We are proud to declare that all WOTLK PVE raid content has now been cleared. This is both a moment of triumph and a cause for concern. The question in all our minds right now is if we could do this, how soon until the rest of the top guilds in the world clear all the raid content that WOTLK has to offer? Did Blizzard miscalculate in the tuning of these encounters? Or is this Blizzard folding under the weight of a large casual player base that demands to be on equal footing with end-game raiders?
I see one of raid bosses dropped a rather large entitlement complex as loot. And yes, Blizzard is folding under the weight of a large player base. Even with the recent nerfs, only a small percentage of the playerbase ever experienced the high end raid content. Why should your ability to feel special rest upon everyone else’s ability to experience the rest of the content?
Eh, QQ more. I’ve never really bought the argument that elite raid guilds serve as aspirational role models for the rest of the playerbase. I over 25% of the playerbase knows who they are.
Considering they cleared it all during the beta before, I don’t know why they’re surprised that they cleared it so quickly now. They did all the learning during beta.
Power gamers and speed run experts can do this sort of thing in any game. I don’t see how it is of concern to the vast majority of players. And they are the audience the developers care about, I mean make all their money from.
Many guilds that downed Sunwell bosses during the testing phase found themselves unable to do it on Live, due to balance tweaks, bug fixes, or de-nerfs.
And then of course there’re M’uru and KJ, which weren’t really downed during Beta… I don’t even know if anyone got KJ to Phase 3 on the PTR.
And y’know, you guys might think it’s laughable, and call it an entitlement complex or what have you, but content that’s trivially easy isn’t content that’s fun for long. There’s a difference between pre-nerf Kael and post-3.0 Kara, if you know what I mean… one of them was to hard, and the other is a 2-hour clear in blues.
It’s kind of like people who only ever do BGs complaining bitterly about high-end arena balance. Yes, there needs to be high-end BG balance; no, you won’t ever be ranked above 2k. That doesn’t mean people who play at 2k+ ratings shouldn’t be concerned if the balance is off.
Meh, I probably shouldn’t bother. I’m sure most of you who are more than happy to bitch about “entitlement complexes” are the same ones who will bitch that Naxx is so very hard because you can’t clear it while semi-AFK mashing one button and standing in fire. :) And then bitch about how hard it is.
Yeah, but the people laughing are likely the ones who would never see the content otherwise. Despite what you may think, raiders aren’t the only people playing the game and those complaining that they’re unable to see shitloads of content due to the inablility to join a raiding guild have just as much right to do so as these hardcore guilds have a right to whine about going through stuff too easily. So who’s more “right” in it all? It’s good you’re including such broad, sweeping generalizations about the people “bitching” here, though.
I’m not sure the argument is about content being too easy or too hard. Personally, I find it funny that power gamers are complaining that there isn’t enough content, since that’s easily solvable - i.e. don’t powerlevel your toon in shifts and then complain that you got to the endgame too fast.
Also, it doesn’t even matter that some of the content might be a bit too easy. So they already learned all the fights in the beta, which most of the WoW population didn’t have access to, and then after beating it following all that practice, they complain that it’s too easy? It didn’t strike them as imbalanced (or possibly imbalanced if they didn’t do it on the beta server with the 3.0 changes) prior to powerleveling to 80 in 2 days and clearing it again?
Having been in Sunwell, I think this is wonderful news. SWP was fun in that it was incredibly challenging, but it was also painful in that it was an epic bumfuck. Sure, 10% of my time in there was enjoying the teamwork and high requirements and the incredible head rush after downing a server first, but 90% was worrying about logistics and having to yell at my guildmates because they only brought four out of the five requisite consumables for Brutallus.
Blizzard will never, ever be able to deliver a satisfying experience to the likes of Nihilum or SK and cater to a measurable portion of their playerbase at the same time. Just because these guys breezed through it hardly means they were half AFK and /dancing in void zones. I feel a little sorry for them, but raid design has gotten too realistic for world firsts to mean anything now.
I thought the 25-mans were supposed to be really hard and the 10-mans were supposed to be for casuals who just wanted to see the content. If all the 25-mans are beatable within days of release, then something probably is wrong. When is the next round of raids supposed to be released? Maybe those will be harder.
I don’t understand how it’s even remotely a concern if they all knew what to do from the beta. It’s like playing a game with a trainer or a Game Genie.
So now Blizzard will release instances with ridiculously hard gear check encounters to compensate for the easier raid game that’s currently in place, a la Sunwell Plateau (which most high end guilds didn’t even clear before WotLK came out).
