Breakfast Topic: Should WoW bring back attunements?
by Scott Carson 
Feb 9th 2011 at 8:00AM
Early raiding in World of Warcraft required wide variety of attunements, from "Hey! Go touch that rock!" to "Hey! Go do every almost raid and dungeon in the expansion!" Over time, many of these attunements were eased or lifted as the playerbase grew and more people were interested in experiencing the current endgame. In Wrath of the Lich King, we had just one fairly minor attunement, and that raid was in the initial tier of raiding for the expansion. The only real attunement since The Burning Crusade has been to reach the level cap and learn to perform well enough to not get kicked from the group.
As we look to the future of raiding, maybe we should look to the past as well. While attunements could often be time-consuming, many of them were completed by just playing the game normally, with some added direction beyond "kill mobs to collect phat lewts." Several attunements added much of the epicness that long-time players say that the game has lost over the past two years or so. Attunement quest chains also introduced us to a host of interesting characters and often fleshed out the lore behind the raid we were trying to gain access to at the time.
Given the current state of the game, could attunements return to the World of Warcraft? Better yet, should attunements return?
| Yes | |
|---|---|
| No | |
| Yes, but only for raiding content |
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Mazaltov Feb 9th 2011 8:02AM
I would hate to be forced to choose between working a full time job and raiding. I love WoW but it dosent pay my rent.
Anominous Feb 9th 2011 8:07AM
Erm how does your rent come into an attunement post?
And fyi - I have a full time job, family commitments, and raid, as many many people also do.
Eberron Feb 9th 2011 8:11AM
Likewise. I enjoy my raiding, but my guild does it on a limited twice weekly, 8-10 hours a week schedule, and adding another mandatory amount of time on that which isn't directly related to picking up some phat loots is just annoying.
I liked some of the story behind it, but whatever's done, don't A) Get in the way of me gearing up full time students/part time workers or just professionals with limited play time so I can fill my raid team or B) Don't make things more frustrating in that we can't sub in Kyle's death knight for his perfectly capable resto shaman cuz, oh, lookit that, he hasn't done the attunement yet.
I spit on reward-less time sinks. Go ahead and set a "You must heal this encounter of NPCs before you're allowed to bring a healing specced toon" attunement, fine, but that sucker better be BOA.
Como Feb 9th 2011 8:56AM
Doesn't necessarily need to be a time sink though. Imagine this, blizzard separated heroic and raiding paths so that raiders don't have to do heroics and vice a versa. The attunment quests could actually gear you for your raiding content. It could be quite a few quests 5 man, some 10 if you wanted mimicking boss abilities and fights in some way. This has 2 effects, you get ur gear with out having to run the same easy heroics over and over again, and you could learn mechanics of the upcoming tier. They already reuse boss abilities in mobs why not make some mini encounters to help players learn.
If done properly atunments could be very good and not a time sink. More of a content primer similar to the old class quests of vanilla (hunters prob remember this ;) ) learn your role better, get raiding gear, avoid easy heroics. Sounds like win win to me.
Luci Feb 9th 2011 9:15AM
I like your mention of BoA attunement Eberron - I think it would work the same way if they did it on a "first-wave" basis, like they have with discovering dungeons. That way, your alts probably wouldn't have to do it, but it would be more of an epic experience for your main and your first encounter with a specific raid.
@Mazaltov- I too am finding a hard time raiding. School full-time AND work full-time here. So, my time is severely stretched and pretty much no guilds raid on the weekends. All Tuesday-Thursday nights, so choices are limited if available at all, but that's just how it is : / and I don't think there is any real way around that.
Thundrcrackr Feb 9th 2011 9:39AM
Attunements are only fun the very first time you do them. For every alt or friend you have to do it with after that, its just becomes a pain in the ass.
quickshiv Feb 9th 2011 9:56AM
@Thundrcrackr Exactly
This pole is about as bias a pole as you could get. The audience you are asking in no way represents the typical wow player. We as readers of wow insider represent a very small portion of the player base that actually cares what is going on in the game. The typical player knows nothing about lore, story line, patches or even how their character works. Most casual raiders don't even understand the game they are just waiting for the RL to tell them what to do.
If this question was prompted the next time you log into wow but also added the option of "I don't know what attunement means" I am guessing the results would go something like "I don't know what attunement means" > No > "Only For raiders" > Yes.
SunGod228 Feb 9th 2011 10:52AM
I know I love when the dungeon finder puts in in Arc and someone releases, because they usually don't have a key. Same goes for SM, and DM.
Also unless I get a friend that has they key I can't solo kara on an alt, because he isn't attuned.
So yeah they need to at least get rid of all the old attunements. I like the idea of a BoA attunement though because ultimately the quest lines are a lot of fun and usually more involved than your standard quest line.
Herman Feb 9th 2011 1:57PM
for DF dungeons, you can just port back in.
Forreststump Feb 9th 2011 2:16PM
Poles are biased?
NecDW4 Feb 9th 2011 3:13PM
I like raiding, and i ALSO like nice long quest chains as long as they have a good bit of lore to them, are interesting, and give me a nifty little item to play around with. Personally i LOVED doing the Ony attunement chain in vanilla, one of my favorite quest chains ever, and i STILL have my amulet that turns me into the drake if i use it in the cave.
gamerunknown Feb 9th 2011 8:19PM
They won't do it. The badge changes were designed so you didn't have to run obsolete raids, while attunement would probably mean exactly that. So every new alt or recruit you brought into the guild would have to be taken through the attunement process or just not consider recruiting new characters, no matter what their skill, penalising players for joining the game late.
It would also make life more difficult for PvP players seeking to get specific PvE items which are BiS for their spec, since atm they can stay in their PvP guilds and get taken on runs by raiders and pay for the item.
If heroic 5 mans and raids were separated, whichever was easier would be the gear path for pretty much everyone. Much more likely would be that attunement for the first raid of the expansion would have you go through heroics from throughout the expansion or there would be a little hole behind the raid you could drop down into with a smiley face on the bottom.
Sinthar Feb 9th 2011 8:04AM
Attunements IF done right - and thats a big IF, can be epic and add to the feel of the game imho.
If they are done wrong - then detract from the game. It should not be too long - but should have some difficulty in it - maybe involving using some mechanics from the raid it unlocks so people would have to have done all they will need before they set foot in there. For example using interupts - bandaging, kiting etc etc.
Noyou Feb 9th 2011 8:18AM
Nice. you said what I wanted to say before I wanted to say it :P
N-train Feb 9th 2011 10:46AM
IMO, you simply can't walk that line.
If an attunement is too hard, then it becomes a more-or-less pointless timesink that only people with a lot of time will do and ultimately just prevents your raid from having backups if you need one. It also greatly limits your ability to pug. People will complain that attunements are a vanilla relic that ought to have been destroyed years ago and there's a good reason we haven't seen them since BC.
If it is too easy, then everyone and anyone can do it without much effort and it might as well not even be there. We also live in the age of dual-specs and alts, meaning Blizz would have to design a questline simple and easy enough people would be willing to complete multiple times without wanting to kill themselves (or give up). People will complain that attunement was a joke, that anyone can do it with almost no effort at all, and that it should have been harder like the vanilla/BC ones.
Ultimately, Blizzard probably figures getting ready for raiding itself (especially in Cata) is often enough of a grind as is, why add another arbitrary questline that 10/25 people are forced to complete to start raiding? On top of this, being locked out of a raid because you didn't complete a questchain goes against Blizzard's "play with your friends" policy.
I like the idea of attunements from a lore/immersion/preparedness standpoint, but I think from a gameplay standpoint they're pretty pointless.
MaboezEU Feb 9th 2011 10:47AM
Whenever I go into a raid for the first time, it takes me a couple of attempts to really get to grips with the mechanics as they are (or at least were) so different from either level progression or normal dungeons. I was lucky enough to start raiding halfway through wotlk (so never had to attune to anything) when most others in the team were experienced or epic enough to keep me up when I slipped. It's not about knowing what to do, but doing it... so any kind of attunement that gives an idea of how mechanics would work (not exactly the same of course) would be a good way of attuning - especially if they could be repeated for practices sake.
I feel blizz tried to do this in some cata quests, but went off target?.. 'spank this big dude while an npc tanks it'.. surely they could have had some slightly more difficult encounters out in the wild where you have to run around, do a dance and other random stuff in order to individually down a big guy?
Not raided in cata yet, but mechanics in the dungeons are more raidlike than before (imo), which will obviously help, and perhaps undermine this post?
relmatos Feb 9th 2011 8:09AM
I dont mind having attunements if they're bound on account. back in tbc I had 3 chars and having to do the attunement and farming rep for heroic modes on all the chars was a pain.
neogramps Feb 9th 2011 8:15AM
^this
My DK is an enchanter, and I wanted to get the Mongoose pattern from Moroes without cheesing the door. The quest chain took a couple of days, several solo instances and a trip around the world to content I had never seen before - great fun, and I'm glad I did it - but, doing it on every toon - no thanks - BoA unlocks would be fine by me.
MusedMoose Feb 9th 2011 8:16AM
Seconded; was thinking the same thing.
Noyou Feb 9th 2011 8:21AM
The BoA aspect sounds very smart. I would take it further and say BoA but per spec. So once you do it DPS you are good there but you would have to do it again for Heals and Tank as well. Just makes sense to me as long as they were done right. If it was just rep or quests then there would be no point for the spec specific thing.