Old Raid Content - no hope?

[jpark]

It's also time taken away from Blizzard's incredibly slow content production to tweak old stuff instead of develop new.  I understand and agree with their viewpoint here. I'd rather see new stuff than rehashing old stuff, as that always piqued me in EQ. 

If I understand this correctly majority of player base will not see most of that 'old' content and once expansion hits catasses that can get there move on to new shiny. It also makes no sense to go there as part of getting to max-level.

From another thread - taking derailing furthing into a new thread.

For players that never raided MC/ BWL/ Nax prior to expansion - is there any hope that they will see that content now?  It seems a waste of prior development effort to offer no incentive so that these instances have value.

I disagree with the view that now that folks are 70 - AQ40 or BWL should now be easy.  A lot of encounters will still require tremendous skill in coordination - which if you don't have it - no amount of DPS realistically can solve the problem (my suspicion - e.g. the Ebon Roc fight in BWL).  Folks can overpower UBRS with DPS - even MC - but AQ40 / BWL require actual strategy for many fights - that DPS cannot solve.

If my suspicion is true - there really will be no way for new gamers or new raiders to enjoy the old content - since any guild doing them for "fun" would still have to treat that content just as seriously as new raid content before they can do it successfully.  That is a big investment of time for loot rewards not comparable to expansion rewards - it's a shame there are no plans to address this.

[Ironwood]

I talked briefly about MC in regard to this a while ago.

[rk47]

if they take out attunements from MC maybe there is a chance for quick peek and see for casuals.
Right now when people talk about MC, I'll just tell them off with the attunement bullcrap that I'm not interested in doing. Easy cop-out excuse. It sounds less mean than 'fuck that shit' ;)

[Ironwood]

If they re-engineered it to be a 10 or 5 man and stuck in some nicer loot, people would be all over it.

[sinij]

All of the old raid content should be adjusted so it does not require attuning or keying - people who are not attuned/keyed are not going to go through 'end game grind' to get into now mid-game dungeons.

Few things should be reworked - loot and difficulty.

Loot:

Right now there is huge jump in loot at level 57-58, where you can get to tBC and any green found there is better than most purples. I think this should be addressed by moving 'old world' dungeon loot 5-10 levels down. For example T1 set would be perfect at level 45-50 if you could get it. T2 set would be good at around 55-60 but only if you could get it casually.

As to level 60 dungeons like Dire Maul, UBRS and such - rewards for doing them should be in-line with much-easier beginner tBC dungeons. Loot tables should be redone to make it worthwhile to do.

Difficulty:

Old raiding dungeons are not something you could casually do even if you could easily get into them and rewards are not appropriate to effort spent doing them. I think solution to that is to level-adjust content. Plaugelands should be re-tuned for level 45-55 (lower each monster by 5 levels) along with Strat&Scholo with all loot existing loot lowered in minimum-level reqs. This will provide more things to do at 'hell levels' (50-58).

MC/BWL/Nax should be made into 5 or 10 man casual runs that could be done with PUG and with loot that would carry you into tBC and not get replaced right away with first green quest reward.

[LK]

Loot:

Right now there is huge jump in loot at level 57-58, where you can get to tBC and any green found there is better than most purples. I think this should be addressed by moving 'old world' dungeon loot 5-10 levels down. For example T1 set would be perfect at level 45-50 if you could get it. T2 set would be good at around 55-60 but only if you could get it casually.

As to level 60 dungeons like Dire Maul, UBRS and such - rewards for doing them should be in-line with much-easier beginner tBC dungeons. Loot tables should be redone to make it worthwhile to do.

Keep in mind people have to buy the expansion to get access to this.  If anything, the way it's designed now would seem to encourage people to upgrade and skip the content.

Difficulty:

Old raiding dungeons are not something you could casually do even if you could easily get into them and rewards are not appropriate to effort spent doing them. I think solution to that is to level-adjust content. Plaugelands should be re-tuned for level 45-55 (lower each monster by 5 levels) along with Strat&Scholo with all loot existing loot lowered in minimum-level reqs. This will provide more things to do at 'hell levels' (50-58).

MC/BWL/Nax should be made into 5 or 10 man casual runs that could be done with PUG and with loot that would carry you into tBC and not get replaced right away with first green quest reward.

Why do I imagine that if Blizzard releases another level-cap-raising Expansion that these same arguments will be made for Lv. 70 content in Burning Crusade?

[sinij]

I think new expansion should be better integrated into old content, so majority of players do not experience 'trash all old loot and replace it with first green from FedEx quest' syndrome.

I also think every player should be able to casually see all content in the game, just not right away.

I'm talking here about what makes sense, and very few things in WoW make sense. It is popular despite what they do, not because what they do.

[Fabricated]

tBC was a gear reset since the gear gap between the casuals and the raiders was really, really, really bad. That, and 99% of the 5-man loot from the old world wasn't itemized worth shit.

Shit, even with the sizable level bump all level 70 epics got in quality, there are still blues that compete with the lower end of the epics. This was most definitely not the case pre-tBC.

As for old-world content...leave it I say. I'd love to fully complete BWL and see all the neat lore in Naxx that only the hardest core poopsockers got to see, but to be honest none of those fights are doable by casuals. Heroic versions of Strat/Scholo/Dire Maul would be cool for about 5 minutes until we realized how sick we were of running them before the expansion dropped. There is no way in hell you could get me into a Heroic BRD either.

[ajax34i]

I don't know.  A lot of people might want to re-visit MC/BWL/Naxx (I'd say retune them as 25-man content rather than 10), or perhaps nobody would care.  I guess it's one of those things where Blizzard would just have to put in the work and do it, before they can see how successful / wanted it really is.  And I don't know if they'll want to do that.  I don't know how much effort it takes to re-do the loot tables, probably quite a bit.

Personally, I'd go, if they revamped the loot, removed or shortened the attunements, and made it 25-man.

Blizzard could even try to implement some of CoH's code, whereby if a raid of L60's enter one of these instances, they get the regular crowd of NPC's, but if a raid of L70's enter it, they get 4x the number of trash mobs per spawn point, and buffed-up bosses or something.

Oh well.

[Chenghiz]

They've already taken some of the old 40-man raid bosses and basically copied them for 5-man content; I don't see why they couldn't keep in that trend. The boss fights (and scripted sequences I guess) are really what make the raids fun other than the loot. Players can already see the instances in the numerous raid movies that exist.

[Merusk]

Again, on ALL these ideas, why?  Blizzard isn't quick on the content updates as it is, why delay new stuff even more in favor of  old stuff?   Do you really want to see MC or Naxx so badly that you want to have a reason to visit it at 70, or would you rather they publish Zul'Araan or some other 5 or 10 man content?  I know which one I'd prefer.

[Lightstalker]

tBC was a gear reset since the gear gap between the casuals and the raiders was really, really, really bad. That, and 99% of the 5-man loot from the old world wasn't itemized worth shit.

Shit, even with the sizable level bump all level 70 epics got in quality, there are still blues that compete with the lower end of the epics. This was most definitely not the case pre-tBC.

There are several pieces of BWL and T3 that last through the end of Karazahn.  The big gap was between T2 and T3 in the old world. 

Pre-expansion there were blues that were better than purples, especially those from ZG.  The ZG blues were partially addressed when a patch changed their color from blue to purple.  Wonky itemization hasn't improved with the expansion, or changed overly much with the expansion.  There are epics that are worse than blues, and lvl 60 epics that are superior to lvl 70 epics.  The bump for tBC purple itemization was the 'other' option available for dealing with ZG blues, now Blizzard has attempted both obvious "buff the items" routes.

Bloodlord in ZG can nearly be two manned and trivially 4 manned.  We're still poking around there because the enchants available are relatively painless to acquire and not that bad.  MC and BWL still suffer attunement issues but Razorgore can be 6-manned, we've contemplated rolling MC/BWL for kicks on an off night with around 15 people.

The big problem with re-using that content (MC/BWL/AQ40/Nax) is that it was all geared to 40-people at once.  That means loads of trash or highly technical / gimmicky fights.  Take the suppression room, for instance, what if that was made hard for L70s in epic gear?  Would people have the patience anymore to spend 45 minutes moving through it to wipe?  What kind of raid experience is it when you've got a quarter of the designed load of players in the zone?  When the raid does a class check that requires half your current manpower to fulfil?  Guilds that had to team up for 40 man content are now teaming up for 25 man content in tBC.  Even if the zones were revamped many guilds cut all their 'weak' players when they realized they didn't need that many meat shields to run the end-game content anymore.

I do think the attunements no longer make sense, but I don't think the playerbase or blizzard would get much value from re-tuning the old world raids since the player guilds are no longer built to run (challenging) 40-man content.

[lariac]

They should just tune them down so that it can be accomplished via 5 man groups. That way if people want to go see them and do some sight-seeing, it doesn't require a whole lot of effort.

AQ40 and Naxx come to mind. I wonder what percentage of the player base has actually seen this content.

[SurfD]

i would say that if you grabbed 2 groups of people who had done a full karazan clear (thats 20 people), they could pretty easily do everything in MC, BWL, AQ 40, and probably 90% of naxx without much difficulty.  In all honesty, the fights are no that hard, especially with the way 10 extra levels of HP, MP, and Spells/abilities/talents trivialize things.

I mean, anyone who has done all of the 5 man content currently out there, and most of the 5 mans on heroic mode at least once, has probably encountered nearly every single raid mechanic you are going to encounter in any of the old 40 man stuff.

All it would take is a 10 or 15 minute readup session on the general behaviour patterns of each boss in a 40 man, and you could probably wafflestomp most of them quite handily.

And once again, dont forget how CRAZILY trivial 40 man stuff gets when you gain 10 levels and are running around in decend 5 man blues / karazan stuff.

[Venkman]

I agree it's a waste of development, though they did get a good 6mos-1.5yrs out of it. I imagine they'll redesign/vamp them at some point as the total Warcraft storyline moves forward. By the time people trivialize Black Temple, Garr or Ony should have long fled.

[Azazel]

Again, on ALL these ideas, why?  Blizzard isn't quick on the content updates as it is, why delay new stuff even more in favor of  old stuff?   Do you really want to see MC or Naxx so badly that you want to have a reason to visit it at 70, or would you rather they publish Zul'Araan or some other 5 or 10 man content?  I know which one I'd prefer.

I think it's in part becasue of Blizzard's glacial content-producing pace - after all, the art assets for all the deserted old raid content are complete, so it's just a matter of retuning the mobs and loot rather than having to go through the entire design process including mapping, layout, art, world building, etc. So in theory, the new-old content should be something they can get up to relevent faster than developing all-new stuff.

[Chimpy]

Retune C'Thun to level 70ish, make him accessible to a group of 40 people sans all the crap before him. That is my only "old content" suggestion. Even if the loot was sorta meh, that fight is seriously the most fun I ever had in WoW. Plus, everyone needs a chance to get a henatacle :-D

[SurfD]

i would re-run AQ 40 in a heartbeat if i was guaranteed a Hentacle.

[Koyasha]

We're only one expansion in.  It was a HUGE jump in power, but so was EQ's first expansion, and we didn't immediately see people doing the Planes of Fear, Hate, and Sky with small groups.  Difference of course being that in EQ's first expansion, old gear was not entirely obsoleted - it was certainly made to look poor in comparison, but not completely useless.  That's where I feel WoW made a mistake, the old gear was made too useless.  Hopefully future expansions will keep the jump in gear power a little less extreme so that it's still worthwhile for people to do old dungeons, even if just for fun/alts/twinks.

One of the things that kept me playing EQ for years - and still brings me back on occasion - is the thought of going back with small groups and killing old bosses.  Most recently, last year I had good fun doing Vex Thal with 3 people.  If the next couple expansions do it well and have it set up so that old gear is still somewhat useful, at least for alts and such, it will be fun to go back and do it.  But just like in EQ, it would get boring if there was nothing to gain, beyond the first couple times.  Eventually going and soloing Trakanon got old, cause nothing he dropped was useful even for my alts.  Killing Kunark Dragons became more of a routine than a fun thing to do, and so on.  This wasn't a bad thing in EQ - by the time it got dull to do it, it was years and years after Kunark - but in WoW, if future expansions provide a similarly huge power jump, it won't be fun even 2-3 expansions from now.

That above all else is one thing EQ did relatively well.  They raised the bar in a manner that kept older things somewhat fun and useful to do for years after release, making a huge amount of older content still viable to call content.  In WoW, most of the level 60 dungeons can hardly be called content anymore, because it is entirely worthless to do them.  They're there, but there's no point whatsoever in doing them.

[ajax34i]

Again, on ALL these ideas, why?  Blizzard isn't quick on the content updates as it is, why delay new stuff even more in favor of  old stuff?   Do you really want to see MC or Naxx so badly that you want to have a reason to visit it at 70, or would you rather they publish Zul'Araan or some other 5 or 10 man content?  I know which one I'd prefer.

Because, like it's been said, it shouldn't take them too long to just re-tune some NPC's and re-do some loot tables.  Maybe a month?  Two?  They did re-tune loot as a patch...

And there are probably a lot of people who haven't seen this content.  It was only accessible to the ubers, remember?  I haven't seen half of BWL, and all of Naxx and AQ40.  There are a lot of casuals in the game, and they probably haven't seen all of this stuff.

Plus, it would be a side-grade (is that a word?); those hell-bent on reaching 70 ASAP and hitting the Black Temple can do so, whereas the casuals looking for a diversion can go check out the old stuff but not be required to find 39 other people, and get keyed, in order to do so.

[SurfD]

why is getting keyed such a problem?

other then naxx, which is a reputation based grind, it would take a level 70 character about 10 min to get keyed for MC (easily soloable if you take the jump in the lava shortcut), a group of 70's about 30 min to get keyed for BWL (10 70's could SLAUGHTER ubrs) and there is no attunement for AQ 40.

Well, i suppose BWL could be a problem if no one has done the UBRS key questline.

[sinij]

Again, on ALL these ideas, why?  Blizzard isn't quick on the content updates as it is, why delay new stuff even more in favor of  old stuff?   Do you really want to see MC or Naxx so badly that you want to have a reason to visit it at 70, or would you rather they publish Zul'Araan or some other 5 or 10 man content?  I know which one I'd prefer.

You see, all new stuff is designed for catasses consumption, regular players won't ever see it. Redoing old raid dungeons will be for casuals. I don't understand why WoW devs insist on creating content 80% of player base won't ever see.

[sinij]

why is getting keyed such a problem?

Endless quest chains, rare turn-ins and rep grinds . Most importantly it requires other people to be keyed, so you not just need to find other people, you need to find other people that are keyed making it a problem to PUG. People will simply skip it in favor of Ramparts or other tBC dungeons that does not require keying.

I'm also think that old dungeons should be made doable at around level 60, by casuals. Making old world reward actually useful in process of leveling to 70.

[Threash]

Again, on ALL these ideas, why?  Blizzard isn't quick on the content updates as it is, why delay new stuff even more in favor of  old stuff?   Do you really want to see MC or Naxx so badly that you want to have a reason to visit it at 70, or would you rather they publish Zul'Araan or some other 5 or 10 man content?  I know which one I'd prefer.

You see, all new stuff is designed for catasses consumption, regular players won't ever see it. Redoing old raid dungeons will be for casuals. I don't understand why WoW devs insist on creating content 80% of player base won't ever see.

I dont know where you are getting that, its completely the opposite.  Old raid content, specially naxx and aq was designed with catasses in mind, the new raid content is extremely casual in comparision.

[Elsebet]

Blizzard could even try to implement some of CoH's code, whereby if a raid of L60's enter one of these instances, they get the regular crowd of NPC's, but if a raid of L70's enter it, they get 4x the number of trash mobs per spawn point, and buffed-up bosses or something.

More trash is definitely not a good idea.  :)

[Merusk]

why is getting keyed such a problem?

Endless quest chains, rare turn-ins and rep grinds .

He was referring to the MC/ BWL keying.  MC attune is easy to solo at 70, so long as you know the path.  It's easy for stealthers and hunters at 60 even.  At worst you'd need to duo it if you're a heal-spec, because you might not be able to kill the few elites you need to.   BWL I can see having a bit of a problem, because you have to do an UBRS run and who the hell wants to do that at 70, even forgoing the fact you need to find someone who still has the UBRS key.

You see, all new stuff is designed for catasses consumption, regular players won't ever see it. Redoing old raid dungeons will be for casuals. I don't understand why WoW devs insist on creating content 80% of player base won't ever see.

If you don't see it, it's because you don't want to join or help start a guild that wants to see it, really.   Even 10-man stuff will still have that barrier to entry, because folks just don't like taking non-guildies when saved instances are involved.  The notion being that you (rightly) can't count on PUGs to be there the next day, or in a few days, or whenever the next run of that saved instance is.

If you want to do away with saved-instances, well then that's a completly different base game.  This one's about loot aquisition, and multiple ways of doing so.

[Chenghiz]

Tons of players see the entry-level raid content, so sinij is not entirely accurate. The late-game stuff like Black Temple or Naxx won't be seen by any but the hardcore. I think what he's suggesting (and I agree) is that they take that content and retune it for smaller groups of people at level 70 so that those who never saw it can do so.

[El Gallo]

Endless quest chains, rare turn-ins and rep grinds .

Isn't the MC attunement "quest" to click a stone 2/3 of the way through a level 55 dungeon?  And the BWL quest to click a stone at the end of a level 60 dungeon?  Sure there are collective action issues, but I don't think the attunements are the issue.

Back in beta, I was always a proponent of "normal/nightmare/hell mode" dungeons (raid and otherwise).  The heroic mechanic pretty much accomplishes this, and hopefully it can be scaled upwards (and in raid dungeons as well) so that Blizz can mitigate this issue on the future.  I wish they had built in a way to upgrade the original dungeons, but they didn't, and God knows how long it would take them to retrofit them for upgrades.

The old raid instances have the additional problem that they were designed around 40 people and now the game has abandoned 40-person content, which adds a much bigger rebalancing wrinkle.  I don't know that the analogy to EQ1 raids holds, because those were almost all straightforward tank-and-spank encounters which you can easily handle with gear and levels.  You can just outgear more complicated fights, but it takes a lot longer.

My hope is that WoW2/WoW1.5/World of Diablo/Vanguard II (lol) will (a) have one or two group sizes for content and keep them stable from the get-go and (b) a built-in capacity for difficulty scaling in every dungeon from the get-go.  I wish they could retrofit WOW like this, but if they could do so I imagine they would have. 

[Jayce]

Did EQ1 have the concept of a raid group, or did you just organize your guild into a lot of 5-man groups together?

I also have the impression that EQ1 had some raids that required more than 40.  Is that right?

[El Gallo]

EQ did not have raid groups until, iirc, the Planes of Power expansion.  So you just had regular groups (6-people per group in EQ) before that.  Though I think you could make private chat channels to facilitate raid coordination before that (I think the chat channel system came with Luclin (an earlier expansion) but I may well be wrong about that).

Anyway, yes there were some encounters geared for more than 40.  I think the PoP raid group interface allowed 72 people, but people would sometimes bring more than that (there wan't any real in-game effect of being in the raid vs outside it, at least at first).  Because there were no instances there was no limit on how many people you could bring to a raid other than coordination and lag you would occasionally see some pretty obscene zergs (back then, I think a lot of the raid stuff is instanced now - come to think of it there were some instanced encounters at the end of PoP).

[Jayce]

I think it's easy to lose sight of the fact that instancing and raid groups made raiding in general a lot less primitive.  You physically can't just zerg an encounter with 100 people, communication is more facilitated, and the instanced nature makes things like varying difficulty levels possible.

Given that, the comparison to EQ1 raiding seems even less tenable.

[Merusk]

EQ did not have raid groups until, iirc, the Planes of Power expansion.  So you just had regular groups (6-people per group in EQ) before that.  Though I think you could make private chat channels to facilitate raid coordination before that (I think the chat channel system came with Luclin (an earlier expansion) but I may well be wrong about that).

I want to say that chat channels came-in before Luclin, but then I recalled being in Ssra while another raid was going on.  First group in gets to claim /yell for their heal rotations... so yeah chat channels came later.

Complete Heal was also a big part of why encounters were just tank n spank.  Percentage Heals are teh debil.

PoP was designed for 72 people minimum  Something about the way the Rathe Council encounter worked required a certain number of people on each mob.. and that worked-out to 72 people.  The subsequent "oh hay, now you only need 35" of the GoD/ OOW was also another reason many ubers quit.  Which made iit funny watching WoW do the same thing 3 years later, and not having it backfire on them like it did EQ.  (Lack of choices helped there, though.)

Then again, I also recall being ecstatic about 40-man raids and SOME folks (Gallo!) saying it was crap and just meant that everyone had to be more on their toes, so you're actually NARROWING the amount of people who would raid, because scrubs would be bumped and unable to raid.  This argument was repeated again as they released the 25-mans and once more about a year ago when we found-out kara was a 10-man.   Tee Hee.

[El Gallo]

I didn't think it would be crap, just that it wouldn't be the panacea a lot of casuals and time-starved powergamers thought it would be.  You could take out North Temple of Veeshan with 40 obsessed catasses watching TV half the time, 60 generic powergamers watching TV half the time or 90 total fuckups watching TV half the time.  Or whatever combo you can come up with.  Black Temple?  You bring 40 people who get 100% Freebird on Guitar Hero 2 Expert while passing their guitars back and forth in a painstakingly choreographed bee dance or you don't zone in.

There were a lot of raid spots for dead weight slackers with very inconsistent schedules but a nice personality (like me!) in EQ.  Now, it's harder to mooch 

[Selby]

why is getting keyed such a problem?

You obviously never got keyed for Ony on the Horde side.  14 steps of hell.  Multiple LBRS\UBRS runs, world dragon hunts, etc.  The most painful keying I've ever had to do.  MC\BWL were a cakewalk compared to that.

[SurfD]

why is getting keyed such a problem?

You obviously never got keyed for Ony on the Horde side.  14 steps of hell.  Multiple LBRS\UBRS runs, world dragon hunts, etc.  The most painful keying I've ever had to do.  MC\BWL were a cakewalk compared to that.

Level 70 druid, level 70 mage, level 65 shaman, All horde, all keyed for Ony.  I know the pain.