State of Raiding pre 3.1

I have to admit, this is a bit of an alibi post to prevent a long chain of addon posts. But 3.1 is just some week(s) away and I talked to a lot of people about WotLK, how they like it and if it met their expectations as a raider or not.

Raiding motivation

The holy trinity that keeps people raiding is 1) loot, 2) challenge and 3) fun. All of that is present. But let me get a little bit deeper into the subject:

Loot

If you raid 25 man content, chances are good, that you’re already sporting most of the best in slot items and there are just those 1-2 items left for you, that never drop. Still, there is something about loot in WotLK I don’t like:

Purple is the new blue. This has already started in BC with the introduction of purple gear dropping in heroic instances and the introduction of Badges of Justice. I still think it is sad that rare items have become so redundant. Because I like gearing up and I loved getting blue pieces. I thought it was cool, when in the beginning of BC the dungeon set still meant something (remember?). This made the transition from blue to purple so much more epic, while now some weeks of grinding heroics instances and crafting epic gear bring you to a gear level that makes 10 man naxxramas nearly pointless.

The same goes for Tier gear. In my first guild I had to work hard and show commitment if I wanted to get into the 25 man raid and not just do karazhan runs. And one of the motivation for doing so was getting that distinctive 25 man gear. I still think it would be cool if 25 man raiding, normal or hard mode, would give raiders an unique look and not just stupid titles and better stats

Challenge and Fun

I won’t dig up the topic of achievements and why I don’t like them as an excuse for content and as the only source of challenging raids, just read my previous post. For me, 25 man raiding had always been the place to look for challenge with still enough space for having a good time. 10 mans were always reserved for joking a round, getting to know folks on teamspeak and just having a good time. This is compromised by easy 25 man raid content, all the raiders that want every last achievement out of every instance including 10 mans and the fact that I just don’t want to see Naxxramas five times a week, pushing my motivation for 10 man raids to a minimum.

Raiding philosophy

Blizzards has just recently posted how they see 10 man raiding and 25 man raiding. And I’m happy to hear they admit that T7 content didn’t turn out as intended, with 25 man raids far too easy and some of the 10 man encounters pretty challenging.

I’m not sure though if blizzard will be able balance raids like they plan, because actually they’d like to achieve two things at the same time:

1. Offering 10 and 25 man raiding as two different paths if roughly equal challenge, one for smaller guilds that love the cosy atmosphere of 10 mans and the pressure it puts on every single player and 25 man raids for everyone who loves huge buffs, big numbers, dozens of buffs and gimmick fights.
2. Offering 25 man raiding as a step up in difficulty, honoring players with better loot for putting together bigger raids and facing hopefully harder encounters

I understand their reasons. They want 10 man raids as a path of its own. They don’t want 10 man guilds become the training ground for 25 man guilds. At the same time they don’t want to alienate 25 man raiders by handing out the same loot you can get in 10 man raids.

A good chunk of my first guild formed a 10 man raiding guild at the beginning of WotLK. I followed their process closely and was surprised how they struggled with the so called easy 10 man content. Some months ago they started doing 25 man raids together with another small guild. They just burned through the 25 man content. So for this specific example blizzard has completely failed at offering 10 man raids as a path worth sticking to.

I’m extremely curious how balancing in Ulduar will turn out. How many guilds that would prefer 10 man raiding but at this point PuG 25 man raids will get back to fully concentrate on 10 man raids? How many 10 man guilds will actually really do hard mode 10 man content or will it rather be an additional challenge for the raiders that do 25 man raids as well, as it is now with sarth3D 10 man version? And how large the gap of difficulty will be, between 10 man raids, 25 man raids, 10 man raids hard modes and the heroic hard modes?

The last point I’d like to mention is blizzards view on “hardcore” content, not in the sense of hard modes but how sunwell turned out. I agree that WoW and its content should be accessible to as many players as possible. On the other hand I strongly disagree with their point of view, that sunwell was too hard and they don’t intend to include raid instances  of that difficulty ever again.

That’s understandable from the stance of a programmer. It is just silly to create instances for a small percentage of players. Blizzard underestimates the impact of high-end content on the community though.

I think it is cool to have content in a game I’ll probably never beat or only with a huge effort. I love the impact of high-end raiding guilds on the community, how people all over the world followed the race to a first kill. I’m not sure that many people during BC were sad they didn’t get to see sunwell. I’m sure that many didn’t agree on the difficulty of T5/6 content. But having an instance like sunwell also brought some kind of a mystical touch to how people saw high-end raiding. Unlike now, where pretty every serious raiding guild can beat all the content in a pretty short time. So my opinion is still, that there should be extremly hard encounters brought into the game simultanousely with all the instances designed for the broad mass, perhaps just as a mini instance or as 1-2 additional bosses.

Additional reading:

Totalbiscuit on Blog Plz and the blue answer to his thoughts.

Eliah Hecht on WoWInsider