09-21-2007, 08:13 PM
Why do attunements exist? What is Blizzard's rationale?
Back before The Burning Crusade, the following attunements existed. Correct me if I missed anything:
1) Molten Core - you required a fragment obtained in Blackrock Depths; what originally was a raid instance you had to blow through to get to MC, became 5-man restricted once they added this attunement. I can only imagine how silly destroying the place with 40 people was to get to the raid instance entrance. Once the attunement was in, it was a 5-man quest group to get there.
2) Blackwing Lair - running UBRS and defeating General Drakkisath would get you attuned.
3) Onyxia - running UBRS and defeating General Drakkisath had a *chance* of getting you attuned; originally, only 1 person at a time could get attuned this way, then it was bumped up to a random number, then it was bumped up to everyone.
4) Naxxramas (hi Gort) - either get to Exalted with the Argent Dawn or "pay" to get in by bringing numerous mats to an NPC, mats that were expensive at the time and now are cheap. Basically it kept people out who weren't at least mildly interested in paying a price to see it.
Technically there were other "attunements" in the form of keys, like having to run LBRS a lot to get an UBRS key, or spending a wad of cash (15g) to get a Scholomance key. However, only one person in a party would need these keys to bring everyone else in.
Looking back at these attunements, all I can ask is, were they even necessary? In terms of timesink, sure. But Blizzard learned quickly how much they irritated players. After your 40th UBRS run to get yet another person attuned to Onyxia, you'd have to want to tear your brains out. People complained. A lot. And look at some of the things Blizzard did over time:
A) General Drakkisath's blood drop rate substantially increased.
B) General Drakkisath (and UBRS in general) made substantially easier to beat.
C) Onyxia questlines made easier; could you imagine needing a raid force every time someone wanted to confront Lady Prestor in Stormwind? At first, you did.
Still, attunements in general are a PITA. Want to bring that 3rd alt of yours into Onyxia for some fun? Oh snap, only on step 12 of the Onyxia quest line, never mind.
The general thinking of attunements goes something like this: for players to want to raid instance X, they need to "prove themselves" by being able to do thing Y. Either through a skill check, gear check, or just plain dedication check. And it's cute the first time you go through it. You feel you're making progress on your character getting the attunements nailed down. But it's a barrier to entry for alts, especially when if you're in a raid force it can be harder to find groups to run "lesser" instances and so on.
I argue that attunements in general are just totally unnecessary. They're pointless, and just serve as a way to slow people down and prevent them from seeing possibly unfinished content. That could indeed be the reason they exist, but then they should all be removed over time. Either that, or institute something that players have been asking for for awhile: once one of your characters has been attuned to something, they all should be.
Blizzard continued the mistake into TBC. The horrendous attunement requirements to get into SSC and Tempest Keep completely blocked all but the dedicated raiding guilds from entry. I was one of only two members in my raid group to get attuned to Tempest Keep before the attunement requirements were removed - most members just weren't interested in "the hassle." The combination of heroic 5-man content and 10-man raid content in order to get attuned to 25-man content was poorly managed and put far too much pressure on raiding guilds to work out attunements. Horror stories of tanks and healers burned out on running heroic Shattered Halls abounded, since they'd have to keep running it over and over for the Trials to get their DPS-mates attuned.
Blizzard completely removed the attunement requirements for SSC and TK. They realized eventually how big of a goof-up they made. If anything, if attunements were ever truly required, they should have been on Gruul and Magtheridon. Beat Gruul, you're ready for SSC. Beat Magtheridon, you're ready for Tempest Keep.
The general logic of "if you can beat X, you must be ready for Y" is, as we know, very flawed. A level 70 wearing all greens who is escorted through some instances to get Karazhan keyed is NOT ready for Karazhan, as an example. You could make the argument, however, that if his buddies are so well geared that they can bring that dead weight along with them on the various instances, they can bring him along to Karazhan too. But it misses the general point that attunements are not a good system to provide proper advancement. They exclude people not necessarily on skill, but on time investment and other factors. That can make some sense sometimes, but not when your 3rd alt has to jump through 40 hoops to get somewhere.
What's a good system to control access to raid zones? The raid instances themselves, of course. If you want to argue that attunements keep people out of zones they're not ready for, there's no real harm in letting them in unless you attach some measure of e-peen in being in an exclusionary place. If you're not ready for BWL, Razorgore is going to completely wafflestomp you. If you're not ready for AQ40, the Anubisath Defender packs are going to leave you a bloody smear on the ground. If you're not ready for Tempest Keep, Void Reaver is going to...oh wait, not really, since Void Reaver is about the same difficulty level as Lurker Below in SSC. Which brings up another point about attunements: they don't coincide with the difficulty curves of instances.
You have to defeat Lady Vashj and Kael'thas Sunstrider to walk into Mount Hyjal. Wow, Mount Hyjal has to be pretty brutal then, right? Nope; the first boss is nowhere near as difficult as those two end-bosses, and nowhere near as difficult as some of the earlier bosses of SSC and TK. It's almost "free" loot compared to them. Take Void Reaver as an example of a boss that is out of whack with its original attunement requirement.
Ultimately, the only true point of attunements may be to limit a raider's choice. If all raiders had a choice of raiding SSC, TK, Hyjal, and Black Temple all at once, that's simply too many instances to tackle in a 7-day schedule. Something's got to give, and what will give will be the lower raid instances. Attunements are a way of saying "look, if you can beat SSC and TK, it's about time you stop running them as much and try out Mount Hyjal." But...when pre-TBC raiders had the freedom to go to MC, BWL, AQ40, and Naxx at the same time, what did the slower guilds run? BWL. People are smart enough to figure out where they should be by gear/experience level, and if they're not, a quick night in the higher zone would show them in a harsh fashion. You can't be taking a Karazhan-geared raid into Black Temple and expect much.
So why have attunements? At all? Ever? In my opinion, attunements are one of a number of things Blizzard got wrong in TBC to help destroy the fabric of casual raiding guilds. If you're in a dedicated raiding guild, it's just another bump in the road, yawn - but in a more social guild, attunements cause more trouble than you'd believe.
Could you imagine that in order to play in arena teams, you had to turn in 100 battleground marks from each existing battleground? Arenas are incredible accessible to anyone, anytime. Some attunements are the equivalent however of having to perform that much pvp. (aaagh, my eyes!)
Your thoughts?
-Bolty
P.S. Rumor has it that the next 25-man raid instance to be released before the next expansion, the Sunwell, will not have any attunement requirement. Is Blizzard learning?
Back before The Burning Crusade, the following attunements existed. Correct me if I missed anything:
1) Molten Core - you required a fragment obtained in Blackrock Depths; what originally was a raid instance you had to blow through to get to MC, became 5-man restricted once they added this attunement. I can only imagine how silly destroying the place with 40 people was to get to the raid instance entrance. Once the attunement was in, it was a 5-man quest group to get there.
2) Blackwing Lair - running UBRS and defeating General Drakkisath would get you attuned.
3) Onyxia - running UBRS and defeating General Drakkisath had a *chance* of getting you attuned; originally, only 1 person at a time could get attuned this way, then it was bumped up to a random number, then it was bumped up to everyone.
4) Naxxramas (hi Gort) - either get to Exalted with the Argent Dawn or "pay" to get in by bringing numerous mats to an NPC, mats that were expensive at the time and now are cheap. Basically it kept people out who weren't at least mildly interested in paying a price to see it.
Technically there were other "attunements" in the form of keys, like having to run LBRS a lot to get an UBRS key, or spending a wad of cash (15g) to get a Scholomance key. However, only one person in a party would need these keys to bring everyone else in.
Looking back at these attunements, all I can ask is, were they even necessary? In terms of timesink, sure. But Blizzard learned quickly how much they irritated players. After your 40th UBRS run to get yet another person attuned to Onyxia, you'd have to want to tear your brains out. People complained. A lot. And look at some of the things Blizzard did over time:
A) General Drakkisath's blood drop rate substantially increased.
B) General Drakkisath (and UBRS in general) made substantially easier to beat.
C) Onyxia questlines made easier; could you imagine needing a raid force every time someone wanted to confront Lady Prestor in Stormwind? At first, you did.
Still, attunements in general are a PITA. Want to bring that 3rd alt of yours into Onyxia for some fun? Oh snap, only on step 12 of the Onyxia quest line, never mind.
The general thinking of attunements goes something like this: for players to want to raid instance X, they need to "prove themselves" by being able to do thing Y. Either through a skill check, gear check, or just plain dedication check. And it's cute the first time you go through it. You feel you're making progress on your character getting the attunements nailed down. But it's a barrier to entry for alts, especially when if you're in a raid force it can be harder to find groups to run "lesser" instances and so on.
I argue that attunements in general are just totally unnecessary. They're pointless, and just serve as a way to slow people down and prevent them from seeing possibly unfinished content. That could indeed be the reason they exist, but then they should all be removed over time. Either that, or institute something that players have been asking for for awhile: once one of your characters has been attuned to something, they all should be.
Blizzard continued the mistake into TBC. The horrendous attunement requirements to get into SSC and Tempest Keep completely blocked all but the dedicated raiding guilds from entry. I was one of only two members in my raid group to get attuned to Tempest Keep before the attunement requirements were removed - most members just weren't interested in "the hassle." The combination of heroic 5-man content and 10-man raid content in order to get attuned to 25-man content was poorly managed and put far too much pressure on raiding guilds to work out attunements. Horror stories of tanks and healers burned out on running heroic Shattered Halls abounded, since they'd have to keep running it over and over for the Trials to get their DPS-mates attuned.
Blizzard completely removed the attunement requirements for SSC and TK. They realized eventually how big of a goof-up they made. If anything, if attunements were ever truly required, they should have been on Gruul and Magtheridon. Beat Gruul, you're ready for SSC. Beat Magtheridon, you're ready for Tempest Keep.
The general logic of "if you can beat X, you must be ready for Y" is, as we know, very flawed. A level 70 wearing all greens who is escorted through some instances to get Karazhan keyed is NOT ready for Karazhan, as an example. You could make the argument, however, that if his buddies are so well geared that they can bring that dead weight along with them on the various instances, they can bring him along to Karazhan too. But it misses the general point that attunements are not a good system to provide proper advancement. They exclude people not necessarily on skill, but on time investment and other factors. That can make some sense sometimes, but not when your 3rd alt has to jump through 40 hoops to get somewhere.
What's a good system to control access to raid zones? The raid instances themselves, of course. If you want to argue that attunements keep people out of zones they're not ready for, there's no real harm in letting them in unless you attach some measure of e-peen in being in an exclusionary place. If you're not ready for BWL, Razorgore is going to completely wafflestomp you. If you're not ready for AQ40, the Anubisath Defender packs are going to leave you a bloody smear on the ground. If you're not ready for Tempest Keep, Void Reaver is going to...oh wait, not really, since Void Reaver is about the same difficulty level as Lurker Below in SSC. Which brings up another point about attunements: they don't coincide with the difficulty curves of instances.
You have to defeat Lady Vashj and Kael'thas Sunstrider to walk into Mount Hyjal. Wow, Mount Hyjal has to be pretty brutal then, right? Nope; the first boss is nowhere near as difficult as those two end-bosses, and nowhere near as difficult as some of the earlier bosses of SSC and TK. It's almost "free" loot compared to them. Take Void Reaver as an example of a boss that is out of whack with its original attunement requirement.
Ultimately, the only true point of attunements may be to limit a raider's choice. If all raiders had a choice of raiding SSC, TK, Hyjal, and Black Temple all at once, that's simply too many instances to tackle in a 7-day schedule. Something's got to give, and what will give will be the lower raid instances. Attunements are a way of saying "look, if you can beat SSC and TK, it's about time you stop running them as much and try out Mount Hyjal." But...when pre-TBC raiders had the freedom to go to MC, BWL, AQ40, and Naxx at the same time, what did the slower guilds run? BWL. People are smart enough to figure out where they should be by gear/experience level, and if they're not, a quick night in the higher zone would show them in a harsh fashion. You can't be taking a Karazhan-geared raid into Black Temple and expect much.
So why have attunements? At all? Ever? In my opinion, attunements are one of a number of things Blizzard got wrong in TBC to help destroy the fabric of casual raiding guilds. If you're in a dedicated raiding guild, it's just another bump in the road, yawn - but in a more social guild, attunements cause more trouble than you'd believe.
Could you imagine that in order to play in arena teams, you had to turn in 100 battleground marks from each existing battleground? Arenas are incredible accessible to anyone, anytime. Some attunements are the equivalent however of having to perform that much pvp. (aaagh, my eyes!)
Your thoughts?
-Bolty
P.S. Rumor has it that the next 25-man raid instance to be released before the next expansion, the Sunwell, will not have any attunement requirement. Is Blizzard learning?
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.