Tuesday Morning Post: Raiding reshuffling redux edition
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Apr 27th 2010 at 7:00AM
If raid size debates aren't your cup of tea, there's plenty of other news to peruse. For example, we also got a small sneak peak at Cataclysm's world with some Cataclysm concept art uncovered by Scrolls of Lore. For a roundup of the rest of the week's happenings, you can check below, as usual. You'll have plenty of time to do so, as we will have downtime this morning from 5 AM to 11 AM pacific.
Hot News and Features
- Blizzard recently banned 320,000 players from Battle.net for cheating.
- Genn Greymane returns for another edition of Ask A Faction Leader.
- Registration for the official 2010 Arena tournament is now open.
- Buff(ing) for BlizzCon is one of our newest features, designed to help get you in shape for the big weekend.
- Blizzard has released a concept art gallery featuring some pretty awesome art from all their major franchises.
- Totem Talk has advice for shamans in the Plagueworks and gets enhancement shamans through the 60s.
- Lichborne takes a deeper look at sigils and at tweaking your frost DPS build.
- Shifting Perspectives waxes eloquent on class homogenization's effect on cat DPS and UI tweaking for balance druids.
- Encrypted Text discusses the zen of rogue cool downs.
- The Light And How To Swing It investigates the Cataclysm blessing changes and offers some tips for healing heroics.
- Spiritual Guidance takes a closer look at some shadow priest related tidbits from the recent Twitter dev chat and discusses healing priorities.
- The Care and Feeding of Warriors discusses the latest buzz on warrior AoE.
- Arcane Brilliance gives Mana Adept a second look.
- Blood Pact discusses warlock strategies for the Lich King.
- Scattered Shots has a basic survival 101 guide for your approval.
- Gold Capped discusses making money with alchemy.
- Insider Traders has a list of things they want to see stay in Cataclysm for professions.
- WoW Rookie has a collection of tips and tricks for newbies.
- The Overachiever continues looking at more of the 25 most evil achievements in the game.
- Raid Rx looks at hashing out healer and tank disagreements.
- Ready Check helps you deal with disruptive raid members.
- Heroic speed runs may be just the thing you need to break the dungeon doldrums.
- Officers' Quarters deals with the pre-expansion doldrums.
- Check out screenshots from It Came From The Blog's latest Gurubashi Beatdown.
- Know Your Lore discusses troll politics.
- Figure Prints announces new character busts.
Filed under: Realm Status, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Stardusted Apr 27th 2010 7:59AM
With the new recruit a friend mount coming online today, I wonder if the topic will generate near the amount of conversation the star pony did.
Mxlppxl Apr 27th 2010 4:43PM
maybe blizz will ban some AFK'ers in battlegrounds next
Aftermathmatical Apr 27th 2010 10:12AM
You know when I heard the 25/10 man raids having the same lockout, I was like... "Holy crap, no more 10man guilding and then 25 pugging or vice versa, the only raiding guildies can do is guild runs, and its gonna be hard to keep em all in line" I thought why would blizzard... LIMIT the amount of raiding we are doing by cuttin it in half! Sheesh.....
BUT THEN...
Rob pardo.. several times he's said, that the perspective is what matters to the people.. How rest XP used to be 100% experience, and when you weren't rested it was 50%. And everyone HATED it. So they changed it to 200% rest xp, and 100% not rested, and doubled the required xp to get to 60...
its perspective...
I think thats whats going on now, they don't want everyone feeling like they have to run every raid 2 times to get everything they want, they just want them running it one time, it will decrease burnout as well. BECAUSE, they specifically said they will be having only 5 more levels so they can focus on raiding, and they will be offering MANY more raids. Like 4 at the start and more and more so on. Plus less 14 boss raids and more 5 or 6 boss ones. They are increasing the number of raids, and we will be raiding the same amount, but just not double of each raid.
In the end I think we'll end up with the same amount of raiding.
Recubi Apr 27th 2010 11:35AM
The question id like to ask blizzard is with all this cutting and reforming to make it more accessable for the "casual" gamer what do you have to offer the "hardcore" gamer? Do we get nothing but balooned boss HP pools and increased damage with minimal rewards for our efforts?
Same goes for the Pvp Junkies out there. Giving them access to everything without limits what rewards would they have by actually doing well in battlegrounds or arena? A title. . .or mount ( which is the same skin as the PvE one?). Talk about lackluster.
What would be the driving force to excell to be the best since the gear is attainable for everyone? The most tangable thing they can come up with is mounts but hey you can get one that kinda looks like it for 25 bucks anyway so whats the point.
Aftermathmatical Apr 27th 2010 12:01PM
By minimal rewards.. I'm guessing heroic loot in ICC isn't better rewards? I mean, 277+ gear, when only a small percentage of guilds on a server have downed LK.
And for the mount, of course ppl can get 25buck pony, but its not Invincible, ppl know that. If they had invincible you know everyone would notice much more than 25 pony's running around.
The question I always ask when fellow hardcore gamers complain is... Have you downed 25icc LK yet? Have you gotten the icc achievement mount in 10/25?
If the answer is no, then usually answer is to stop complaining then. If so GOOD FOR YOU.
Plus, I think that the way gear was attainable in LK wasn't quite what they wanted as they have stated. When each new raid came out, ppl could do the 25 and get a bunch of gear and then go steamroll thru the 10man and get the achievement. Would as many 10man guilds be at LK if they couldn't do 25man as well? Probably not. This in itself will limit the amount of ppl getting gear super fast, meaning the bigger guilds and better guilds will be getting farther faster.
It appears at first to make it even more casual but I think its a step in the opposite direction to make more balanced again inbetween casual and hardcore.
Recubi Apr 27th 2010 12:23PM
The answer to all is yes. I have that . . .killed that. For what? Heroic loot? that has 5 more spellpower and is just colored a different color? Which is the EXACT same fight but you may get goo thrown at you? Ya very lackluster.
What happened to the days of Sunwell. . tier gear was a footnote on what actually dropped in there and the boss content was fantastic. It went through serveral nerfs till the QQers slowed their sobbing.
All this does is once again water down the harder content so everyone can get what they want without having to put forth the effort to do so. Point and fact . . they aint going to make 10 mans harder to compete with 25. . .they are going to soften 25 to make it comparable to 10. SO thus. . difficulty is the same. So once again we will crush the content within a short period. . farmed and geared. . sitting in dalaran bored while we listen to everyone scream for the nerf bat.
PsychoChris Apr 27th 2010 12:38PM
I think you need to re-exam your broad based statistics. How do you define "Hardcore" vs "Casual"?
You say a small percentage of guilds have downed LK....well, true. Did you know that a small percentage of guilds actually raid? Most are actually "Ma' & Pa" guilds or bank alt guilds, if you are looking at pure stats. In which case, a small percentage of guild have cleared Naxx too.
Of guilds that actively raid each week, with a goal of progression (not gearing), a large portion have killed LK. The issue is that most guilds that aren't #1 or #2 on their server, LK kills is not the #1 priority. So they raid each week, or when they can scramble together 25 people, and they do it as a fresh run, who's goal is not to kill LK, but to gear their raiders (sure eventually they want LK, but that's not the priority). So they in fact, are getting exactly what they are targeting out of raiding now.
To lump such a large sample of data into such a tiny (assumed) focus is ignorant at best, if not intentionly false. The number of LK kills is irrelivant.
The changes are clearly designed to reward less for time, and more for performance. I am not saying its good or bad, just different. Blizzard is clearly catering to casuals (people who spend more time outside of WoW than in), but that's who pays the bills.
nikdaheratik Apr 27th 2010 2:56PM
Yes, the Sunwell bosses were so fantastic that 99% of players didn't go there. At all. Same with Naxx in Vanilla. There were no EZ Mode bosses, which is fine if you're in a great guild, and a major block for everyone else.
But if you want to look at hardmodes, I guess you can only hope that they end up like Ulduar was instead of the past couple of tiers. Firefighter or Yogg +1 or Yogg +0 were very different from the regular mode fights.
So, again, your complaints are directed towards the QQ casuals, which is stupid as they should be able to play some version of the end boss in a game they're paying for too, when in fact its a problem with the developers, who were too busy to put out another Ulduar quality tier of content.
lolikitty Apr 28th 2010 1:15AM
While i'm really bummed that i won't be able to do a 10 and a 25 the same week on the same char, maybe Blizz has figured that if you're casual, you won't mind anyway, and if you're hardcore, you probably have an alt or two you can also raid with ?