07-13-2006, 12:13 AM
AV used to have a rythm sortof. Push push push until you hit a block, bam one side pulls out a NPC and all of the sudden the stalemate breaks wide open. I loved following a group of wolf riders, frost shocking their targets and healing them up as they smashed through the SP GY.
The problem was that this happened so rarely, with idiots fireing off waves of NPC's at any spastic time, nobody watching the FWAS, nobody on mining, etc.. Without any coordination, and strong NPC's, it usually went way too long.
The other problem was organized groups vs pugs. Raid groups could still smash the old AV in 45min or so, which threw the reward/time all out of whack. That's why they banned organized groups in AV, leaving it to the gibbering idiots.
Unfortunatly it will take crossserver and matchmaking to allow them to restore join as group to 40man BG's. And that's not until the expansion.
The answer should have been to fix the problems without completly gutting the place. Now the average game takes less time then the average AB game. That's just wrong. Its supposed to be epic, and 20 min is not epic. And it screws the honor bonuses up.
That's the point. Go with the first charge and see if you have an exceptional group that will be able to defeat the alliances advantage in pure race games. If not, kill Belinda and a tower or two, then wait for the Allys to finish it, the faster the better. Once the raid groups are past each other, trying to defend against the main crush while the rest of the horde are messing with towers is only going to get you killed. The one thing you may want to defend is your captain - usually the winning side will only have a couple of people trying to get him, so 1-2 people may be enough to save him. Lots of people don't realize you get the same honor/rep bonus for saving your captain as you do for killing the enemy. And if you kill Belinda, 2 towers, and a bunch of named mobs, you get nearly the rep/honor that the winners do.
I think you mean week here, and not run. 17 weeks * 30 epic per week / 60 players is 8 epics per player. I'm deliberatly leaving out crafting, because casuals have no resistance blocking fights. But the biggest thing you are leaving out is learning. SR, help me out here. How long from first zone in to Rag down? We were about 5 months. And even if you are all complete naturals, with a deep and intuitive knowledge of the zone from write ups and movies.... you still need to hit honored with the hydraxians, which will take a few weeks. And you need to farm up cores for a while, if you don't want to be trollkabobs or toasted gnomemellows.
Again, you didn't answer me one way or another. Did you have a core of people who had already raided? People who already had their quintessence? Maybe a tank with 2/3 of a FR set already?
Hey it's a business decision. Once they changed C'thun to make him killable, there were pleanty of guilds that were done with AQ40. If those people started quitting because there was nothing to do, does that take the shine off the apple for the second tier raiders? Are there more people who would quit from that then casuals who can be kept around by another couple of 5 man dungeons? What percentage of causals would stick with the game long term for two dungeons they can beat the first weekend they are out? Is that a better or worse use of 6 months of the R&D time then a raid zone that will probably occupy raiders for 6 months? I don't know.
The problem was that this happened so rarely, with idiots fireing off waves of NPC's at any spastic time, nobody watching the FWAS, nobody on mining, etc.. Without any coordination, and strong NPC's, it usually went way too long.
The other problem was organized groups vs pugs. Raid groups could still smash the old AV in 45min or so, which threw the reward/time all out of whack. That's why they banned organized groups in AV, leaving it to the gibbering idiots.
Unfortunatly it will take crossserver and matchmaking to allow them to restore join as group to 40man BG's. And that's not until the expansion.
The answer should have been to fix the problems without completly gutting the place. Now the average game takes less time then the average AB game. That's just wrong. Its supposed to be epic, and 20 min is not epic. And it screws the honor bonuses up.
Quote:Leeching in AV isn't good for the game, but if everyone does it you'll lose pretty swiftly.
That's the point. Go with the first charge and see if you have an exceptional group that will be able to defeat the alliances advantage in pure race games. If not, kill Belinda and a tower or two, then wait for the Allys to finish it, the faster the better. Once the raid groups are past each other, trying to defend against the main crush while the rest of the horde are messing with towers is only going to get you killed. The one thing you may want to defend is your captain - usually the winning side will only have a couple of people trying to get him, so 1-2 people may be enough to save him. Lots of people don't realize you get the same honor/rep bonus for saving your captain as you do for killing the enemy. And if you kill Belinda, 2 towers, and a bunch of named mobs, you get nearly the rep/honor that the winners do.
Quote:MC + Ony is a bit over 30 epics a week, counting crafts and trash drops. Call it 0.8 per player per run. That puts 17 weeks of regular attendance in a guild that can clear the instance at 13 per person - of your 60 player guild, they'd be concentrated on the players that came regularly. That ignores learning time, but playing a Warlock and a Druid helped. For me raiding was easy, extremely well rewarded and excruciating.
I think you mean week here, and not run. 17 weeks * 30 epic per week / 60 players is 8 epics per player. I'm deliberatly leaving out crafting, because casuals have no resistance blocking fights. But the biggest thing you are leaving out is learning. SR, help me out here. How long from first zone in to Rag down? We were about 5 months. And even if you are all complete naturals, with a deep and intuitive knowledge of the zone from write ups and movies.... you still need to hit honored with the hydraxians, which will take a few weeks. And you need to farm up cores for a while, if you don't want to be trollkabobs or toasted gnomemellows.
Again, you didn't answer me one way or another. Did you have a core of people who had already raided? People who already had their quintessence? Maybe a tank with 2/3 of a FR set already?
Quote:As for making new content, I don't see "we can't produce content faster than players will consume it" - which I understand and accept - as justification for "we will only produce raid content", especially when that raid content is being provided faster than most raid players are consuming it!
Hey it's a business decision. Once they changed C'thun to make him killable, there were pleanty of guilds that were done with AQ40. If those people started quitting because there was nothing to do, does that take the shine off the apple for the second tier raiders? Are there more people who would quit from that then casuals who can be kept around by another couple of 5 man dungeons? What percentage of causals would stick with the game long term for two dungeons they can beat the first weekend they are out? Is that a better or worse use of 6 months of the R&D time then a raid zone that will probably occupy raiders for 6 months? I don't know.