Instance Design in Wrath

[Sir_Die_alot]

The way instances are designed and released in tier 9 has left a bad taste in my mouth.

I'm not fond of t9 either. Probably for a few different and a few of the same reasons. Mostly the badge system but also they have easy mode and hard mode which is EXACTLY the same just hits harder with more hitpoints.

Ulduar is in a weird place for us now. I'd like to focus on killing hard modes, but half of the incentive to go there is gone now that no one really needs gear from there.

I think the mistake blizzard made here is that ulduar hard is harder than TOC normal. Is this a flaw with TOC or a flaw with ulduar? I know much of this talk is about 10 mans which are more just badge farm and the odd BIS piece for me so I kind of ignore them in my thinking. I do think that ulduar hard loot should be > TOC normal even if its only a slight amount.

We farm ToC25 in 1.5 hours or less each week, do a 30m Onyxia and a 15m Vault25, and then WTF are we to do for the other 9-10 hours of scheduled raids? We aren't quite strong enough to do even the first heroic mode ToC25 fight, so that leaves Ulduar25 for the sake of achievements and someday seeing Algalon....

This sounds like just bad management to me. If you're farming ToC25, you should be able to seriously work on TOTGC by now unless you have had some serious defection to other guilds. They are hard. You will wipe. But that's what makes the reward of killing it better. :)

Just seems more and more like bad design to me now and I attribute a lot of our low sign-ups these days to it. The TBC model seemed better to me....releasing two big instances simultaneously (SSC & TK, BT & CoT), no hard modes, just bosses that get harder the deeper you go.

Again I think this is management. If you haven't done something "hard mode" you have only done it as the "casual mode" blizzard put in the game so casual guilds could see content. Its going to be easier that way and that's how blizzard avoids pre BC naxx situations where most servers didn't see more than a couple wings of naxx dead before the expansion. Easy mode is easy by design. Ulduar I think was the best design thus far with this. Most fights are COMPLETELY different when done hard mode. TOTGC is the flawed one where the fights match exactly, they just up hitpoints damage and other minor aspects of fights.

The ToC instance design seems fine for elite guilds that make sure only the best players raid with them all the time and are able to jump right from their first full clears of ToC25 normal mode into heroic mode, but any average guild composed of a mix of great, mediocre, and a few poor players had each normal-mode ToC25 boss on farm the first week they killed it and can clear ToC25 in 1.5 hours, but is a light year from killing heroic beasts.

Again this is the flaw with TOTGC instead of simple ulduar hard modes. Being able to choose boss by boss is nice and they are doing this with icecrown but using the TOC model of higher hitpoints and damage. I think ulduar was the way to go because you double the fights in the game and though they use the same players they are still VERY different fights. Doing it fight by fight instead of the flawed TOTGC way lets the guilds that aren't super bad but aren't super 1337 do something other than farm 25 easy and stone wall on 25 hard. Saying simply there should be no hard modes I see as wrong though because then they would ALL be "hard modes". I think most guilds would be blocked on thorim or freya and never even seen general right now if blizzard had done it that way. The flaw is loot qualities. Once normal TOC 25 came out nobody needed anything out of ulduar 25, including the hard modes.