dual boxing is very hard. No idea how someone would do more than 2
And on the other side of the spectrum, we just had a bash at Twilight Bastion with 9 people. Everything will seem hard like that, of course, but Naxx this definitely ain’t.
Then again we did get slate/storm/nether on Halfus, the worst combination imaginable. It’s actually pretty interesting that way, I’m a little bummed that we’ll probably get something easier when we try again after Christmas.
If you’re going to be a 10-man raiding guild, you’ll need about 15 active players, and you’ll want your officers to carefully track who sits out each week so that everyone gets a relatively equal number of invites. Depending on the reliability of your members, you’ll want 3 tanks, 3-4 healers, and 7-8 dps (with a good mixture of physical/spell and melee/ranged).
If your GM wants to run 10m raids with 20 active players, you’re going to see membership attrition really quickly since people won’t be satisfied with the number of invites they’re receiving. Maybe that’s actually your GMs intention and this is a sneaky way to cull your ranks? That’s a pretty poor way to run a guild, but I saw similar actions from GMs during the switch from 40-mans to 25s when TBC launched.
I’ve only done one raidboss thus far (not counting Baradin Hold), but Omnotron very strongly reminded me of Illidari Council in Black Temple. Harder, mind you, but it had the flavor of that fight to me.
If you’re going to be a 10-man raiding guild, you’ll need about 15 active players, and you’ll want your officers to carefully track who sits out each week so that everyone gets a relatively equal number of invites. Depending on the reliability of your members, you’ll want 3 tanks, 3-4 healers, and 7-8 dps (with a good mixture of physical/spell and melee/ranged).
Yeah, that’s not happening… the GM’s buddies get in every raid, and supposedly we’re still gearing up for 25man raids, but we’re not recruiting and there’s no talk of running a second 10man so that people can actually get Valor points.
Athryn
4025
Your mage is getting lonely! :p
Drama incoming! Bail out!
So, no, then. A hobby profession, another two races, and a welcome and much-needed revamp to lowbie questing zones do not equal a sudden shift in Blizzard’s priorities towards the early game.
Look, I think it’s very clear that Blizzard wants to support multiple styles of play, from the hardcore raider to the explorer, altoholic, or hell, fish-and-chatter. And the zone revamp and new races do a lot to keep the pre level cap game at least vaguely fresh for people who aren’t all about raiding. But it’s also pretty darn clear to me that the endgame is the ultimate destination being pointed towards. Between the working of raid/dungeon mechanics into regular questing to get people comfortable doing that sort of thing, the continued lowering of the exp required to level up to the latest expansion content, the introduction of badges, the tweaking into justice/valor points, the “flexible” raid lock system, and on and on, it seems entirely evident to me that Blizzard is certainly catering to the more casual gamer…but they’re catering to them in an attempt to ease them into the endgame content they might not have been able to access previously.
Athryn
4028
The endgame is where every MMO ends up. Your silly complaints about WoW may as well just be about any MMO.
JM1
4029
Indeed. It’s not an open-ended MMO like EVE.
I’m not complaining. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I just disagree with people who don’t think it’s where Blizzard’s focus is.
Ok. Let’s do this the other way. What has Cataclysm brought to WoW’s endgame?
Lets be serious here, what has WoW done for under privileged inner city kids?
I sense a “Life of Brian” quotation coming…
You mean besides a new set of zones, a bunch of new dungeons, a handful of raids, three new spells and five new talent points per class, 75 points worth of tradeskill items, a whole slew of new achievements, mounts and vanity pets, several new reputations to grind, and a couple of new PvP battles? Just about everything other than the goblin and worgen races + starting zones, and archaeology that you get in the Cata box is endgame content.
JM1
4035
As you’ve pointed out, it’s made a conscious effort to expose players to ‘advanced’ game mechanics practically from level 1. As such, hitting the endgame means that they are not suddenly asked to play in an entirely different manner which they would find deeply frustrating.
If we take endgame to mean “hit 85, completed the major questlines” then players are already properly geared to start running the level 85 dungeons, which the storylines will have guided them to far better than in the past. There’s a more natural progression.
Outside of dungeons, I don’t believe there’s a huge difference between Cata and the previous expansions at max level.
Syzygy
4036
Yeah, I guess if your tanks are too clueless to move out of his shockwave-like attack when it starts revving up things are going to be bad.
I mean something that is new, something that is game changing, something that is not simply an iteration of its predecessor. For example, Burning Crusade introduced heroic, arena, flying mount and Jewelcrafting. WotLK introduced Inscription, mount combat, death knight, phasing and achievements.
What has Cataclysm brought to the table? Mastery? Reforging? Those seem minor in comparison. The answer is the focus of the development has shifted. Yes, new contents are still being pumped out by gallon and will continue to do so, but most of the exciting things are now happening in the mid-game. A sustainable model of players leveling several characters on both factions, a new social mechanism to support that model and all that good stuffs.
JM1
4038
I think Mastery and Reforging are fairly major changes actually, but they haven’t gone all WoW:NGE on us, no. What they have done is made things easier to get into at the endgame without lowering the difficulty or trivialising the content. Hence the remodelling of the way stats are handled and the drastic overhaul of most classes.
idrisz
4039
show them they can sell gold instead sell crack.
Being totally honest here, Athryn, while I love Drop Bears and I intend to level my Mage, I think that it would be a very bad idea for me to make Drop Bears my primary raiding experience. :)
Alt raiding with you guys would probably be a ton of fun, but I want as my primary a raiding spot in a Guild that doesn’t raid very much but is very focused when they do raid. A Guild which raids, oh, six hours a week and intends to clear hardmodes.
