f13.net

Did we really need another "I'm quitting WoW" thread?

This sub forum is like an AA meeting; I need reinforcement that the game is still bad so I don't fall off the wagon.

Do people actually read posts "by sub-forum"? I've been using "Show unread posts since last visit" since I signed up. :P

I successfully resisted re-installing WoW just a couple of days ago, as I was listening on Skype to a couple of friends doing PvP. Then I gave it a second thought and went "Hmmmm. Nah."

Do people actually read posts "by sub-forum"? I've been using "Show unread posts since last visit" since I signed up. :P

I've managed to not start playing again.   :oh_i_see:

Mostly by reading threads in this forum.  For which I thank people!

If you're reading and posting in this sub-forum, have you really quit WoW?  :why_so_serious:

Fuck off with the panda hate, it's old you goddamn whining bunch of sad sack grimdark emo-teen wananbees.

Fuck off with the panda hate, it's old you goddamn whining bunch of sad sack grimdark emo-teen wananbees.

I've managed to not start playing again.   :oh_i_see:

Mostly by reading threads in this forum.  For which I thank people!

This sub forum is like an AA meeting; I need reinforcement that the game is still bad so I don't fall off the wagon.

I'm to the point where I log in and play for 15-20 minutes and then get bored and quit.  Mostly because doing alts... well I've done the content SO MANY times I just flat out don't have any interest in doing it again.  And the MoP stuff was neat the first time, all right the second, and now I'm tired of it on the 3rd run through.  I slogged through the Cata content like 5-6 times before bailing on it.  Now I think I might just quit for good... I don't really get anything out of the game anymore.  No rage or anger, no "Blizzard sucks" posts, just... fade away and sputter out with a whimper.  Which is a shame since I've been playing since 2004.

Not to mention in my advancing age I just can't sit at a computer and play for hours on end anymore, my joints hurt all over if I do that without getting up.  I'm too old?

I know.  It is literally amazing how many people freak out about Pandas when Taruen have been around since day one, and while Playable Worgen are relatively new, the creature has been around since day one as well.

Especially given that wolf-furries have been around for a couple of years - not to mention the cow people.

In all honesty the dungeons, scenarious and raids are better and more accesilbe than ever before.  There are a ton of dailies if you just like questing.

Ultimately I think the problem is that I just can't sit down and play all weekend long like I used to since having a kid. Is it possible that WoW isn't casual enough for me?

This version of WoW hasn't been casual friendly at all in my opinion, compared to Wrath or the back end of Cata.

"But.. but.. but.. look at all the casual stuff we've added! You can farm and run pointless scenarios and it's so easy to get in to raids as long as you do them in our mandatory order!  Never mind that the gear grind is brutal, you shouldn't care about gear in our gear-grind game!  Hardcores need grind or they'll leave us for something else. They said so!"  :awesome_for_real:

"Gear needed to start LFR" is a funny way of saying "Here's what you need to start the content that you will repeat ad naseum"

Getting into the bottom of any ladder in wow has never been the issue, it's the climb which has become increasingly dull and pointless.

Alts are the issue.

I ran moshugun a dozen plus times for my hunter.  If I decide I want to switch over to the rogue my options are.. run moshugun vaults a dozen plus times to see new content.

If I decide it'd be cool to have an epic weapon on another character.. it's another lame ass grind fest.

Everything in the game is designed around the obsessive one-character player with more time than sense or responsibility.  Fuck that I'm done with that entire paradigm.  There is no sensible reason to force players who want to play more than one character in to a weeks-long grind to try new content on that character.

Or champion the faction in heroics/scenarios.

I don't like LFR because it has become a baseline, and it's not really that fun to me, nor does it encourage retention the way they want. Groups of friends keep you subbed, and forming small groups of 10 or less can keep people involved on a weekly basis rather than just jumping into faceless groups. I also liked that you could do 10 or 25 mans in Wrath and not just have to choose one or the other. I liked that heroics were fun and easy without having a ton of pugs unless you wanted them. I liked that you had 25 dailies if you wanted them, and the game wasn't designed entirely around reputation as advancement.

I don't like LFR because it has become a baseline, and it's not really that fun to me, nor does it encourage retention the way they want. Groups of friends keep you subbed, and forming small groups of 10 or less can keep people involved on a weekly basis rather than just jumping into faceless groups. I also liked that you could do 10 or 25 mans in Wrath and not just have to choose one or the other. I liked that heroics were fun and easy without having a ton of pugs unless you wanted them. I liked that you had 25 dailies if you wanted them, and the game wasn't designed entirely around reputation as advancement.

Are there fewer ten man raid groups now because of lfr or did exposing all these other people to raiding actually make more people interested in it?  We don't know.

10man raiding has done more to kill "community" in this game than anything.

Paelos, this was one of YOUR biggest bitches. "Don't make me deal with 24 asshats when all I have is 10-15 people who enjoy each other's company!"  

LFR lets you do that, and when you *really* don't give a rats-ass about your ilevel e-peen it's the better tool for making it a game instead of a lifestyle.  

WoW has been heading this way for a while. Cross server BGs killed PVP for me; in Vanilla everyone who did PVP seriously knew each other, Horde and Alliance. We'd post on the forums, /wave in BGs, etc., and you knew based on who you were fighting against what kind of opposition to expect. When they made it cross-server they shortened the queue times but at the expense of some server community. The dungeon finder did the same thing for 5 mans, and LFR is just an extension of that.

I have a hard time arguing the play experience of LFR is good. If anything it's worse than not raiding, and having advancement options through 5 mans that weren't tied to about 15 fucking faction reps.

I don't do LFR for play experience. I do it to see some of the content I normally wouldn't be able to see and to help me gear up in the offhand chance I might raid. For play experience I do other things.

How about just making content that doesn't require 24 asshat strangers?

It's not that LFR is inherently bad. It's just completely removed the motivation by what used to be the middle ground non-heroic raider to even try. They don't want to bother with rosters, schedules, etc when they can just queue and faceroll. Again, that's not inherently bad, and for many it would be fine. However, the reward structure is set so closely together that giving any effort at a 10 man beyond just doing LFR runs ad naseum makes zero sense. As a result, you don't have tight knit groups, which is the essence of what kept me playing for years. The moment that went away and was replaced by The Faceless 24? I quit within a month.

Also 5 mans in Wrath weren't full of strangers for me at all. It was full of people I knew from various guilds, and a network of friends I made through 10 mans, dungeons, pvp, etc.

Just replace brutal with "tedious and unfun" and it applies just as well.  Vanilla or BC gear grinds were indeed brutal and this is fluff in comparison but it's still unnecessary and boring.

"Between all of these sources, an adventurous player should be should be able to walk right into the Raid Finder Throne of Thunder within a week or two of hitting level 90, even without touching any of the mainland reputations." (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/9601895/Catching_Up_to_53-5_2_2013)

Such a terrible grind.

Your experience was not typical and using it as a basis for argument about how the game should work is selfish.  For the vast majority of the playerbase there is no functional difference between how WotLk Heroic LFD worked and how MoP 25-man LFR works.

It's because the game as a solo/faceless experience is very easy to put down without consequence. You can sub month to month and then you can quit. Nobody will care. Nobody will miss you, and you won't miss anyone else.

That's the WoW we have now.

Well to be fair, blizzard is very, very rich but the game has been declining at a steady and surprisingly fast pace. I know people just want to say attrition and pretend nothing else is the cause but clearly some things are not being handled well.

Your complaint is one of an older generation of games. It works the same as it ever did, you can still friend that guy who was awesome in LFR or LFg and do raids and dungeons with him just as easily as before.  The stickiness is the same, spread-out across more servers with different tools for social sticiness.

If you can't find people to socialize with, it's your fault, not LFR's.

They connect the same way they do in other games and social media.  Blizzard is shifting to that paradigm with battle tags and cross-realm raiding.  Or did you miss those additions?   How did you meet the people you liked in your guild in the first place?  

Your complaint is one of an older generation of games. It works the same as it ever did, you can still friend that guy who was awesome in LFR or LFg and do raids and dungeons with him just as easily as before.  The stickiness is the same, spread-out across more servers with different tools for social sticiness.

If you can't find people to socialize with, it's your fault, not LFR's.

If that was the case, the game wouldn't have lost 50% of the xpac release sub bump in the first three months. It's NOT AS STICKY.  

THE PANDA EXPANSION IS SHITTY AND NOT FUN TO PLAY BEYOND THE FIRST 3 MONTHS.

Surpsise sub drop is now due to stickiness not mentioned? har.

As someone who's never been in a raid guild (nor do I want to be in one), I'll say that LFR has been a godsend. If you're complaining about boringness / lack of challenge, play a healer.  :why_so_serious:

I guess, although the tier 10 and 11 numbers each have a year of data whereas t14 has eight months.  Extrapolating would still be a decline though.  It also goes by entire guild instead of groups so there would be knock on effects from the guild perk system cata brought in.  

The problem with LFD/LFR is coming up amongst my former guildmates. Seems a bunch of people left because LFR/LFD killed guild groups.
It's the reason I left during Cata, and didn't even pick up Mists.

Subs dropped to 8.3M in WoW after Q1. That's a drop of 1.3M from the prior quarter.

This expansion is not working.

Bearing in mind you've already said that the real reason you don't like WoW any more is that your guild imploded and you've not been able/willing to find a new one, I'm not quite sure how any expansion would help you.

The more important part is the feedback about 'casual' engagement (or lack thereof) so expect TBC2 to do completely the opposite to MoP re: dailies, factions, etc.

Oh I found a new one. I even played with it for 3 months of expansion. As usual, you draw the wrong conclusions from the facts. They lost me though, because the game didn't encourage me doing stuff with that already maxxed out lvl 25 guild, and the new guild was only interested in doing LFR on tuesdays. Now, I could have found a new NEW guild at that point after getting to 90 and tried to get into the raiding game, but that was even blocked by the rep grind stuff. Or I could have played alts, but that problem has been discussed as well.

I would have been just fine for another 3 months in the new guild if LFR didn't exist, and the stuff wasn't blocked behind rep gains, dailies weren't considered content, and they generally didn't act like adding more factions was the path to enlightenment.

That's the point. I wasn't just some guys who quit 2 years ago and said, FUCK OFF BLIZZ I LOST MY BOYS! I was actually playing this xpac for a quarter, and they lost me again.

How many subs did they have before Panderia hit?  I mean, it seems quite possible that there is some core of WoW players who will keep playing no matter what and that otherwise the new WoW expansions are going to be subject to the same kind of 3 month wonder phenomenon we've seen in every other MMORPG of late.

What reps are blocking you?

"Between all of these sources, an adventurous player should be should be able to walk right into the Raid Finder Throne of Thunder within a week or two of hitting level 90, even without touching any of the mainland reputations." (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/9601895/Catching_Up_to_53-5_2_2013)

So getting rep with a bunch of obsolete factions is holding you back?

Oh you mean I get to do LFR more to gear up? HOORAY!  :oh_i_see:

I guess me saying I hated that particular feature and wanted it gone on every page got by you.

"You have lost 1.3 million subscribers because the game is to time consuming for us casuals. Bring back tabards. Dailies suck"


"We heard from A LOT of players in Cataclysm that they didn't have enough to do and got bored. It's a tough sweet spot to hit."

This is a very telling twitter quote in the that response to having more things to do = dailies.

The heroic scenarios idea seems like the first good idea they've had in the patches so far. The rest of it prior to 5.3 was just cramming new dailies down people's throats with new factions and new zones, while adding one raid.

In Wrath, you had 3 big patches, with 3 new raids. In Cata, you had 3 big patches with 2 raids. Now we're about to have the third big patch in Mists and it's only one raid and scenarios replacing 5 mans?

It just seems like less and less meat with more and more filler. If they want people doing LFR as their primary goal, they need to focus on raids as the content.

I'm telling you, account-wide reputation is the way to go. Pretty much everything else is account-wide nowadays, so why not?

I'm telling you, account-wide reputation is the way to go. Pretty much everything else is account-wide nowadays, so why not?

You're forgetting they wanted to gate and slow-down people getting to the item level caps.  They didn't like that you could hit heroics within hours of hitting the level cap.  For some bizarre reason.

If anything, the tabard system to me was sort of a door-prize for re-running dungeons over and over, esp. if there was a piece of gear/achievement I was trying to get.  If I didn't get said gear/'chieve, at the VERY least I got rep up to unlock gear and swag on the outside.

It probably had something to do with their data to burnout. I'm betting they pulled that data from Cataclysm though, and not Wrath, and thus drew conclusions that may not have been correct.

Subs dropped to 8.3M in WoW after Q1. That's a drop of 1.3M from the prior quarter.

This expansion is not working.

I think that is more common than people realize, and the reason I don't like LFR.

This is a very telling twitter quote in the that response to having more things to do = dailies.

Certainly how I looked at things.  "Well, no upgrades but at least I'm farther along x rep."

Without tabards all dungeon time without an upgrade as was wasted time and effort that should have been spent doing one of the other dailies.  Then tack-on the extra-special Fuck-you change of "you only get max VP for one dungeon a day, so you have to run them every day" and folks like me who have extra game time on weekends but not weekdays find other outlets.  I preferred running 1-2 a week and 3-4 on Saturday morning.


"Wrong conclusions from the data presented," could be the title of their Masters Thesis in game design.

Equally-anecdotal counterpoint: The advent of LFD and much later LFR sustained the interest of myself, my wife and several other friends long after they would have expired. Organised-time-committed regular raiding with 40 of my closest online friends hasn't been something I've been even mildly interested in since Gates of Discord. Having the opportunity to "just do" a dungeon, and later a raid was a godsend and kept me playing for literally years longer than I otherwise would have.

I could have done the organised-dedicated-love-my-guild thing like I did in EQ, but you know what? I don't have that much time to dedicate anymore, and my online MMO "friends" just scatter to the wind anyway. Now I can (and do) play on my own terms, whether that means catassing 12 hours a day or not playing at all for weeks on end.

I refuse to believe that we have to choose between grouping with random chucklefucks OR friends. There's gotta be a better way than what Blizz implemented in LFD/LFR.

I've had the itch again and I decided I was going to do what I wanted. I started farming some mounts, did a little PVP, and completed some old achievements. It is much more fun to me than trying to keep up or catch up. Way less pressure and more fun. Too much time in Pandaria has crushed me.

All that interests me is the pet battles. When is Pokemon the MMO going to come out?

The only way I would consider playing WOW again would be if everything was soloable, if I wanted to do it so.  This would come back to Paelos' scalability ideas.  

I was also a big fan of the initial segment of Conan online.  Good story combined with progression of the character.  I'm not seeing much of that in WOW, to this day.

The problem for me, as a grownup, is that "endgame" just sucks.  There's no other way to rationalize it.  I don't have the desire or time to dick around with the gearing and grinding.  They have separate servers for PvP and Role Playing, why not have a ZOMG HARCOREZ RAIDZERS server or 10?  And then have a soloable content server?  The big issue that Paelos has been skirting around (yet not quite hitting it on the head) is that it's impossible to make everything accessible for every person.  WOW has been approaching it the wrong way.  They try to put different things on each server that might be accessible, but I would like access to everything there is to do.  I want to run through Karazhan by myself if I want (still my favorite dungeon) and actually get experience and decent, level appropriate drops.  I want to do Deadmines and Wailing Caverns and the Stockade and Razorfen Downs and every single dungeon solo, if I want.  What better way to do that than to have servers that allow you to do just that?  They would have to rethink some of the cross server stuff if they were to implement something like this (which they won't).  

If all content is accessible on one server but not the other, which server will be empty? I'm not saying I have the answers, but Blizzard still wants their game to be a social experience. I just don't think they can have it both ways without a sizable chunk of the player base getting upset.

You just tailor the number of servers to take care of the players.  There would still be people playing both.  I also take a little bit of an exception to the idea that being able to solo content would make it less of a social experience.  There is not social experience for me now.  There will still be guilds and chat and all that if you want.  Why do you think the player base would get upset about being able to choose how they play the game?  I'm not sure I understand why that would be an issue.

The only way I would consider playing WOW again would be if everything was soloable, if I wanted to do it so.  This would come back to Paelos' scalability ideas.  

I was also a big fan of the initial segment of Conan online.  Good story combined with progression of the character.  I'm not seeing much of that in WOW, to this day.

The problem for me, as a grownup, is that "endgame" just sucks.  There's no other way to rationalize it.  I don't have the desire or time to dick around with the gearing and grinding.  They have separate servers for PvP and Role Playing, why not have a ZOMG HARCOREZ RAIDZERS server or 10?  And then have a soloable content server?  The big issue that Paelos has been skirting around (yet not quite hitting it on the head) is that it's impossible to make everything accessible for every person.  WOW has been approaching it the wrong way.  They try to put different things on each server that might be accessible, but I would like access to everything there is to do.  I want to run through Karazhan by myself if I want (still my favorite dungeon) and actually get experience and decent, level appropriate drops.  I want to do Deadmines and Wailing Caverns and the Stockade and Razorfen Downs and every single dungeon solo, if I want.  What better way to do that than to have servers that allow you to do just that?  They would have to rethink some of the cross server stuff if they were to implement something like this (which they won't).  

Yeah, I don't know how difficult it would be to make it happen.  It may be impossible.  The tech is beyond my knowledge base. 

As far as the hardcores, if you have a hardcore set of servers to cater to those people that are completely different, meaning complete gear progression, 10 or 25 man raids, cockblocks, etc. why would it matter if they had soloable servers?  Why would people get pissed?  They could still wave their epeen around and call me a wuss.  I wouldn't mind at all, tbh. 

You would need to have the rewards scale in order to prevent the raider uproar. People are already angry that you get purples in LFR and "you didn't really have to work for it." I really think this would be very helpful to the game. I guarantee it would increase subs.

(I think 25 man raiding is basically just a uber pursuit at this point that should be killed along with 40 man).

But why would you make different servers? Just allow the content to scale to the number of players, so you can take 1, 10, 17, 25, whatever.

Haha, wow, that's certainly an opinion.  :uhrr:

(LFR is 25-man for a reason)

Their argument against scaling (so you could solo raid content for 1/10th the reward for example) is that in order to make it "balanced" it would almost by definition be punnishingly inefficient. Sure, it is great and all that you can go solo a raid, and get 1/10th X valor + 1/10th Y chance at an item drop, but the instant the average person looks at that and sees that grouping with 10 randoms for the same time investment and only a bit more hassle gets you X valor + Y chance at an item to drop,  they are going to rightfully ask why the hell they would realistically want to solo it. 

I don't. The role ratios in 25 man allow for a lot more dpsers to go on raids in a timely manner, and one shitty player derails a 10 man more often than 2.5 shitty players in a 25.

You made a comment about LFR, I responded. No goalpost moving, please.

My thought process was to separate out the hardcore people from the folks like me that just don't even really give a shit about gear and rewards.  I just want to have fun.  I also am not all that interested in running through a dungeon 75 times to get enough tokens to buy a set of legs or on the off chance that I'll get my fancy purple drop.  If you don't scale the rewards on a mixed server you'll have howling, for sure.  The hardcore guys can't handle it when everyone has the same gear and its easy to get.

That game exists; it is called Neverwinter. I think you will quickly tire of fights that aren't allowed to use any design space that might require real roles.

People who played WoW for fun quit playing a long time ago.

I want to do Deadmines and Wailing Caverns and the Stockade and Razorfen Downs and every single dungeon solo, if I want.

My point here is that having different content for different types of players IS NOT BAD.  Why do people want to do everything?

Why do people want to do everything?

The don't really. They want to beat the thing that's on the front of the box they bought. Admit it, WoW is about killing big monsters at it's very core. Most of what we're talking about revolves on that concept. What we're debating is the how, the how many involved, and what requirements are necessary to have that kind of fun.

There are apparently several now. That is to say, people dumped the GBA carts onto a server and figured out how to get a bunch of people in the same world and a chat tab working. One of them had taken my coop over for finals. I could ask which one if you are interested. Here is a random video for one of them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IfiaIPPfzCM

There's a simple fix-  separate the epeens and the non epeens.  On this server you have to work your ass of to get through everything and on this one you can get through it all on your own if you want. 

I'm curious how long you think people would stay subbed if they implemented this. How long would boring solo versions of what might have been compelling dungeons/raids with a group keep your interest?

LFR already set the bar low for just seeing content. Why stop there? In a scaled system, you and your friends determine exactly the kind of challenge you are willing to take with exactly the numbers you have. No hunting, no finders, just group and go.

[snip!]  That's fine, but I don't think it's what is going to increase WoW's sub numbers. It's more likely that it would make them worse by giving people even fewer reasons to stay subbed and allowing them to "finish" content to their satisfaction in an even shorter amount of time.

Exactly.  Solo content in WOW is fishing or killing ten kobolds and getting shitty blue rewards at the end of a quest chain.  And the reason to want to solo it over a non-MMO game is twofold:  1.  The world in WOW is *huge*.  It's got a lot of stuff to do and will keep someone occupied for a long time.  Take a game like the Witcher-  there's only so much to do.  And this example brings me to my second point.....2.  It's very non-linear.  Most single player offline games are fairly linear, although you do get the odd gem like Fallout or Skyrim. 
 

This doesn't really resolve the problem of there being a way smaller number of working mechanics in a trinity MMO when you're allowing groups to be as small as one or two people. Chronicles also supported two players and it didn't make them any more interesting or long-lasting. What you're asking for, content for 2-3 players, is essentially what we got with Scenarios and you only need to look at this board to confirm that they didn't hold anyone's interest very long.

Scenarios were a tacked on replacement for dungeons that failed to deliver on both rewards and fun. They failed on their own merits, not because they happened to be for 3 people. They could be fixed somewhat by offering heroic versions of them and increasing the points, but they will never be raid content or dungeon content, nor were they designed with that intent. People wanted raid and dungeons that they ran over and over and over and over again in prior xpacs.

You and I debate this a lot, but the idea that any large majority of players want challenge in this game is mostly laughable.

People would run the same shit over and over if it's fun. They've done it before, they'll do it again. If they have a good time with it, they'll keep upping the difficulty in terms of a scaled system until they stop having fun.

I've often thought that an offline MMO will... not be the next WoW killer, but certainly scratch the soloers itch much better than shoehorning solo content into a multiplayer game.

In most MMOs, I turn off general chat, and ignore everyone. I'm pretty much playing offline already. Well, I use the auction house system if there is one.

    -Bring anywhere from 10 to 25 people to your raid and the difficulty will automatically scale.
    -Works with battletags, so you can bring friends from other realms.
    -Item level of loot is between Raid Finder and Normal and loot is awarded with the Raid Finder style loot system.
    -Separate lockout from Raid Finder and Normal, allowing you to do all three difficulties.


Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Raids in World of Warcraft have a long history of not just challenging players, but changing and evolving as the years and expansions go by. As with everything in the game, we’re always thinking about what more we can bring to raiding to improve the experience for an even wider range of players. While Normal and Heroic Raids are a great fit for many, we feel there’s another gap worth filling—and to that end, we’re currently working on the development of a new type of Raid for the next major content update: Flexible Raiding.

One Size Does Not Fit All
While it’s impossible to fit every player into a neat, tidy archetype, we recognize that we could be providing a better experience to one broad category of raider: social groups comprised predominantly of friends and family, and smaller guilds that do their best to include as many members in their Raid outings possible.

During the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, the 10-player Normal difficulty served these groups of players pretty well, but the unification of 10-player and 25-player into a single difficulty effectively eliminated that niche. While Raid Finder mode is extremely accessible, it doesn’t provide smaller groups with a tight-knit social experience while progressing through the content. In Patch 5.4, we’re planning to introduce a new mode of raiding that allows us to deliver the sort of experience that we think these players are looking for.

/Flex
To fill this void, we’re in the process of developing a new Flexible Raid system, which includes a new difficulty that sits between Raid Finder and Normal difficulty, while still allowing friends, family, or pick-up groups to play together. This difficulty will be available for premade groups of 10–25 players, including any number in between. That means whether you have 11, 14, or 23 friends available for a Raid, they’ll all be able to participate.

The Flexible Raid system is designed so that the challenge level will scale depending on how many players you have in the Raid. So if you switch between 14 players one week and 22 the next, the difficulty will adjust automatically. Keep in mind that unlike Raid Finder, no matchmaking is available, so you’ll need to make sure you invite people to attend—but if some can’t make it, it’s not the end of the world (or the Raid). You’ll also still be able to invite Real ID or Battle.net friends cross-realm. Who you choose to bring and what Item Level gear they’ll need to join your merry band is up to you, too—there’s no Item Level requirement for this Raid difficulty.

Dressed to Kill
A new Raid difficulty also means a new Item Level. Flexible mode will award loot with an Item Level that falls between Raid Finder and Normal quality, and will use the Raid Finder’s “per person” loot system, specialization choices, and bonus rolls, so you won’t need to worry about bringing the “wrong” person and having them win that piece of gear you’ve long been waiting for.

You Have the Keys
We plan to unlock the Flexible Raid difficulty in wings, similar to Raid Finder, but on an accelerated timetable. This new difficulty also has a separate Raid lockout from Raid Finder and Normal difficulty, allowing you to take part in all three if you so desire. You’ll also be able to complete portions of your “Glory of the Orgrimmar Raider” raid meta- achievement in Flexible mode as well as in Normal or Heroic to earn cosmetic rewards such as an epic mount. This will allow Raid groups the opportunity to switch off nights between raids to complete achievements. Finally, taking part in Flexible, Normal, or Heroic difficulty will provide access to additional rewards that won’t be available in Raid Finder.

Getting Down to Brass Tacks
As with any in-development feature, we’re continuing to refine how the Flexible Raid system will work, and we look forward to hearing your constructive feedback from your experiences on the Public Test Realm when the new system goes live.

Sucks that flexible doesn't just replace normal level raiding period for simplicity's sake but well with established systems, what can you do?

    -Separate lockout from Raid Finder and Normal, allowing you to do all three difficulties.

I can hear the hardcore now: Oh great now we have to do 2 extra raids between LFR and Flexible raiding!

I guess this is the big 5.4 feature. Bummer, I was really hoping they'd add scaling for older dungeons so that I could run places like Mechanaar at 90 (95, 100, etc.)

I think the actual hardcore would look at it like: good, something that will get the gear up even faster in a week.

I think the actual hardcore would look at it like: good, something that will get the gear up even faster in a week.

A 10 second glance at the topic in the official raiding forum indicates no; they are doing exactly what I said they would.

"Not too worried about it being mandatory if we have something in place to award us 522 loot every week or two like SPA rep. I also like that it's cross-realm, so I'll be able to OpenRaid the meta chieves or do random runs. It gives low pop servers something else to look forward to."

"To me, this shows Blizzard's lack of imagination. They are basically trying to backdoor us. They did away from separate 10/25 man lockouts because they felt people felt obligated to do them both. Now we have come to 3 separate lockouts. If they want us to be excited about a something new, don't let it be such a crappy thing. Give me an Undead Paladin, then I'll be excited. My 3 year old son excretes more imagination in the toilet than this."

If this existed in Wrath/Cata my guild might still be intact and playing. We often had problems with 13-14 people wanting to go on a raid but only being able to take 10.

If you feel like you have to do everything, this is probably not the game for you.

I guess this is the big 5.4 feature. Bummer, I was really hoping they'd add scaling for older dungeons so that I could run places like Mechanaar at 90 (95, 100, etc.)

This is just one of the things the development team is currently working on for the next major content patch (and beyond.) This is not THE one feature. This is one of the features that we believe could really help groups who are looking for a more social experience perhaps a bit more on their own terms.