Nice of Blizzard to screw over casual raiders

[Tuftears]

Saturday isn't badly off, we can still start or finish MC on Saturday. It's Thursday that's in trouble unless we open up the possibility of a Tuesday or Wednesday raid to open an instance that gets completed or continued Thursday. Which is probably likely.

We're going to have to be a little more flexible about our timing if we want to continue rotating content between days.

As new content comes out, we may just need to resign ourselves to picking and choosing which instances we'll run in any given cycle, or doing only some of a raid instance like MC, due to time constraints. For instance, with Ahn'Qiraz coming out with a 40-man run, I could see us having to choose between MC, BWL, and AQ40 for our 40-man run days.

With the expansion... That's several new 40-man raids at least. At least we'll be able to count on something fun to do each raid day!

[WildFire]

Saturday isn't badly off, we can still start or finish MC on Saturday.  It's Thursday that's in trouble unless we open up the possibility of a Tuesday or Wednesday raid to open an instance that gets completed or continued Thursday.  Which is probably likely.

We're going to have to be a little more flexible about our timing if we want to continue rotating content between days.

As new content comes out, we may just need to resign ourselves to picking and choosing which instances we'll run in any given cycle, or doing only some of a raid instance like MC, due to time constraints.  For instance, with Ahn'Qiraz coming out with a 40-man run, I could see us having to choose between MC, BWL, and AQ40 for our 40-man run days.

With the expansion...  That's several new 40-man raids at least.  At least we'll be able to count on something fun to do each raid day!
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The way I understand it is that AQ-20 will be roughly equivalent to a 20-man version of MC. So it's really a contender for a replacement for when we want a change from or have gotten bored having put ZG on farm status... which we haven't as yet. I also think that it's entirely possible that the 40-man raid days could be replaced by TWO 20-man AQ-20 raids.

AQ-40 will, from I understand, be equivalent, if not a step up from BWL, so it's a bit 'out of reach' of the Avarice Alliance for some time. I also read that the place is VERY big - will probably be cleared after 4 or 5 days of continuous progress, so it will not exactly be cut out for casual raiding guilds.

But again, even assuming a flip-up between AQ-20 and ZG for 20-man raids, and MC and BWL for 40-man raids, peppered with Onyxia visits, at some stage in the future, that's still a heck of a lot of content someone who can only make it to one day out of the 3 (4?) raid days Avarice goes on will be missing out on.

I suppose the question we may have to ask ourselves is whether the 'raid instance load' we want to experience will be overwhelming.

[Treesh]

I don't fully understand the issue, but I think you may protest too much.  Consider people in small guilds who would love a chance at finishing high end content or who would at least like to see some of it in their lifetime.  It seems you have it pretty good either way.
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I am quite happy that our alliance was able to actually get into the high end content. I'm very pissed that I get to raid one day out of the week. Thankfully, our leaders understand that frustration and do rotations on when we start instances so I no longer get to see just the beginning of Molten Core. While we were still learning MC, the only boss fights I ever got to see were Luci and Mags. The only chances for equipment upgrades I had were off of Luci and Mags. And they sure as hell weren't dropping priest items when we were doing that. We did switch so we'd open MC on Thursday one cycle, open on Saturday for the next cycle and then open on Monday for the next so those folks who only got to raid one day a week didn't see the same crap over and over and over. It had gotten so bad that we had bosses on farm status that I had never seen yet despite raiding every Thursday. And I really, really enjoy the learning stages of the raids. The possible drops are only interesting to me because in order to be not a total liability in the next learning stages, I need to have better equipment. The new content when it is actually new to most of our alliance is where the fun lies for me at level 60. The more raids I miss, the less I get in on the learning and just have to deal with the tedium of farming the instance.

I'm sure our alliance leaders will figure out something to lessen the blow of this asinine decision, but even if we throw in another raid day to try to keep a rotating schedule, that means I'm missing out on not just 2/3 of the learning, but 3/4 or 4/5 instead. You can call me a drama queen or chicken little all you want, but learning these instances with our Avarice alliance is the only enjoyment left on Stormrage for me. If I'm reduced to only farming instances instead of being able to help learn new things, what's the point in continuing to play there? If my only enjoyment is gone or severely curtailed, why bother when I know I can go have fun elsewhere? Yes, I will horribly miss a lot of the folks on Stormrage (too many to list them all by name), but why bother going on the runs if I can't help others or progress my character either? (The amount of points I gain compared to how little priest loot drops means that it will be months before I get the gear I need to really help in BWL and beyond and I'm quite sure that folks will be damned tired of farming MC anyway by that time.)

[LavCat]

Read my post on the official boards.  It explains exactly why this sucks for us.
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I read through the entire 33 page thread. I did not notice a post from any of your characters, but I admit my eyes started to glaze over. However I think I now understand the issue: there is an exploit whereby players are able to kill bosses more frequently than Blizzard intended. The proposed fix is to cancel ongoing raids at the time of weekly maintenance.

This seems like a poor solution and I can see why it could be an inconvenience. I can see why people are complaining. I can see how some people in a raiding guild could raid less often.

That being said (and it may be sour grapes on my part), in the present scheme of things a person in a small guild is not going to have a chance to raid at all. Sure there is an occasional pickup for MC or ZG, but not often, at least not for MC. Nor is there any way I know for someone who does not go in for the honor/dishonor PvP to get equivalent level items. (For the most part -- an exception that comes to mind might be the Darkmoon amulets.) Most crafted items are poor. Either that or the recipes require materials from someplace like MC. Never mind that some people might actually like to raid.

The level 60 hunter quest is a solo quest, but it requires a BoP drop from MC to start.

I have three reasonably well accoutered level 60 characters (and had a 59 in beta). I do not consider myself a casual player. Yet as the game stands now there is no way I am going to get to experience the content that you take for granted.

[Treesh]

I have three reasonably well accoutered level 60 characters (and had a 59 in beta).  I do not consider myself a casual player.  Yet as the game stands now there is no way I am going to get to experience the content that you take for granted.
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If you knew how much time, effort, blood, sweat and tears have gone into making the alliance work on Stormrage, there would be no way that you could make that comment. No one would be able to make that comment. Yes, some of our folks don't know just how much has gone into making a herd of cats hope to move in the same direction, but some of us are most definitely not taking it for granted that we can get in there at all. What I see is hard work and sacrifice and dedication being #$%& on by Blizzard with this because they're fixing this like they've "fixed" so many other things in other games - by going overboard.

Edit: And Quark's post isn't in the post on the general boards. It's here.

[LavCat]

If you knew how much time, effort, blood, sweat and tears have gone into making the alliance work on Stormrage, there would be no way that you could make that comment.  No one would be able to make that comment.  Yes, some of our folks don't know just how much has gone into making a herd of cats hope to move in the same direction, but some of us are most definitely not taking it for granted that we can get in there at all.  What I see is hard work and sacrifice and dedication being #$%& on by Blizzard with this because they're fixing this like they've "fixed" so many other things in other games - by going overboard.

Edit: And Quark's post isn't in the post on the general boards.  It's here.
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Thanks for the link. I have now read the correct thread (which was mercifully much shorter).

I am not arguing that the proposed fix is a good fix, indeed it seems like an ill considered programming shortcut. I am not making any excuses for the fix at all. I would not wish the fix on you or anyone. Until I read this thread I never knew the problem even existed.

Where I don't follow Quark's logic is that now with the proposed fix you will not be able to see the new instances in Silithus. This makes little sense to me.

Lastly I do not mean to denigrate the work you have put into your group. I tried very hard and failed, as you may well remember. It still hurts.

[Kevin]

Thanks for the link.  I have now read the correct thread (which was mercifully much shorter).

I am not arguing that the proposed fix is a good fix, indeed it seems like an ill considered programming shortcut.  I am not making any excuses for the fix at all.  I would not wish the fix on you or anyone.  Until I read this thread I never knew the problem even existed.

Where I don't follow Quark's logic is that now with the proposed fix you will not be able to see the new instances in Silithus.  This makes little sense to me.

Lastly I do not mean to denigrate the work you have put into your group.  I tried very hard and failed, as you may well remember.  It still hurts.
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The issue for us is that we could have potentially done a 5 "event" rotation over the 3 or 4 days so that would still farm MC if we needed to, still progress/farm MC and had one day in A'Q to explore. The longer rotation would have slowed down the loot getting a bit more (unless we added a steady 4th day) but would have still gotten everyone everywhere over the span of a month. Now if we take some of our raid days for the Silithus stuff we are giving up MC or BWL or having to add another raid day that interferes with the casuals in the guild and we'll have to try and do longer rotations to get it in. With the current raid lock system we would lose like on MC instance every 5 or 6 weeks I think, sticking with just 3 days of 40 mans a week and the new lock outs we would lose an MC about every 3 weeks.

Again we can work with it but it hurts us a lot as we try to gear up and explore getting everyone involved but not raiding too much for the non raiders in the guilds.

[q4m]

This change sucks. I see no reason why they don't just fix the cascading issue instead. If I recommended a shotgun type approach to an issue like this at work, I would expect to be laughed at...at least.

All this does is slow down progress or completely eliminate end game content for some people. Keep in mind that it is in Blizzard's best interest that our progress is slowed. That, in my opinion, is why they are doing this.

I know our alliance will come up with something the majority of people will be happy with. I just would like to slap the person at Blizzard that thought of this :(

[LochnarITB]

I am quite happy that our alliance was able to actually get into the high end content.  I'm very pissed that I get to raid one day out of the week.  Thankfully, our leaders understand that frustration and do rotations on when we start instances so I no longer get to see just the beginning of Molten Core.  While we were still learning MC, the only boss fights I ever got to see were Luci and Mags.
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I can only make one suggestion for if we continue thurs/sat/mon and that is to take a right instead of a left. I know that means we have to take out giants and dogs twice but it does allow us to rotate MC content for our time constrained members. Of course, it still leaves domo and rags for only people that can do sat/mon. Also, if we want monday only people to see rotated content, we would have to forget domo/rags on those lockouts. BWL, however, is a straight through, right? That would mean that thursday people could only see the beginning of BWL.

GAHHH!! It is just ridiculous to have to make such a stupid concession to a stupid "fix". Cascading hurt nobody but the guild that did it. Any claims they had to uber progress and equipment was tainted by the fact that they did it by cheating. If Blizzard really cared about cascading, they would check for those that did it and suspend/ban them. They have done that to make examples of groups they said were using other exploits, why not here? I think this was chosen because it benefits Bliz more than the players, it slows down progress of less hard core groups and keeps them as paying customers longer.

If they really believe this is a fix for cascading, that would make me even madder. It is a pre-school approach. "Well, class, Billy and Bobby were being bad so we're all going to take a nap now." :angry: :angry: