World Of Warcraft Discussion Thread

[siya]

Originally Posted by Sugetsu

I am on kael'thas which server are you guys on?

Koz'Goroth for me

[StarTouch]

Originally Posted by Wordplay

That's still better than what we got here: we got exactly two guilds capable of running Karazhan regularly and only now they are *almost* about to enter to Gruul's Lair. One of which declined my request to join in, effectively cutting my chances to get into raids by 50% right there.

Getting to see anything after Gruul's is impossible on our server due of that reason alone.


That's true. Rogues are also ones to suffer from this, since many of the raid bosses have insta-gib spells and if the rogue aggroes them too much, he's toast for sure. It would be much better if the first two or three raid-areas had more slack to spare instead of everyone having to play by the script to the dot. Frankly, I do not believe any of the raids to be doable in any other way, since the damage output of the mobs and bosses is so ridicilously high.


Very rarely, I'd say. I went to Zul'Gurub once with about ten lv.70 guildies and it was terribly boring. I'm sure we could had even ran it like a regular dungeon with five men, minus the loot and EXP. But I heard that they were going to redesign Naxx for lv.80 characters, so perhaps it's not totally hopeless to see some other, old raids being fitted for new content...


That's how I feel too. You could say we have seen the ending screens, so time to move on to do other things.

1) I sympathise with your situation (on your server). If your server is one of the newer ones (which I believe it is, also I didn't really read any previous posts...so if I'm wrong, let me know ^_^), chances are...the raiding scene there would be kinda lacking. My server was pretty similar and it would be even more embarrassing to mention that it is one of the oldest servers of WoW (release day launch). One guild with just one kill in Serpentshrine Cavern (take note once again, one of the oldest servers. You'd expect better from a bigger and older bunch). It was then that my guild of 15+ decided going around recruiting the best players of the server who weren't already guilded.

We started on Gruul, far behind the server first guild (at that time) and have since muscled our way into Black Temple / Hyjal, being at top of our server and joining the other top 3% of the playerbase in the world in Black Temple. Lots of blood, sweat and tears. I'd say "never give up and keep trying" but if all else fails, a server x-fer / reroll is one thing to consider. PvP servers are generally the most competitive and furthest-progressed servers in WoW.

2) Rogues are generally squishy. Sacrificing utility and general survivability for pure upfront damage. They have a few clutch tools to save themselves but nothing like standing 35+ yards away from a boss / mob and dishing out damage from a safe distance. Having said that, rogues are the kings of dps in end-game content and there are guilds who would intentionally kick out mages / hunters to fill the raid ranks with more rogues. Aggro is generally a non-issue to be honest. Helpful tools like Omen or KTM (though I prefer Omen) are a clutch in maximizing dps without pulling aggro. Vanish and feint are two tools to keep aggro below the tank (though feint is almost never used. I've never seen my rogues use feint, our MT does just fine on aggro).

Environmental / AoE damage is a primary concern for melee dps. Cloak of Skill...err Shadows can only get so far. However, much of this also applies to the other dps-ers, ranged included. TBC demands every raider take good care of themselves. Health pots / Health stones / Protection pots are game-winners and no longer are healers always held responsible for every raid member's death (unless it's a blatant case of dozing off).

3) I wouldn't say raid encounters must be played to the dot of their respective scripts. There are some laughable "tank-and-spanks" but they are few and far in between. The most amazing encounter in the game-to-date is Kael and I've had the pleasure of facing him with my raidmates and in no way is the fight done with the exact same routine every time we go back to face him. Positionings vary, even a dps strategy alters from raid to raid. You can bring 8 healers and go for a controlled fight. You can bring as little as 5 healers and go for a dps burn. Phase 3 is never the same (as Thaladred the Darkener just picks random targets to chase and potentially kick their butts). Mind-controls are also totally random and it's not surprising to have all three main tank healers MC-ed at once in phase 4.

Sure, one can follow strategy guides and execute perfectly...in theory. Practically, something will ALWAYS go wrong on your "first" kills. That's where no strategy guide can save the raid and it depends on individuals to adapt to the situation. Overall, TBC raiding demands adapting on the fly and I'm pleased with most of the work Blizzard has done. There are some stupidly dumb "cockblocks" in PvE admittedly but they've been hotfixed, mostly.

[Ending]

and there are guilds who would intentionally kick out mages / hunters to fill the raid ranks with more rogues.

That doesn't sound too wise to me. Mages and warlocks have so much more utility in addition to high DPS. For example: kiting, decursing, and pets. They can AoE and single-target whereas rogues can only hit one target at a time, which are usually immune to majority of their poisons and CC abilities. Which makes them exist solely for DPS that is better performed by the ranged classes.

You can bring 8 healers and go for a controlled fight.

You know, we have only about that many priests, in total, here, myself included. Six of which are in the "bad" guild.

That's where no strategy guide can save the raid and it depends on individuals to adapt to the situation.

If the main-tank dies, there is nothing to adapt to. The boss will wipe everyone and that's it. It's the same thing if one or two of the healers accidentally die: it's game over despite 90% of the others still being alive.

[StarTouch]

Originally Posted by Wordplay

That doesn't sound too wise to me. Mages and warlocks have so much more utility in addition to high DPS. For example: kiting, decursing, and pets. They can AoE and single-target whereas rogues can only hit one target at a time, which are usually immune to majority of their poisons and CC abilities. Which makes them exist solely for DPS that is better performed by the ranged classes.


You know, we have only about that many priests, in total, here, myself included. Six of which are in the "bad" guild.


If the main-tank dies, there is nothing to adapt to. The boss will wipe everyone and that's it. It's the same thing if one or two of the healers accidentally die: it's game over despite 90% of the others still being alive.

1) So far in Hyjal / Black Temple, there are plenty of dps races to kill a boss before it kills you. Mages are found to be lacking in the dps departments and various top guilds in the world did / are stacking their raids with rogues. Can a mage / hunter fit in? Definitely. In terms of min-maxing though, they're not the cream of the crop for those outright dps races. Examples being Kaz'rogal (burning mana ftl, basically Kazzak 2.0), Reliquary of the Lost (kill them before they kill you) and pre-nerfed Mother Shahraz (not really a dps race at that time, but more of range dps being gimped to hell due to mechanics). AoE is a non-issue and is mostly limited to trash. When my rogues are doing 1300+ dps and my mages are doing 1K+, I certainly would favour my rogues in a pick on the roster. Staying alive is not a problem thus far on the fights I've been on.

For CC, 2 mages is often enough to keep a couple of adds sheeped while the MT + 2-3 OTs (other warriors or/and feral druids) pick the loose ones up. Hunters are rarely brought for kiting (though we do use a hunter to kite some ghouls in Hyjal) but even then, it's mostly on trash mobs. BM hunters are pretty hot dps atm but still nothing compared to a warlock or rogue. Mages got the short end of the stick from Blizz (though they're getting buffed in 2.3, so hooray for them ^_^).

2) It's true that a main-tank dying is often a guaranteed wipe. That hinges on the healers (assuming the MT doesn't do any stupid stuff like standing in that BLAZING HOT RING OF FIRE, just to give an example ) to be able to do their job. However, not always a MT dying is a guaranteed wipe. We've had our MT die on Vashj (our shaman didn't drop a grounding totem T_T) at 20+% and still managed to recover. We also had our MT die on Supremus (yes, embarrassing >_<) but we got through it by just spam healing one tank to the end (the OT taking the hurtful strikes). There are guilds who have killed Illidan but had their warlock tank die to the demon phase. Solution to that? Get a hunter to Feign Death and swap in Shadow Resist gear. That's something that you will never see in any strategy guide and requires quick thinking. There are various examples that quick adapting to a bad situation can prove to be a clutch in beating the encounter. Not an excuse to perform badly obviously but when things go wrong (tank DC-ing, healers DC-ing, people being dumb, etc), the raid is expected to think of a solution to quickly adapt. Of course, not every situation is salvagable but then again, not every bad thing is a hopeless cause. ^_^

3) You have 8 priests? Damn! We only have 4 (2 holy, 2 shadow) xD

[Jazzrat]

Originally Posted by siya

Koz'Goroth for me

another Kaz'gorothian here.

Rogues are the prime dps class in BT/Hyjal due to haste gear. Mages were seriously lacking in the dps department and having more than 1 mages doesnt really gives you much except more polymorph/frost nova which is mostly useless in a boss fight.

However, the next patch would see some changes to that.





Also, Hunters are actually a good dps class. My guild usually have the locks n hunters topping the dps chart (at SSC/TK).

[Sugetsu]

This game has a huge problem when comes to raiding, and the one to blame is its raiding design. It makes it actually quite difficult to find enough people to even do a 25 man. This is why only 10% or less of the WoW population only make it to high end content. This is not the players fault, most people in this game want to see high end content but they simply do not meet certain conditions that I will list further down. It is up to blizzard to fix this issue.

As a former officer for AQ40 and naxx guilds and former guild master and founder of my current raiding guild I know this problematic all too well. It is quite alarming to me.

The big problem with raiding is that you need 25 people that can show up at the same time for at least 2 to 5 hours depending on how hardcore the raiding guild is. Well thats not too hard if you have about 35 active members (A guild with only 25 active members would never progress) But, if you want to get past gruul then you need about 45 active members all with high skill and knowledge about the game mechanics and class.

Here is a curious thing, all guilds that I have seen that are past gruul in my server and in other servers are all Pre-burning crusade guilds or new guilds formed in a new server where all the transfers are level 70s. Why is this you ask? Well if you are in an older server with an already established raiding community, where all hardcore players already belong to guilds, it is quite hard to create a new guild and look for 35+ level 70 people that meet the following conditions:

a) Has time to play the game a lot, farms consumables, gear and has all his keys.
b) Can show up to raid at least 4 days a week.
c) Knows his class very well.
d) Has a good connection and good reflexes during game play.
e) Has good attitude and is willing to listen to instructions and focus during raids.
f) Does research on all boss encounters without waiting for the raid leader to explain the fight over and over.

A guild that wants to progress and see high end content must have players with these qualities, and must have good leadership with commited officers that spend time on the guild. All these requirements are quite difficult to achieve in 90% of the gaming community because most people have real life to take care of.

Trying to make raids smaller was a good move by blizzard, but 25 man raids are still too big. This is why most guilds are stuck at karazhan, which is actually a very manageable number for any guild, making karazhan the most popular raiding instance in the game. Wanting to progress further but finding 25 more people that meet the qualities listed above is quite a feat in itself.

I wish Blizzard would make raids even smaller again to about 15 or just leave it at 10 people. I am sure they can make fights just as epic as the ones that require 40 or 25 people.

[hooliganj]

Alliance on Thunderhorn, Horde on Azjol-Nerub - neither one is a very prominent server, although Thunderhorn is one of the original beta servers.

My only 70 is a pally on Thunderhorn, who as I said, has trouble getting into any kind of raid (or even groups, most days), so I've taken to farming, and creating lots of alts. I would have suspended my account to wait for the new expansion, except my g/f plays, so I've been building up a horde priest so I can run instances with her hunter.

Anyway, as Sugetsu points out - the amount of preparation and homework required for most end-game raiding seems to preclude anyone who has anything else to do. Those of us with jobs, school, outside hobbies or significant others may just have to be content to play for the occasional fun or waste of time, and let the truly hardcore get on with the end-game.

[StarTouch]

I agree that raiding can be quite demanding at times...and frustrating, to boot. There are many factors that come together as Sugetsu pointed out such as dedication, skill, activity, etc. However, the factor I'd like to go in-depth would be dedication. It is usually what stagnates, breaks or progresses a guild in content.

When my guild was making attempts on Kael'thas in the past, we were repeatedly getting our faces beaten into a wall. It was frustrating, people were making stupid mistakes, tensions flared, people start disconnecting (genuinely AND "on purpose")...you get the picture. Not before long, on Kael'thas attempts, I'd see only 23-24 people online in the guild. People were unwilling to show up and would rather to do the farm content. After the threat of recruiting / gkicking people, a few more showed up and after a couple more weeks...Kael finally died, we entered Hyjal ---> downed the first boss, Rage ---> entered Black Temple. And oh behold, suddenly I'm seeing 32+ online in the next raiding week. I'm sure one would get the idea I'm trying to drive home by saying the above.

What holds back guilds ultimately is to get people to return day after day to beat their faces against a brick wall once you get to a difficult encounter (Pre-nerfed Magtheridon, Kael'thas, Archimonde, Reliquary of the Lost, Pre-nerfed Mother Shahraz, just to give some examples). A lot of people aren't willing to put in the effort to learn complex encounters which would wipe your raid time and time after again when you return. This would include research, theorycrafting, farming and of course, actually attending the raid.

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I personally think 25 is the perfect number for raiding. 40 was a nightmare on the logistics / administrative end for the raid leaders. As much as I support the idea of raids downsizing even more to 15 (I'd really disagree on 10), there are various concerns that are already expressed by the general raiding community.

I'd love for encounters to be epic (I loved C'thun, Kael, just to give a few examples of great encounters) but it is increasingly more difficult to create dynamic, creative and challenging encounters as a raid size decreases. While the developers do their best to try this, they admit that there are limitations due to current game mechanics.

Also, certain classes / specs (more on specs though, rather than classes themselves) would be picked as a primary priority over another, should raids be downsized again. Utility would be an even greater aspect to emphasise for raiding guilds and certain classes / specs with not so amazing utilities like say...a restoration druid may be benched for a restoration shaman (totems, heroisms, best raid healing spell a.k.a chain heal versus tree of life aura + HoTs). Paladins are more than guaranteed for at least 2-3 raid spots should raids be downsized to 15. Great blessings, the best single-target healers in the game, durable, life-saving clutches...hard to pass them up. Overall, more and more classes would be pigeon-holed into certain specs and in the worst case scenario...be totally left out. Of course, I'm speaking from a strictly min-maxing mentality and assuming if game mechanics stay the way as they are now. Theorycrafting, on my part. ^_^

Just my opinions and sorry for the long posts of doom. xD

[Ending]

Can a mage / hunter fit in? Definitely. In terms of min-maxing though, they're not the cream of the crop for those outright dps races.

Perhaps. I have not been that far in the game and never will be, knowing it will become obsolete when exp2 comes out, but what you said made me wonder why some guilds still turn down capable people when they need everyone they can get...

Of course, not every situation is salvagable but then again, not every bad thing is a hopeless cause.

Again: perhaps, but you only need to lose 10-20% of your raid or a single healer/tank for it to turn hopeless.

This is why only 10% or less of the WoW population only make it to high end content.

IIRC, 3%. Remember reading about this on the official forums, where this one guy calculated the value based on the "Most Run Instances" -list in the armory. This only to say that for the 97% of us there is NO end-game content.

you need 25 people that can show up at the same time for at least 2 to 5 hours depending on how hardcore the raiding guild is. Well thats not too hard if you have about 35 active members

Thus far it has also required one hour to even start the whole raid with the players I have been with, since no one ever follows the set schelude and makes the rest of us wait. Especially annoying if the GM prick enough to conciously allow it.

Personally, I think finding guild-members is too difficult at the moment and the build-in LFM tool could be better. There should be announcement boards, purchasable recruitment NPCs, and somekind of tournament days to make it easier to find peeps. Sadly, on our server there simply aren't enough lv.70 people to make it possible to have more than one or two raiding guilds... Sucks, since raids are too difficult for casual PuGs and there isn't anything else to do after heroics.

All these requirements are quite difficult to achieve in 90% of the gaming community because most people have real life to take care of.

That's what I think too: one hour fiddling your thumbs before raid begins, four hours raiding, numerous wipes and work to fit into the script, and 150g repair-costs per week without necessarily getting any loot during that time. Where is the fun in that?

This is why most guilds are stuck at karazhan, which is actually a very manageable number for any guild

I'm actually thinking about the way Guild Wars works at the moment. IIRC, it was much easier there (before I got bored to the whole game) to find people due of the simple fact that it was absolutely impossible to continue on the road if you didn't team up. I think you could get 20 people together in 15 minutes without problems, since everyone was in the same boat.

WoW should look example from there... in addition to the no monthly fees policy.

[StarTouch]

Originally Posted by Wordplay

Again: perhaps, but you only need to lose 10-20% of your raid or a single healer/tank for it to turn hopeless.


IIRC, 3%. Remember reading about this on the official forums, where this one guy calculated the value based on the "Most Run Instances" -list in the armory. This only to say that for the 97% of us there is NO end-game content.

1) It would really depend when you start losing raidmates in a certain encounter. If you lose 10-20% off the bat when an encounter begins, then yes...it would be wise to call a wipe and quickly restart. If it's in the middle of a fight, a safe estimate would be about 20-30% and if it's during the last 20% of a boss' health, more often than not, it is not surprising to see a raid with 13-15 members alive enduring that final stretch for a kill. Of course, this would vary across the encounters but I'm just generally giving a rough estimate. ^_^

2) I believe I've read the post too on the Raid & Dungeons forums and it turns out he's actually pretty right on his estimates. www.wowjutsu.com has 3.47% of the world's guilds in Black Temple. Take note that wowjutsu.com does not include possible alliances between guilds but the figure shouldn't inflate that much. Overall, he's spot-on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~

In all, I believe blizzard should pay heed to the more casual bunch a bit more. More 10-15 man dungeons would be great to keep people occupied (those who aren't able to land a spot in a serious raiding guild) and this may even help out hardcore raiders too in filling up on the odd itemization gaps (healing trinkets generally suck at the moment, just to give an example. When the only upgrade to my healing trinkets is at Illidan, something is a bit wrong. Mind you, my trinkets come from pre-TBC and the heroic reward trinket).

In the end, what's left for end-game guilds who have "beaten the game"? Farming the instances in 8-10 hours over 2 days and having the week off. Not that my guild has already cleared Hyjal / BT (hoping to kill Archimonde next week and then work on the second-half of BT) but I imagine that it's no more frustrating than the playerbase who can't raid at all. I think 10-15 man dungeons are the way to go for now (as in, adding more of them) and Zul'aman in patch 2.3 is a good step...but it's still not enough, in my opinion.

[hooliganj]

Well, the current schedule has the 10 man Zul'aman in 2.3, Sunwell as a combo 5/25 man dungeon at some point in the near future, and then we're looking at Northrend, barring any more new announcements in between. They've already said that Zul'aman would be about the same level of difficulty as Kara, and I can't imagine the 5 man version of Sunwell being much tougher than the heroics, so I think Blizzard is also aware that they need more casually oriented end-game content.

[Sugetsu]

I have been on both sides of the fence when it comes to guild progression. I have been raid officer for one of the best guilds in the server before BC came out, and I have also formed a guild from scratch just by having people off of my friends list.

People in an end game raiding guild are in a very privileged position. Only when you become a part of a new guild you realize the big obstacles you have to go through in order for your guild to become hardcore. The most difficult part is recruiting, as Wordplay stated.

All guilds have 2 types of players; hardcores and casuals. The hardcore players are the ones that meet the requirements I mentioned earlier. The casuals are the ones that meet some of the requirements but not all of them. The more people you got in the guild the more hardcore players there will be, even some casuals can become hardcore if there is enough motivation. The big problem is that 25 people is still too large a number for raiding, specially if you are in a new guild. For example for Magtheridon you need: 4 to 5 tanks, 3 to 5 warlocks and 7 to 9 healers. It can be done with less but only when you have him on farm, anything on SSC and The eye requires 3 tanks, 2 locks and 7 healers minimum. Gruul's Lair, on the other hand, doesn't require any specific classes as long as you have 4 tanks. The class requirements make it quite hard for any new guild to get past gruul's, it is not impossible for the new guilds get past that content if they keep trying, the problem is patience. It can take up to 6 months or more in order for the guild to grow enough (that if it doesn't suffer from any major drama) but not all players are patient, once they get gear up they might go to the older guilds because they don't feel like farming the same content over and over until their current guild has enough to do something else. Only older guilds who have gone through trouble before BC came out are the ones that are making progress past gruul at this point. (Or new guilds formed in recently created servers)

Then comes the problem between new and old guilds. The old ones are in a privileged position because they can recruit whoever they want from any new guild, therefore they can weed out the casual from the hardcore. If raids were about 15 players maximum it would be much easier to start a raid because statically a guild never has more than 15 players on at all times, it is only when raid time approaches that this numbers start to fluctuate. I welcome anyone to refute this claim.

If blizzard doesn't reduce raids to a manageable size, nothing will change and there will always be a 3% that can do 25 man raids while the rests does Karazhan lol

[Ending]

Reducing the size might be one option, but I would prefer to see big raids more than just extended 5-man dungeons. So how 'bout... you know... just reducing the difficulty? Current raid-difficulty could be the new "heroic raid" instead.

I wouldn't mind seeing more alternatives to Alterac Valley either.

[StarTouch]

Reducing the overall difficulty of boss encounters, as Wordplay suggested, has been mentioned about a few months ago by some players. The idea has been supported by both the raiding and non-raiding playerbase. However, Blizz reps did not touch on the topic and it has dissolved amidst the junk on the WoW forums.

I too, am all for the idea of a reduced difficulty (and maybe even raid cap) for a "normal" boss encounter (with a "heroic" level being as it is now).

My theorycraft on the matter is that Blizz on their end just wants people to stick around and try to form up a larger group / raid / guild amongst themselves to be able to raid content as it is now. After all, more time spent = more money for Blizz. That is probably their way of thinking, from my point of view.

Not that it works in my opinion.

[siya]

Originally Posted by StarTouch

Reducing the overall difficulty of boss encounters, as Wordplay suggested, has been mentioned about a few months ago by some players. The idea has been supported by both the raiding and non-raiding playerbase. However, Blizz reps did not touch on the topic and it has dissolved amidst the junk on the WoW forums.

I too, am all for the idea of a reduced difficulty (and maybe even raid cap) for a "normal" boss encounter (with a "heroic" level being as it is now).

My theorycraft on the matter is that Blizz on their end just wants people to stick around and try to form up a larger group / raid / guild amongst themselves to be able to raid content as it is now. After all, more time spent = more money for Blizz. That is probably their way of thinking, from my point of view.

Not that it works in my opinion.

Well I agree with that..but the whole, more time spen equals more money for Blizz. Well, if your like my dad and you pay all the way through even when you don't play....seriously...my dad used to play Star Wars Galaxies (not complaining, I did too XD) when it first came out before the game went to crapy NGE..but that's not my point...he no longer plays and he still pays for his 4 accounts.....Not to mention paying for his 2 WoW accounts...and he wonders why he never has money...lol

[StarTouch]

A personal attachment to the game. Memories, friends (made within the game) and other stuff often makes players (not saying all though) continue paying for their subscriptions despite them not being as "hardcore" as before.

When I decide to give up on raiding one day, I'll probably still continue paying for my account just so I can pop around and chat with the friends I've made during my close-to-3 years of playing the game. Or if I'm short on cash, I'll just donate my account to the guild and have my guild master pay for my account (with me just coming online off-raid hours to chat).

[Jaden]

I did some hardcore raiding pre-TBC on EU-Burning Legion/Magtheridon alliance side. Was great fun, fighting Nihilum for the outdoor bosses. We refused to deal with them at first, and they sent their rogues to wipe our raids with mind-control caps and whatnot, resulting in strange incidents and no one being able to kill them. XD I quit sometime around the Naxxramas patch due to lack of time. Later rerolled to an RP server for more casual gameplay...I do still raid, like two nights a week. We're still wiping on Magtheridon, but it's better this way.

[Jazzrat]

Making the game easier would just cause people to consume the contents faster than Blizzard can produce. I m against making raids easier that it should be, as it is, WoW is already a pretty casual and easy mmo to raid in.

My guild are only at kaelthas and vashj but we are dropping one new boss everyweek with a 4 raid day per week schedule. A farcry from the olden days of being stuck at a single boss for a month+.

[StarTouch]

A lot of complaints from the non-raiding / casual playerbase usually stem from not being able to see / experience the upper tiers of end-game content. As both a pre-TBC raider and TBC raider, I'll have to say attunements are far harsher now than it was before.

As a raider in Hyjal / Black Temple, I feel like punching myself in the face every time a new recruit or formerly-inactive raider joins the raiding ranks. Attuning is a chore and a headache, eating into progression schedules. I just dread having to backstep to Vashj / Kael'thas to attune the few odd people missing their vials. Kael is a brilliantly-designed fight and I love it...but I'd rather spend my time in BT / Hyjal, clearing more content.

I just don't understand why Blizzard doesn't want to have attunement scrolls drop off the first few bosses (as an example. Later bosses are fine too.), BoE of course. Raiding guilds / alliances can use these scrolls to attune those recruits and / or sell them to players / raids having problems (for whatever reason) getting attuned to Hyjal / BT. I believe it would benefit both sides. This matter isn't bright and spanking new either but Blizz has (unfortunately) decided to ignore it .

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Editted Portion :

I too believe that WoW is a fairly easy game (PvE and PvP - wise) and one would be hard-pressed to find another MMO which offers such a gentle learning curve (along with easy leveling). Leaving PvP aside, as it's not the main issue at hand for now, PvE is generally very easy to learn but there are some "gatekeeper" boss encounters that would punish poor play and demand that the entire raid perform at a good level. Not decent, but at least good, just to emphasise. A lot of WoW's playerbase are newbies to the MMO scene and they lack a lot of the required raiding mentality in order to excel. Nevermind skill and knowledge (which a lot of players lack. I'm no grandmaster of gaming but I'd dare say I know the ins and outs of my class and know how to itemize my character to the max, given the current available gear, etc), dedication (which I mentioned in an earlier post) is sorely lacking in quite a number of players. Ultimately, all this is what separates the world best guilds (Nihilum, Forte, Last Resort, Death & Taxes) from the rest. I don't like playing the "lawl no life 4 u" card as it is a very broad and unfair generalisation of end-game raiders. They simply don't have as much, or if any, "dead weight" as say, a guild like my own. The best possible raiding specs, the best raiding mentalities, personal coders to develop mods for the raid (the first guilds sure didn't have convenient boss mods in the first place hehe) and outright dedication to excel put them a mile ahead of many other guilds in the world.

So what does this lead us to? The lesser skilled, dedicated, <insert whatever factor here> raids / guilds are left trailing behind, possibly months before they can even catch up by a step. Reasons vary, be it dedication or activity or time or whatever. Just look at the WoW community, legions of blabbering idiots claiming nerfs to well-tuned encounters. Some of the nerf-cries are legit (thank god I didn't get to do pre-nerfed Mother Shahraz. I'd prolly have cried to sleep) but the majority aren't. I'm not saying WoW is a perfect game but it certainly isn't a broken game in terms of difficulty.

Regardless, Blizzard >> SHOULD << know of the above but yet, they have to appease their customer base. Attunements will be lifted, bosses nerfed, fights made easier...just so the majority of the customer base can progress, that being the end-all for any MMO...progression.

There are various ways to ensure progression, nerfing content is one. Introducing more content is another (PvE and / or PvP). However, for the latter, Blizz must be sure to strike a skewed balance in favour of the majority who at this point, are unable to raid efficiently. Of course, I'm > strictly < speaking from a business-minded point of view.

[Jazzrat]

It's the same reason why high end gears are BoP, it's so you cant twink other people and forcing em to actually work for their rewards.

Generally though, i prefer a simpler attunement process that simply marks a player qualified for upper tier contents after they defeat certain bosses instead of convulated quest lines that makes you go back and forth. The whole reason why my guild couldnt get into SSC/TK earlier was the attunement process.