevent world-class uberguilds from clearing the place within 6 hours of release because Blizzard had to make the regular mode accessible to less hardcore players.

Let's face it, within hours of ICC opening its doors we were seeing the hardcore elite clearing out the first wing.

When the Lich King is released, you can bet Ensidia and the rest of the uber guilds will get the world first, world second, world third, ect all within the first few hours.

If by "actual difficulty" you mean "overtuned encounters requiring massive consumable/world buff usage or gear farming", "stupid resist gear cockblocks", "mobs despawning after a period of time and not coming back until a soft reset or similar elapsed period of time", "bugged encounters that don't get fixed for weeks or months (cough c'thun cough vashj 2.0 cough)", "elaborate gear checks also requiring an extremely atypical amount of one role (4H)", or "asinine encounter mechanics that reward perfect RNG and punish the smallest deviation from a good draw" (original gruul, original magtheridon).

They played fair with difficulty in Sunwell, making the encounters legitimately difficult, and even so there was never a boss that survived more than one reset worldwide.

"The problem here is that the only way to make the content gate itself is to make it so hard that even the hardcore elite guilds of the world have trouble with it, which effectively shuts out the other 98% of WoW players from every seeing it."

"The Gating is there to prevent world-class uberguilds from clearing the place within 6 hours of release because Blizzard had to make the regular mode accessible to less hardcore players."

Your two concerns are at odds with each other as much as bliz's philosophy. On one hand you are concerned about how fast ubber guilds will clear the content. On the other, you are worried that if they don't artificially gate and just make it gate itself, you are concerned the regular joe won't be able to clear it.

First, who care's how quick ensidia can clear content? Does that have any impact on you what so ever? (inc what I am going to get downranked for) Their ability to clear content as such a quick rate is a testament to how watered down the content is. Go look back in the records and see how long it took them to clear BT or Hyjal, and look at what it is like now.

And don't give me the "hard modes are hard" speech. I am no longer in a raiding guild now a days. Know why? Cause within weeks of the last boss of ToGC being available I got a pug kill on him. That's right, a pug.

Blizzard is systematically reducing the elitist content in the game. Problem is, that system has worked for them for years.

@ avhi: your PUG group killen Anub25 on HM which a lot of guild still havent done and that only after a few weeks release of anub?

The reason behind Blizz's changes was for more people to get to experience the entire game. Back in Classic, if your guild cannot clear ZG, AQ20, or MC, you cannot advance to BWL, AQ40. If you can't do BWL, AQ40, you can't do Naax. A huge majority of guilds never got past MC, while a select few guilds got to see Naax and facerolled through BWL and AQ40. Blizzard had to create whole new raid instances just for the select few, who quickly became bored with the existing content. Now, most everybody to some extent can enjoy the content that Blizz has developed, and that is a huge plus for me. It might take longer than some guilds would like, but what's the rush? I pick the current iteration over Classic any day.

@Avhi

Yes, it worked for them for years. And like the gimmicky cross dressing shock artist rock star, they have their audience now, so out comes the quality acoustic album, and everyone that liked them for all the wrong reasons will either grow with the artist, or join the massively huge new audience that will be drawn to the true talent now being displayed. The artist has grown, he's making music now. We can sing along, or go to some tired old club that's playing the tripe they performed in garter belts and lipstick three years ago.

Me, I like music, so I'll keep listening. :)

I have a solution for this issue.

1. No content will be gated. The whole of a raid instance will be available immediately on release of the patch.
2. The content will be tuned to require elite play on the order of Ensidia, et al. But the content will also have clearly defined and pre-built "step-downs" that will allow the instance to be nerfed in a predetermined way. (Conversely, the content could be tuned for regular raiders, but have pre-built step-ups that would be active when the instance is released.)
3. The high-end tuning will be maintained for 3 weeks (or 4, or 2, whatever is deemed appropriate) to allow high-performing raiders to make their attempts at clearing. The loot tables will not differ from lower-end tuning. During this period, however, achievements for downing bosses or accomplishing encounter objectives will have an "Elite" tag to clearly differentiate them from "normal"-tuned achievements.
4. After the determined period, the instance will be nerfed according to the plan, and the Elite achievements will no longer be available.

Limited attempts honestly aren't an issue for most guilds. Back when my guild started working on ToGC, we wouldn't get through 25 attempts over two nights of three-hour raids, let alone 50. Psychologically, when you're having a wipe night, it feels like you're wiping over and over and over, but look up your parses afterwards and you'll usually find there were fewer wipes than you felt. So maybe the 10/15/20 attempts we're getting in ICC is a considerably lower threshold, but if you're getting through the other bosses quickly enough that you still have enough raid time in the week for that many attempts, you're probably putting in 15-20 hours a week (not even accounting for the 10-man/25-man split), then you're in a hardcore guild that cares about your server rank. And it's for the benefit of your kind of guild that you don't have to lose out to guilds that put in, say, 30+ hours a week.

If any guilds are seriously disadvantaged by limited attempts, it's the ones who are good enough to chase server firsts, but primarily consist of members who learn by practicing. It favours the careful, preparatory style of excelling at raids over the performance-driven style of wiping quickly and trying again and again. I'm not so sure that homogenizing play styles is ever good for the game, but that's the cost of keeping progression competitive.

I still prefer attempt limits to a time limit like Algalon's. This way you at least allow for a DC or a bathroom break, or adjourning the raid for a day.

Me? I liked the hard rock. Where you really got into it, where the music took you up and you had no choice but to rock out to it with all of your heart. Music that made you feel glorious, that you knew was the pinnacle of how music should be. It was difficult to play, but that just made the achievement of getting through it all the greater to the point where completion of an act was so wonderful that 24 other people just SCREAMED when it was done. When you looked at others who had gone further than you into the music with longing, not knowing what it was like to climb to that next great height but dying to find out.

This new melody? It kinda puts me to sleep. It feels like the song a mother would sing to her child as he has weary eyes at the end of the night. It just doesn't have the same kick that the other did, it doesn't have the same glory, the elation, the fury. There are more voices singing to it, but it seems to me the song was brighter and greater when the few and determined sang along. And when was the last time you heard that great song that was 24 other people screaming with you when it was done? They just meekly say that we will see you all next week, and fade off one by one.

Sunwell raiding was godlike. No game, EVER, will replicate the feeling of clearing that. Those of us that really appreciated Sunwell for what it was are only still here because like it or not, it's the best we've got. This, Demons Souls, and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. The hardcore base is pretty damn small these days, and it's really sad.

The people complaining that things were too hard, my god, you had 98% of the game to play in! Did you need our 2% to be dumbed down too?

PS, I shouldn't have to say this, but no one does it on this side of the fence. If you agree, click that frickin rank up button!

@Avhi
By saying "Go look back in the records and see how long it took them to clear BT or Hyjal" are you implying that they had the same guild and raiding members then and now? Even for them HIGHLY unlikely.

I think it is foolish for them to program it around the

maybe what some of you aren't seeing:

for hardcore raiders to rock their socks off: achievments and Hardmode content.

My raid disbanded shortly before Ulduar was released and we had killed Sarth3d. i had to switch to an average guild up to TOGC. We cleared Ulduar and TOC and were happy. but i could have never rocked Mimi HM or Yoggy+1 or many other hardmodes with them. With that guild we wouldn't even be able to kill more than the first 2 TOGC bosses.

yeah TOGC besides Anub is not that hard, but Ulduar hardmode content was when ulduar was the highest tier really really difficult. how many of you who are saying HM and easy have killed Yoggy+0. i never did and i am fine with that. i atleast got to see everything.

now image ulduar normal mode fight would be like it was in hardmode. i wouldn't have ever seen all the amazing fights after kologarn. imagine Hodir had a 3 min enrage timer, Sif always active, freya +3 and mimiron with fire etc.

few guilds would have ever seen anything in ulduar.

same goes for TOC and now ICC.

the problem with icc is that rather than put milited atempts they should release HM right aways (but a really difficult HM) and have the uber raids chew at those fights and any normal raid could try to advance on normal and be happy with that.