Stockton: Max of 6 bosses per raid in Cataclysm
by Mathew McCurley 
Jun 29th 2010 at 9:00AM
Some very important information was released about Cataclysm yesterday on a G4 Xplay segment, discussing a Cataclysm storyline preview. However, some awesome pieces of news came out unrelated to the story at all. Check out the video to hear Tom Chilton, Cory Stockton and others discuss some pretty cool reveals. The two new important pieces of information were:
- Auto-quest complete technology: Players are able to complete quests in the field and immediately begin the next quest in the chain, without running back to the quest giver for the next step in the quest, allowing multiple quests to be completed without returning home. Think of it as Archmage Vargoth's staff on steroids.
- Raid boss quantity limits: Every raid in Cataclysm will have no more than six raid bosses per instance. Instances like Icecrown Citadel and Ulduar in boss number are gone, and the Serpentshrine Caverns/Tempest Keep model is back in. With a reduced number of raid bosses per raid, three full raids will be available at Cataclysm's launch.
Very interesting, especially the capped raid boss numbers. If you never played World of Warcraft during The Burning Crusade, you missed the proto-concept to these smaller, but more numerous, raids. Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep added up in boss numbers to a full 11-12 boss raid, but was separated into two encounters. Blizzard can now itemize across multiple raids instead of just one environment.
Filed under: News items, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
Gamer am I Jun 29th 2010 9:04AM
You mean that with my limited schedule, I may actually be able to complete a full raid now? *giddy with anticipation*
Neyssa Jun 29th 2010 9:06AM
Totally agree. I was just suggesting the other day in a comment that ICC should really be 5 raids, with separate ID's. This is really good, I am happy Blizz agrees with me (and the other millions of limited playtime people).
Tyr Jun 29th 2010 9:12AM
In before the hardcore elitists whining about 'catering to the baddies and casuals'.
theRaptor Jun 29th 2010 9:39AM
I raid six-nine hours a week in a casual guild. I don't like a max of 6 bosses per raid. I don't mind a lot or most raids only having 6 max, but making it a maxim of design eliminates variety. The progression is likely to go medium boss - medium boss- easy boss - medium boss - hard boss - very hard boss.
When you hit a wall in progression for the night you will need to change raid's and lose time in the transfer and getting everybody organised and focused again. I much prefer the Ulduar/ICC model where you don't hit a hard boss until the very end and there are optional bosses you can skip once you are fairly geared up.
Considering they are talking about removing raidID's and just tracking which bosses you have killed (and allowing you to join a raid as long as they have killed at least as many bosses as you) a casual player could do a winged raid like naxx with 4-5 separate raid groups. And their is also extending lockouts.
Casual players currently have all the tools they need to finish a long raid like ICC (I know, my guild is casual and we use them). Max 6 bosses per raid just removes a ton of variety in raid design and the ENTITLED casuals will just change to whining about how they can't finish the whole tier of 14 bosses split into three raids.
P.S. Who cares about the baddies. They will never kill the sixth boss until a way over geared PUG carries them once the next tier is released, or Blizzard is lying about keeping current raid difficulty.
charizard Jun 29th 2010 9:43AM
you can finish a raid with a more casual schedule now. extend the lockout.
Sithril Jun 29th 2010 9:52AM
I hope that theRaptors comment gets voted up untill it shines and sparkles!
Alex Gore Jun 29th 2010 9:57AM
The number of bosses isn't really making it a "casual" thing. I mean, I really doubt anyone would argue that SSC or TK were "casual" BC raids. Hell, Hyjal back in BC only had 5 bosses as well, that was certainly not a "casual" raid. And of course, Sunwell Plateau had 6 bosses as well.
It's not another case of casual v. hardcore, as it is simply about reducing the time necessary to raid. Blizzard obviously doesn't want raiding to be the timesink it has been in the past, and that decision was made a long time ago. Just look back to the start of WotLK when they put pots on a non-combat CD. That was totally designed to prevent the need to farm mats and/or gold necessary to be able to raid effectively. The design seems clear that they want people to fail at raiding cause they don't know the fights or can't get out of the fire, not cause it is already 11pm and they need to be up for work tomorrow yet they've only done 5 of the 11 bosses in an instance on the weekend.
theRaptor Jun 29th 2010 10:08AM
@Alex Gore
Your point would have been valid before extended raid lock outs. You can take a year now to finish a raid if you want (my guild extended a lockout for two months to see Yogg, we just extended for two weeks to try and get Putri-25). If there are 18 (3x6. Don't ask why I math failed and said 14 before) bosses per tier the person who can't finish ICC/Ulduar with extended lockouts is not going to be helped by splitting those bosses into three raid instances.
The only difference is that some people might feel more accomplished getting [Mount Hyjal Saved!] (theoretical Ragnaros/Hyjal raid achievement) over [Storming the Citadel] (first four ICC bosses).
IMO Karazhan and Ulduar are the best raids ever. And I am really sad to think we will never see their like again.
Dashifen Jun 29th 2010 10:25AM
re: extending the raid lock-out
TLDR version: extending the lockout is great, but not when you need the loot from the bosses you'd miss by extending that lockout.
--
You bring up a good point, i.e. that casuals can extend the raid lockout and thus complete longer raids over longer amounts of time, but that precludes the team getting gear from the downed bosses. For example, my guild hasn't gotten Putricide yet (yeah, yeah, flame away if it makes you feel better).
We'd like to down up through Rotface and then just pound away on the Professor until we got him by extending the lockout, but there is still gear for us in the Lower Spire and Festergut and Rotface, specifically the tanking shield from the Gunship that hasn't dropped for us at all yet. Heck, I'm still looking for two items of loot, one from the Gunship and one from Saurfang.
As a result, while extending the lockout doesn't help us out very much since our problem on Putricide seems to be primarily a lack of ranged DPS on our team to work on the adds. Thus, getting the gear from the first six bosses that we still need is the largest improvement we can make toward that DPS increase. We even have people dual-speccing for ranged capabilities (e.g., an enhancement shaman using elemental during Putricide), but that means going back to the early bosses for some of their loot.
By limiting the size of the raid, it takes less time to get to the boss that's giving you problems and takes less time to down all the bosses overall, which means extending the raid lockout isn't as necessary. That, to me, is a huge benefit toward both (a) seeing content and (b) getting loot, two things that Blizz seems to be fairly positive on.
Alex Gore Jun 29th 2010 10:30AM
@theRaptor
Extension of the raid lock out, however, assumes that you can either get everyone to agree to do that, or even get the same group together for such. And of course, it means locking yourself out of the lower bosses for the week as well, so if you are still trying to accumulate gear or such from those bosses, you are out of luck as long as you extend the ID. Extension lock out isn't a panacea for the point of cutting down on time spent raiding, which is the point.
Look, I loved Karazhan too, but if you don't think that raids can be fantastic without having an over reliance on bosses, I don't know what to tell you. Bosses can be used as much as a crutch by the design team as anything else.
jeffo Jun 29th 2010 10:56AM
@theRaptor:
"When you hit a wall in progression for the night you will need to change raid's"
I thought when you hit a wall in progression for the night you kept banging your head against it until either you or the wall fell over.
(cutaia) Jun 29th 2010 11:06AM
"Considering they are talking about removing raidID's and just tracking which bosses you have killed (and allowing you to join a raid as long as they have killed at least as many bosses as you) a casual player could do a winged raid like naxx with 4-5 separate raid groups."
Sorry, but I'm gonna have to join the disagreement here. BossID instead of RaidID is actually a bit more conducive to the raids they are planning than a winged raid with optional bosses. "LFM Firelands. We're 3/6," makes a lot more sense than, "LFM ICC. First wing down, then we did Festergut and Rotface, got stuck, moved over and did Dreamwalker. PST."
Scooter Jun 29th 2010 11:47AM
I think the real argument here is not about spending X amount of hours on x amount of bosses but rather the scope and feel of the raid. If the raid is fun, then most people would not care if there was 1 boss or 100.
Think about it. Karazhan was huge, it held 12+ bosses, numerous quests, and secrets. The glitches you could pull were epic. Did you know there were two solid versions of the tower before they settled on what we have now? Did you know there was supposed to be a flightpath to a certain point in the tower or that there was supposed to be a flipped version like in Castlevania? Remember the books which offered buffs? Everything I've listed doesn't even cover half of the details surrounding this place.
In spite of all the hours wasted there it stands as the hallmark of most peoples raiding experience. Yes, many people spent 4-6 months working through the place and would rather not go back but the fact is they enjoyed the vast majority of it while it lasted.
If Blizzard wants to make this successful then they need to be creative enough to overcome the homogenization they are are stuffing into every corner of the game. Personally I am expecting great things.
Rob Jun 29th 2010 1:48PM
"Casual players have all the tools they need to get through ICC every week". That's not really true. I don't have time to raid on a regular schedule (and am married to a wife that hates me raiding). I would LOVE to see LK. I would kill for it. Pay all my gold. Will probably never happen. I would have to join a guild and start raiding way more than I am currently.
The thing is, 6 bosses is PUGable, no matter what. More than 6 is hard. The further you go, the less people know the fights, until you start wipe fests and people bail. Kara was great, but you still needed a guild to get through it for quite a while. Only when people started getting BT gear than it became a faceroll that took 3 hours. My first guild spent 20+ hours in that damn place.
If ICC was 6 bosses, I could see the whole thing. Now I have no chance (ditto with ulduar). Naxx has the wing concept, so thats sorta puggable (but everyone did spider/military so, its a wash). They need to get back to the concept of length = hard, and make the game open for people like me, who like to raid ,who are really good/talented raiders, just don't have regular time they can spend raiding.
(cutaia) Jun 29th 2010 2:12PM
"The thing is, 6 bosses is PUGable, no matter what. More than 6 is hard. The further you go, the less people know the fights, until you start wipe fests and people bail."
This is my thought, too. Even if ICC in it's current state was released as two separate raids (with boss orders mixed up in an appropriate way), I could see pugs finishing them sometimes.
As it stands, pugs do the first wing and fester/rot and are left with little time to beat their heads against any of the rest of the bosses in order to truly learn them. Unlike a guild run, getting it back together the next day isn't usually a possibility either.
If released as two separate raids, pugs could tear through 2 easy bosses, have some difficulty on two medium bosses and maybe down the last two, maybe not...but at least have a chance. Then they could do it all over in the "other" ICC. Same bosses that we have now, so not really dumbing anything down. Just making it easier for everyone to have a chance to see and learn all the fights.
charizard Jun 29th 2010 4:29PM
theraptor is talking about guild raiding. everyone else is talking about pugging. extending the lockout in a casual guild is perfectly fine. yes, everyone should agree to it, but in a guild people shouldn't be so selfish that they'd put their own gear desires above guild progression. Unless your casual guild just formed two weeks ago, you won't still need gear from the first few bosses. there is plenty of loot to go around for everyone. no one should need badges (weekly and dailies and now the holiday). if you do need gear, then you shouldn't be worrying about wiping on a single boss over and over yet. get everyone their gear then focus on progression as best you can.
those of you wanting to see content in a pug, i say no. call me old fashioned, but you should not be able to kill the final boss with 9/24 random people from trade chat. besides, you should be finding a guild since cataclysm is going to ruin pugging (guild achievements, single lockouts, and more guild advancement options).
raiding isn't a timesink. my 9/12 HICC25 guild raids for 12 hours a week at the most (7% of the week). find a guild that fits your time best and make it work if you want to see content.
theRaptor Jun 29th 2010 5:06PM
@Dashifen
That doesn't work Dashifen because there will be 18 bosses per tier over three raids. It isn't going to be designed so that you can easily do boss 6 by just farming bosses 1-5 of one raid (for one each bosses loot tables would have to be enormous to cover all specs). If you currently don't have the time to do 12+ bosses in ICC/Ulduar you won't have the time to do two 6 boss raids.
People are thinking that each of these raids will be like ToC, self-contained and having all the gear you need to progress. They won't, it will be like SSC/TK (or BT/Hyjal) where you really needed to do both of them to progress through the content quickly, except now you will need to do three raid instances.
And my point isn't that Cata raiding won't be great, just that with a hard limit of 6 bosses per raid really limits variety.
P.S. Don't vote down people you disagree with, post and say why you disagree. Voting down for disagreement just makes you childish.
ccoder Jun 29th 2010 6:41PM
Don't get me wrong,but 12 hours per week? Hell, thats not casual anymore...
Hawk Jun 29th 2010 6:21PM
@Rob
"The thing is, 6 bosses is PUGable, no matter what. More than 6 is hard. The further you go, the less people know the fights, until you start wipe fests and people bail. Kara was great, but you still needed a guild to get through it for quite a while."
I really don't think a raid should be pug-able until it is over-geared. What if you could assemble a group of strangers and go into ICC and kill LK. Would it really seem like an epic raid if you could?
I believe that some of the raids, especially the hard ones like ICC, should REQUIRE you to find a group of people and raid with them regularly for at least a few weeks. In my opinion, it creates a sense of team. And it should take a group of people working as a TEAM to kill bosses like Lich King. Learning the bosses together, forming strategies that work for their group, learning the capabilities and strengths/weaknesses of your team members.
Im not saying that having ANY pug-able raids would be bad. But being able to assemble a group a strangers through trade chat to down Deathwing will be bad. Once more, Im not opposed to people being able to down raids in pug groups once the realm is over-geared for it (there has already been a pug 10m LK kill on my realm). Im just saying that epic raids and epic raid bosses should require a week-to-week team, guilded or unguilded) to complete. *bracing for down-rank*
Hiddenmonkey Jun 29th 2010 8:31PM
Lol at Raptor's argument, More, smaller raids eliminates variety? It is producing more variety. No longer will we be doing the same old raid 10/25 and then heroic for months and months until the next raid is released, we will have three different raids to explore in this first release, which I assume will drop to 2 in content patches. And we will only have to do them once per lockout