Posts with tag wow-jutsu

It's very, very rare that pioneers are actually the best at what they do. They have great ideas, and those ideas revolutionize their field... but they're just ideas, concepts. It's not long before someone else improves those initial concepts and makes them the new standard. This more or less describes the situation around WoWJutsu.

WoWJutsu was once the number one guild ranking website, tracking progression, boss kills and all of that great stuff. Unfortunately, it hasn't kept up with the times. WoWJutsu's tracking relies on the Armory, crawling the whole thing and using gear that characters have equipped to determine progress. In order for your guild's Malygos kill to be marked down, members of your guild need to have Malygos drops on their Armory profile. This is the only way, as far as I know, that WoWJutsu will list your kill.

What does that mean? Well, it implies that guild progression isn't tracked properly at all. The first guild on a server to clear all of the content can easily come in third or fourth or twelfth on the ranking list. If your armory page doesn't update right away, that alone is going to throw your guild's progression record off. As minor as it may seem, it actually has some bad side effects, specifically when it comes to recruitment. If you claim your guild has cleared the hardest content in the game when you're looking for applicants, and people check WoWJutsu to make sure you're not making false claims... well, WoWJutsu's inaccuracies could imply that you're lying, when you're not at all. It's damaging.

Back in May 2007, when the Black Temple materialized in Patch 2.1, high end raiding guilds were drooling at the idea of taking down the infamous Illidan Stormrage, scourge of the Outland. Unfortunately for those guilds that achieved their lofty goal, there has been little else to challenge them. The telling fact is, when the Sunwell Plateau goes live in Patch 2.4 sometime this Spring, it will be the first new 25-man content to hit the game in a year!

And this is where Lore, a level 70 Blood Elf Paladin whose guild has had Illidan on farm for the past three and half months, now sits. For 25-man raiders, clearing Black Temple hasn't been the real challenge. Finding a new goal worthy of their time, dedication and uber-gear has been the task just out of their reach. And Lore's guild has been suffering for it with attrition, disinterest and players leaving the game entirely.

The news that new high end content is coming is great news, but it can't come fast enough for elite raiders who aren't quite the minority they used to be. WoW Jutsu shows that more than 6% of raiding guilds have entered Black Temple already.

Has Blizzard made the right choice by ignoring this group of players in favor of cranking out PvP improvements, 10-man instances and Cooking Daily Quests? Or has Blizzard dropped the ball for a good chunk of its player base?