Nice of Blizzard to screw over casual raiders

[Treesh]

Caydiem posted about upcoming raid reset changes that are going to happen with 1.9.

The reset times are as follows:


    * Molten Core: Every 7 Days, resetting during weekly maintenance.
    * Blackwing Lair: Every 7 Days, resetting during weekly maintenance
    * Temple of Ahn’Qiraj (40-man): Every 7 Days, resetting during weekly maintenance
    * Onyxia: Every 5 Days
    * Zul'Gurub: Every 3 Days
    * Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj (20-man): Every 3 Days

So, yeah. Thanks for the asinine idea Blizzard. Looks my my raiding days on Stormrage are more than likely over. Thanks Blizzard. Looks like folks on Terenas will be seeing much more of me. They actually can start raids at a time I can make.

And my deepest condolences to those folks who can only play during the servers' nighttimes since Onyxia, Zul'Gurub and Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj are going to be reset during the servers' offpeak times. I think you guys are going to get screwed over the most.

[Kevin]

I'd like to know what is so horrible about cascading anyway? The only thing I can think of is item inflation. But since most of the items are BoP you'll all have them or have to DE them.

OK so you can kill Ragnaros every day of the week. So you can get your whole raid in the T2 pants faster. It seems most of the guilds that can cascade pretty much have everyone decked out though I guess new members and alts could get decked out quicker. So you get more large brilliant shards or a few gold from vendors from the items everyone already has.

Oh it's the new shards that 1.9 will introduce. Can't get too many of those out there too fast by cascading and DE'ing for them.

The raid ID lockout issues that people had are pretty much gone now that people understand the system and that mucking with a few people isn't really a big issue. Making any guild that wants to raid conform to Blizzards schedule is.

This change does not make me a happy GG. And to be honest if my wife is not able to raid with me at least occasionally I'm going to be leaving raids early or not going as often so I can spend more WoW time with her.

I can not figure out a rotation that will let the Sat only or the Mon only or the Thurs only people see all the content unless we plan to raid every night and shift the MC start day from Tuesday to Wednesday to Thursday to Friday, with BWL shift in there... Bleh.

[Legedi]

Seems like MC is going to have to start on Thursday or Saturday, and day two will either be Saturday on Monday. For people that can only play Saturday, they still get to see everything. For people that can only play Thursday or Monday, well this really screws them over.

Do we have a lot of people that only raid one day a week, and it is Monday or Thursday?

This also basically forces us into a three-day raid rotation over a week instead of the 4 day rotation over 9-10 days.

[Kevin]

Seems like MC is going to have to start on Thursday or Saturday, and day two will either be Saturday on Monday. For people that can only play Saturday, they still get to see everything. For people that can only play Thursday or Monday, well this really screws them over.

Do we have a lot of people that only raid one day a week, and it is Monday or Thursday?

This also basically forces us into a three-day raid rotation over a week instead of the 4 day rotation over 9-10 days.
[right][snapback]95517[/snapback][/right]

It gets worse when we start to progress in BWL or the Silithus instance as well. Now try to get openings and second days of those instances worked in everywhere. The 4 day rotation would have been something like MC 1, MC 2, BWL, Silithus or MC 1, MC 2, BWL 1, BWL 2 with some other changes as best we could.

Without having a potential raid every night of the week I just can't see a way to do it. If we do that though when do I get to help people with alts because yeah I might not be in the raid that night but 2 people an instance group does not make and we usually don't have 40+ on every night even with all the alliance members.

Look at last night, we had 40 through the whole night, just barely. If 3 of those people wanted to take that night off to help someone get leveled up, we don't be domo, we don't see Rags because we only had 4 mages we were using a druid as a tank as it was, we need all those rogues for DPS we had some issues as it was, 3 less people and I think we wiped. Sure we could have done Sulf and Golemag with 3 less people but not domo at this stage and the rag attempts would have been even less helpful.

[Lissa]

Caydiem posted about upcoming raid reset changes that are going to happen with 1.9. 
So, yeah.  Thanks for the asinine idea Blizzard.  Looks my my raiding days on Stormrage are more than likely over.  Thanks Blizzard.  Looks like folks on Terenas will be seeing much more of me.  They actually can start raids at a time I can make. 

And my deepest condolences to those folks who can only play during the servers' nighttimes since Onyxia, Zul'Gurub and Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj are going to be reset during the servers' offpeak times.  I think you guys are going to get screwed over the most.
[right][snapback]95510[/snapback][/right]

Agreed whole heartedly...the way to keep people from cascading is to make major examples of people and to point out on forums why these people/accounts are going bye bye. It's easy for Blizzard to detect if someone is cascading (just look at the number of raid ids a character gets in a week's time, if you see that they have 3 or more raid ids for a particluar instance, they're cascading) and once you know the account is cascading, perma-ban. Now, if they want to continue playing WoW, they have to go out and buy a new copy to get the key code.

Likewise, the ToS gives Blizzard the right to do something like this. There's no need for Blizzard to fix the system, it simply takes them doing a little police work (not hard to do) and deal with the offenders in a manner that shows cascading will not be tolerated.

[Kevin]

Agreed whole heartedly...the way to keep people from cascading is to make major examples of people and to point out on forums why these people/accounts are going bye bye.  It's easy for Blizzard to detect if someone is cascading (just look at the number of raid ids a character gets in a week's time, if you see that they have 3 or more raid ids for a particluar instance, they're cascading) and once you know the account is cascading, perma-ban.  Now, if they want to continue playing WoW, they have to go out and buy a new copy to get the key code.

Likewise, the ToS gives Blizzard the right to do something like this.  There's no need for Blizzard to fix the system, it simply takes them doing a little police work (not hard to do) and deal with the offenders in a manner that shows cascading will not be tolerated.
[right][snapback]95522[/snapback][/right]

How hard is it to check if you have 3 raid ID's and not let you zone in? As you mentioned I can't think of a way where you would need to legitimately have more than 2.

How hard is it to add a field to the character data that says killed Lucifron at XXX time or killed Mags or killed whoever at XXX time and if that boss is alive in that instance while you still have a raid ID for that instance to stop you from zoning in.

I'm very very pissed about this change. Pissed enough to have posted on the official forums.

[oldmandennis]

First off, the sky isn't falling. While I'll admit to being a bit apprehensive, let's give them a chance to flesh this out a bit. Remember, the patch is more then a month away. There could be mitigating details they haven't given out yet. If its in the official patch notes and on the test relms in exactly this form, then you should let them have it.

Also, in that month, you will progress quite a bit. Doing MC over 2 days will probably no longer be appealing.

I think this may be part of a push towards winged dungeons. They are trying to move away from long progressions. For example, what if they redesigned MC to moce Domo from the back of MC to in front of Rag. Essentially you would have a 3 wing dungeon, Lucy-Mag for the nooblets, Gehenias - Golemagg is more advanced, and Domo - Rag for the people who are really getting the hang of it. Now, if dousing the runes resulted in items you could save from week to week, and one set of items summoned Domo, you would have a more flexable system. You could do any of these wings on a week night, if you know what you are doing. You wouldn't need to make the long treck to Domo or park a lock (parking doesn't seem like an intended mechanic to me) to get a lot of attempts on Rag in. And if it fit your schedule better you could do things like Luci - Mag + Domo - Rag.

I just pulled that straight out of my butt. I haven't heard anything that indicates they will do that to existing content. But the winged thing is in the future of new dungeons for sure.

I'd like to know what is so horrible about cascading anyway? 
[right][snapback]95515[/snapback][/right]

Cascading is bad because it defeats the lockout mechanism.

The reasons for the lockout? Well, it narrows the gap between the medium core raiders and the hard core ones. It keeps the hard core ones semi sane. A lot of people who "beat the game" don't come back as is, and if you could do it in a dedicated push of a week or two, and knew there'd be no new loot for several months, even more wouldn't come back.

PS 33 pages of posts and counting, probably a record. Poor CM's who have to read through all of that. When does the post break?

[Quark]

I'm very very pissed about this change.  Pissed enough to have posted on the official forums.
[right][snapback]95525[/snapback][/right]

Hmm, I did too ... here.

[Tuftears]

I think for our Alliance, it's doable if we start using Wednesday as a raid day to open MC for Thursday, which might mean dropping a Monday raid every 4 weeks and making it be Wednesday instead. Then we can still rotate the MC and BWL. When we start making real progress in BWL, we'll need to look at the schedule again... But I'm sure we can figure it out.

It's change, we will need to adjust some of our plans, but it isn't unlivable.

[Kevin]

First off, the sky isn't falling.  While I'll admit to being a bit apprehensive, let's give them a chance to flesh this out a bit.  Remember, the patch is more then a month away.  There could be mitigating details they haven't given out yet.  If its in the official patch notes and on the test relms in exactly this form, then you should let them have it.

Also, in that month, you will progress quite a bit.  Doing MC over 2 days will probably no longer be appealing.

I think this may be part of a push towards winged dungeons.  They are trying to move away from long progressions.  For example, what if they redesigned MC to moce Domo from the back of MC to in front of Rag.  Essentially you would have a 3 wing dungeon, Lucy-Mag for the nooblets, Gehenias - Golemagg is more advanced, and Domo - Rag for the people who are really getting the hang of it.  Now, if dousing the runes resulted in items you could save from week to week, and one set of items summoned Domo, you would have a more flexable system.  You could do any of these wings on a week night, if you know what you are doing.  You wouldn't need to make the long treck to Domo or park a lock (parking doesn't seem like an intended mechanic to me) to get a lot of attempts on Rag in.  And if it fit your schedule better you could do things like Luci - Mag + Domo - Rag.

I just pulled that straight out of my butt.  I haven't heard anything that indicates they will do that to existing content.  But the winged thing is in the future of new dungeons for sure.
Cascading is bad because it defeats the lockout mechanism.

The reasons for the lockout? Well, it narrows the gap between the medium core raiders and the hard core ones.  It keeps the hard core ones semi sane.  A lot of people who "beat the game" don't come back as is, and if you could do it in a dedicated push of a week or two, and knew there'd be no new loot for several months, even more wouldn't come back.

PS 33 pages of posts and counting, probably a record.  Poor CM's who have to read through all of that.  When does the post break?
[right][snapback]95528[/snapback][/right]

No the sky isn't falling but the personal effects on Treesh and I are more significant if it stays this way. I don't mind 7 day or 3.5 day lock outs to limit loots or whatever. There are benefits to many people in knowing that MC will reset every Tuesday as opposed to Tuesday, then Monday, then Sunday, etc. Same goes with the 20 mans, knowing that they reset twice a week helps people. But not giving people the flexibility to change when that reset happens is harsh because some guilds have better attendance on weekdays and not weekends. Setting your rotations to help you get the most out of loot and learning runs is a big thing.

Best solution I've seen/thought of to our alliances rotation problem is having a Monday opening move to a Wednesday opening but the alliance currently doesn't raid on Wednesdays. It took some time to figure out the Monday/Thursday/Sat days as the best for the majority of people. We really aren't in a position to say we can just shift to a Tuesday or a Thursday or a Saturday or a Sunday. People have re-arranged schedules to work with the current days we don't have the people to just raid any night of the week.

I would be much happier with more winged instances. SM, DM and Mara, ST (to an extent) are set up like this and because of it they are are better instances to deal with. But if that is the case the Blizzard should put some of that info out for the angry people.

As to the people who stop after they beat the game, you'll never keep up with them and they do not appear to be the major portion of the WoW populace. You might get 30 to 60 bucks more out of some of them but eh. WoW managed to get a player base that is not the same as other MMO's, that was biggest accomplishment of this game. So I'm not sure this change is good for the larger portion of their subscriber base. It just feels like the easy way to fix cascading.

I'm not sure the lock-out narrowed the gap all that much between medium and heavy raid guilds. The new system won't help that either. Heavy raid guilds that can raid pretty much any night of the week won't be affected by this at all (except that the lock out is longer so it slows them down a bit). Guilds that can only raid on weekends or during the week days now fall farther behind because if they have a night where something goes badly they may lose the option of putting another night in unless they start their raids on Tuesday. If you normally did your clears Fri/Sat with an option for Sunday you are still fine. If you did your trash clears on Sat/Sun and then did your learning runs Mon-Fri with the people who could dedicate time to them you can't do that anymore and it's very likely the Mon-Fri raiders don't really need the gear that the clears are creating. The people who can't raid as much as the more dedicated raiders right now are losing the flexiblity to do learning runs to help make the farm status happen.

For us I'm hopeful that just one or two more attempts on Razorgore has us killing him, which for us is probably 2 more weeks out. But that means that since we can't float the start of BWL after the patch comes out that we won't be as easily able to keep farming MC and learn BWL because of when the resets will happen. We need to keep farming MC because we need some item help on Rags and for BWL past Razorgore from what I understand (as well as more practice). One month will not get us out of MC (that is only 4 more clears, we aren't gearing up just 40 or 50 people, we have I think 98 active raiding toons and while some are alts we have needed those alts at times to get us the class balance to be more successful). Doing a one day MC will never happen for us, I don't see us having 5 to 6 hours to devote to that and still give all the people that need or want chances at certain bosses those chances. So for us one month out is not that far off and we will still be doing 2 day MC runs. Heck we've only recently gone from needing 3 nights of 2 to 3 hours to the 2 nights of 2 to 3 hours.

We aren't the only group out there like this. I saw many complaints from people on the official boards that were similar.

I'm still very uhappy with this change as announced and the fact they tried to claim it would help people.

[castille]

Honestly? I don't see the big deal. We can keep the same raid days, we just shift which days we start at. We already have some latenight ZG runs, as is, on Stormrage. Really, if we start raids on Thursday, do them Saturday and Monday, just like we do now, but more in this order, we will have the same raid days at the same time. Might mean some will miss specific bosses, but I'm sure we can work something out where every few weeks, we start on Saturday, or only do 4 or 5 bosses of MC on Monday -- I mean, honestly, we could start doing boss fights on Monday, then the same boss fights on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday as the new instance, giving us more a chance to farm specific set pieces on the bosses we do know, which giving more practice on those bosses.

Just .. another way of looking at it.

[Lissa]

Honestly? I don't see the big deal. We can keep the same raid days, we just shift which days we start at. We already have some latenight ZG runs, as is, on Stormrage. Really, if we start raids on Thursday, do them Saturday and Monday, just like we do now, but more in this order, we will have the same raid days at the same time. Might mean some will miss specific bosses, but I'm sure we can work something out where every few weeks, we start on Saturday, or only do 4 or 5 bosses of MC on Monday -- I mean, honestly, we could start doing boss fights on Monday, then the same boss fights on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday as the new instance, giving us more a chance to farm specific set pieces on the bosses we do know, which giving more practice on those bosses.

Just .. another way of looking at it.
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The problem is that people have scheduled around certain days. Some people can only make Mondays, some Thursdays, others Saturdays. We also move around on which nights we go to certain instances so that people that can only make those certain days get to see all parts. With the fact that MC, BWL, and the upcoming 40 man A'Q instances will all reset on Tuesdays, this means that we can never start an instance on Monday night for those people that can only make mondays. This means that they will never see loot from the start of the instance. This is one reason why this is a big problem.

The other thing that people have a problem with, and Blizzard never seems to understand this, is that you use a scalpel to fix a problem instead of a sledge hammer (Blizzard's preferred method) to fix the issue.

[castille]

The problem is that people have scheduled around certain days.  Some people can only make Mondays, some Thursdays, others Saturdays.  We also move around on which nights we go to certain instances so that people that can only make those certain days get to see all parts.  With the fact that MC, BWL, and the upcoming 40 man A'Q instances will all reset on Tuesdays, this means that we can never start an instance on Monday night for those people that can only make mondays.  This means that they will never see loot from the start of the instance.  This is one reason why this is a big problem.

The other thing that people have a problem with, and Blizzard never seems to understand this, is that you use a scalpel to fix a problem instead of a sledge hammer (Blizzard's preferred method) to fix the issue.
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So, plan like it has always been this way, from the beginning. We are getting to the point where, at least, it seems like we have little to no trouble with the beginning mobs of MC -- dedicate a skip week to allow those beginning bosses of the various instances. You can have a week where you have an instance that starts on x day for whatever purpose, and you have to work around it. Maybe we have 3 weeks of normal play, then 1 week of a skip week where on the specified day, we do the very specific portion of an instance. For instance, doing the beginning of MC on a Monday evening. Or on a Saturday. Then the rest of the people who can attend whenever will be able to do whatever they want with the rest of the raid lock -- be it trash loots or whatever.

I'm just saying that this is how it is, no amount of complaining is going to really change it. Instead of grousing about what is, try and change the viewpoint to look at it in another light. If anything, this just means we can coordinate more efforts on very specific pieces of instances.

[Editted out some typoes]

[Quark]

I'm just saying  that this is how it is, no amount of complaining is going to really change it. Instead of grousing about what is, try and change the viewpoint to look at it in another light. If anything, this just means we can coordinate more efforts on very specific pieces of instances.
[right][snapback]95540[/snapback][/right]

I actually doubt Blizzard had the foresight to think of a group like ours, which is why I made the post on their boards. Given the unlikeliness of it to change back, though, we will have to hash out something (and there are some ideas going on in the CA general/raidcouncil forums). The simple fact is, though, we were delaying "best" loot/attempt raids to allow less available people to see all of MC, and keeping that up now will delay us even more.

[Kevin]

So, plan like it has always been this way, from the beginning. We are getting to the point where, at least, it seems like we have little to no trouble with the beginning mobs of MC -- dedicate a skip week to allow those beginning bosses of the various instances. You can have a week where you have an instance that starts on x day for whatever purpose, and you have to work around it. Maybe we have 3 weeks of normal play, then 1 week of a skip week where on the specified day, we do the very specific portion of an instance. For instance, doing the beginning of MC on a Monday evening. Or on a Saturday. Then the rest of the people who can attend whenever will be able to do whatever they want with the rest of the raid lock -- be it trash loots or whatever.

I'm just saying  that this is how it is, no amount of complaining is going to really change it. Instead of grousing about what is, try and change the viewpoint to look at it in another light. If anything, this just means we can coordinate more efforts on very specific pieces of instances.

[Editted out some typoes]
[right][snapback]95540[/snapback][/right]

And do you realize the number of people in the guilds that think we raid to much? In order to do this we would have to have raids on Wednesdays or Tuesdays to get the things set up for the Thursday people. In order to still allow people access to the raiders to help them with lower level stuff that means we drop a Monday or Saturday out completely so the part time raiders are still losing a day.

We can work with and we are planning with it. We aren't all just grousing. But for out group this new set-up can never be as nice as it is for us now. You can't do it. We have worked hard to try and get things set-up so that everyone in the guilds can have an opportunity to play the game how they like. The raids aren't just set-up to make the raiders happy we are trying to keep the non raiders happy as well.

I'm also trying to keep most of my grousing to the threads on the official forums in the hopes that Blizzard wakes up and changes their minds on this. My complaint here was that I know no matter what we do we are going to to hurt Treesh's raiding time in some way. I was letting people know that because of this and my priorities that this change will also adversely affect the amount of time I will be raiding because playing WoW with Treesh is what we do. Other couples go out to movies or dinner or parties with their friends. Treesh and I get more enjoyment out of playing WoW together than out of those other options most of the time. Treesh will not enjoy the effort and time that goes into raiding if it drops from 4 to 5 times a month to 2 to 3 times a month or if her raiding time is always seeing the same thing. Since I still don't see a solution that gives 4 to 5 raid days a month to all our part time people without putting them in the same content all the time or adversely affecting the non raiding population there is a good chance her choice will not be to raid on Thursdays. That means I will probably not raid on Thursdays so that I still have that WoW playing time with her.

But again most of what I have said here is on the official boards where it is more appropriate. Quark put a thread up http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...ThreadID=240784 on those boards just for that as a matter of fact.

[oldmandennis]

I'm still very uhappy with this change as announced and the fact they tried to claim it would help people.
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That's just it. There is a lot of announcing left to do before this goes live.

I'm just saying its premature to start declaring you are leaving a sucessful raiding group.

The lockout system absolutly narrows the gap between medium and heavy raiding guilds. There are probably less then 200 people worldwide 8/8 tier 2. Getting your whole raid there takes a minimum of 20 raids = 5 months. That's enough time to get new content out. If you removed the lockout, heavy raiders would be done in a month.

[Kevin]

That's just it.  There is a lot of announcing left to do before this goes live.

I'm just saying its premature to start declaring you are leaving a sucessful raiding group.

The lockout system absolutly narrows the gap between medium and heavy raiding guilds.  There are probably less then 200 people worldwide 8/8 tier 2.  Getting your whole raid there takes a minimum of 20 raids = 5 months.  That's enough time to get new content out.  If you removed the lockout, heavy raiders would be done in a month.
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Yes but that is a benefit to Blizzard. It doesn't really affect the players that much. Blizzard wants to keep players around. Someone having a full T2 set while I'm still in blues doesn't affect me that much in game, if PvP were are more level playing field or doing something "first" made a real tangible difference that it would be more of a concern from a player side. But since those things aren't level and bragging rights are all that being first really gives you it doesn't affect me that much. That was my point. Those players leaving the game doesn't affect me that much either as long as there aren't so many of them to make a sever collapse and I don't think that is the case.

[LavCat]

Caydiem posted about upcoming raid reset changes that are going to happen with 1.9. 
So, yeah.  Thanks for the asinine idea Blizzard.  Looks my my raiding days on Stormrage are more than likely over.
...[right][snapback]95510[/snapback][/right]

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.

[Quark]

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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Read my post on the official boards. It explains exactly why this sucks for us.

[WildFire]

Being someone that can only make Saturdays reliably, and maybe the odd Thursday and Monday, I'm not a happy camper.

Will be missing out on a whole lot more of content.

Ah well, maybe it's time to evaluate whether it's worth continuing to play this game, or whether it's time to move on.