Clarification on normal mode functionality
by Anne Stickney 
Feb 9th 2010 at 7:30AM
In other words, raiders attempting the final bosses of these wings on normal difficulty will still see the counter, it simply won't count down if they wipe. More importantly however is the news that players wishing to attempt bosses on Heroic difficulty will need to leave one attempt up if they want to clear the boss on normal mode.Q: If you extend your raid lockout this week, will you still lose attempts on Normal after the hotfix?
A: No.
Q: If you run completely out of attempts on Heroic, will the wing bosses and Lich King no longer respawn, even if the difficulty is switched to Normal?
A: YES. So leave an attempt left if you wish to kill them on Normal. We'll try and correct this in a future update.
Q: Why is the counter still visible in Normal?
A: The hotfix being applied just stops the counter decrementing, and nothing more.
Filed under: Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mattyxe Feb 9th 2010 7:52AM
"Q: If you run completely out of attempts on Heroic, will the wing bosses and Lich King no longer respawn, even if the difficulty is switched to Normal?
A: YES. So leave an attempt left if you wish to kill them on Normal. We'll try and correct this in a future update. "
AH! now it seems clear why they've removed the attempts, looks like they couldn't implement separate counters for each difficulty mode, and this is a nice quick bodge-job fix to stop everyone moaning on the forums.
Falcom Feb 9th 2010 11:47AM
Um, no.
Finnicks Feb 9th 2010 1:28PM
They removed the limited attempts because the uberleet guilds that they were attempting to slow down have finished the content, and will be doing hard modes now.
So there's no sense keeping it on normal mode and keep making life difficult for the semicasuals.
klink-o Feb 9th 2010 8:19AM
I find this quite interesting as it implys that this was not the plan to begin with but rather a quickie fix after they changed their minds.
Psiwave Feb 9th 2010 8:19AM
I didn't think they were ever going to have two seperate counters. If a guild is still wiping a significant number of times on normal mode then they probably aren't going tho have much of a chance completing the hardmodes at all.
Unexpected EOF Feb 9th 2010 8:20AM
Loving the changes to the normal modes. As a self proclaimed casual scrub the idea that a mistake I made could screw over the entire raid to the point where they wouldn't be able to progress was what was kinda keeping me out of ICC.
Daedalus Feb 9th 2010 8:28AM
Kudos to Blizzard on this one.
I'm willing to bet that the majority of guilds have had at least some strife about whether it's worth it to risk attempts on heroic mode, or better to use them on normal to get more people geared; this keeps guilds from being torn apart by people with slightly different goals...
Daedalus Feb 9th 2010 8:33AM
More likely, this was the plan all along, and the fact that you can't progress on normal once all hard mode attempts are gone is just a bug that they couldn't work out in time.
From a programming standpoint, the idea that they could implement one counter, but were completely stymied at implementing a second one just doesn't make a lot of sense.
Daedalus Feb 9th 2010 8:34AM
Damnable comment system. This was supposed to be a reply to Mattyxe
Darkseid Feb 9th 2010 8:36AM
I'm only a casual raider, so I'm still confused as to why they need to limit the number of attempts you can make in the first place. Don't they make the raids so that people can use them. Its not like theres a overwhelming amount of people blitzing Icecrown's final halls anyway, so why limit the people who actually have a shot of making use of the content that most of us will never see outside of a Youtube video?
Clarify please...
Bob Feb 9th 2010 8:45AM
While you make an excellent point, I'd be in favor of making things harder, rather than easier.
He's the Lich King, after all. He should not have died on the first day. Not to anyone.
If there was every anything that merits some kind of a grind in an MMO, I'd think the last iconic boss in the series would be it.
N-train Feb 9th 2010 11:10AM
It served two purposes. One was to add onto the gating system to kill time, the other was the fact that the encounters do get much harder when you can't sit there and faceroll it repeatedly until you get it right. With limited attempts, it requires careful planning and raid awareness as not to waste tries. It makes for a mini-hardmode so the high end guilds had less to complain about since they didn't have actual hard-mode access yet.
Most "casual" guilds were not the people who were going to be downing the new wings within 24 hours of release, the limited attempts was geared especially at the guilds who were. Now that most guilds of that caliber have already unlocked hardmodes or will within this next week, the removal of the normal mode limits is purely to HELP "casual" raiders out.
As for the LK difficulty, remember that his very first 10 man downing was from a hardcore 25 man guild, meaning that they overgeared it hardcore, and therefore it isn't a "true" 10 man kill. Also remember that he has gone down on normal mode only, which is geared for casual players, not the hardcore guilds that have downed him.
It's much more of an achievement for a casual 10 man guild to down him in a month than a top 5 raiding guild to down him in 12 hours. Plus, these hardcore guys are looking to hard-mode LK anyway, which should legitimately be a challenge.
waggsy Feb 9th 2010 9:38AM
Would've been nice to know to leave 1 attempt left sooner then 1 hour ago, after we burned our last attempt on Sindragosa about 9 hours ago.
Jacob Parsons Feb 9th 2010 10:15AM
Waggsy, all you'll have to do is use a fresh clear of ICC. It IS tuesday, after all. And to get to sindragosa all you have to do is kill valithria+ the first four, r ight?
rinkx Feb 9th 2010 10:05AM
The fix wasn't going live before today's maintenance, afaik.
waggsy Feb 9th 2010 10:32AM
Yes, all we have to do is clear the entire place again... lol.
adeal064 Feb 9th 2010 11:07AM
Quick question, When are the servers going to be up and running again?
Cameri Feb 9th 2010 11:42AM
So if you used up all your attempts last week but extend the raid lockout this week...will the bosses be killable or do we have to reclear first?
chanfle98 Feb 9th 2010 11:49AM
Yeah, hitting the extend raid lockout button will make your attempts magically come back after you used them all up on the previous week... Seriously.
Brainded Feb 9th 2010 4:09PM
Since you can switch from Heroic to Normal with one attempt left and run the raid on normal, does anyone know if they did anything to prevent a wee bit of an exploit where a group might run everything on Normal up to the Lich King, then switch to Heroic with all attempts left? Or does it not work that way anyway?