WOTLK raid progression.

[bhodi]

I seem to recall several blue names implying that allowing the degree of freedom they did with the UI was a mistake.  Be interesting to see how much of that carries over to their upcoming MMOG.

It's the only reason I played as long as I did initially. I think Lum called it a 'enjoyment multiplier' or something similar - a very apt description.

[Paelos]

The developers don't like having their own stupidity shoved in their face. End of story.

[Sheepherder]

Except their stupidity was actually rather brilliant, because dieing to a debuff because you didn't have time to read the tooltip, or because you just reacted to the fire effects and the raid blew up fucking sucks.  The information has to be presented somehow, and the animations, sound, and built-in text is often insufficient, particularly with older content.

[Hindenburg]

I'd call MC's mechanics anything but brilliant.

Oh hay mages, YOU GOTTA DECURSE 40 PEOPLE! STAT!

[kildorn]

The initial Oprah giving out curses shit in MC was stupid. Rapid response debuffs, also stupid (CAN I CLEANSE THIS ON.. TOO LATE TO READ!), things like Flame Wreath, stupid.

Essentially, there are fights in the game you must know ahead of time or you will automatically wipe to them. The learning phase sucked when every week you brought a new person, they had to figure it out. Things like Bigwigs/DBM are only possible because the boss encounters are shockingly static (every X seconds he does Y. The pre UI mod method of doing this was some jackass counting on vent.)

Any time a fight becomes Player vs UI, it's stupid. UI mods make that a bit better (heal frames, debuff displays that will only show what the hell I can actually cure so I don't need to mouse over mid fight to look and see if that's a disease or a poison because we can't have nice icon borders by debuff type..), and as a side note: Maly sparks are a pain in the fucking ass to see, especially after they spin you around and give them a runbuff. That entire fight has to be played zoomed out to EVE fleet fight levels to effectively find the fuckers around the goddamned dragon taking up the entire floor. And hell, that stupid Wound debuff from TBC makes no goddamned sense until you read the tooltip, and if you stop to read the tooltip your tank dies.

[Ingmar]

And hell, that stupid Wound debuff from TBC makes no goddamned sense until you read the tooltip, and if you stop to read the tooltip your tank dies.

/stoneform

[Hindenburg]

Hm, they nerfed Luffa. Yet again proves dwarven might.

[K9]

things like Flame Wreath, stupid.

Huh? The only Flame Wreath I can think of was Aran's and that was actually a pretty cool mechanic in my opinion.

The only time when you shouldn't remove a debuff is on Grobbulus, but you learn not to do that pretty fast. Equally, the only fights with annoying cleanse-spam are Noth and Heigan, although these are paltry compared to fights like Felmyst.

I agree with your sentiments about the sparks on Malygos, that whole fight is far too gimmicky.

[kildorn]

things like Flame Wreath, stupid.

Huh? The only Flame Wreath I can think of was Aran's and that was actually a pretty cool mechanic in my opinion.

The only time when you shouldn't remove a debuff is on Grobbulus, but you learn not to do that pretty fast. Equally, the only fights with annoying cleanse-spam are Noth and Heigan, although these are paltry compared to fights like Felmyst.

I agree with your sentiments about the sparks on Malygos, that whole fight is far too gimmicky.

Flame Wreath is stupid because at the time it was the only ground effect during a boss fight where you had to NOT get the fuck out of it or you died. It's an example of "know the rules beforehand because you have no time to read the tool tip before reacting"

It's a fine mechanic as is, but only with posted strats/boss mod type effects, otherwise it's player vs UI.

[Arinon]

There is very little room between trivially easy to handle and something hard to survive the first time you encounter it.  It usually involves heavy fight scripting and telegraphing.  Both of which are awesome for longevity.

[Ratman_tf]

*Yar! Rant! Yar!*

I agree. I compare it to memorizing multiplication tables. Pretty dull and awful.
But this kind of game design goes way back, and permeates a lot of games now. Expert players pretty much expect it now, and want to be challenged on that meta-level.

[Malakili]

Flame Wreath is stupid because at the time it was the only ground effect during a boss fight where you had to NOT get the fuck out of it or you died. It's an example of "know the rules beforehand because you have no time to read the tool tip before reacting"

It's a fine mechanic as is, but only with posted strats/boss mod type effects, otherwise it's player vs UI.

WoW is designed for you to die many times before you can win a fight even if you KNOW the strategy (but haven't practiced it).   There is no way they were expecting people to get it right the first time.  Its, oh hey, this will definitely wipe the raid the first time someone sees it.  Oh well, they'll run back and do it again.

[Chimpy]

And in the case of Aran....get fucking lost on the way back.

Fucking hate the god damn MC Escher part of that place.

[Phred]

WoW is designed for you to die many times before you can win a fight even if you KNOW the strategy (but haven't practiced it).   There is no way they were expecting people to get it right the first time.  Its, oh hey, this will definitely wipe the raid the first time someone sees it.  Oh well, they'll run back and do it again.

But, fortunately I guess, no one on the live servers ever get's to see the fight for the first time. By the time it's off the test server into live there are 20 different mods and strategies posted for it to help you. I doubt even the people on the test server have to figure this stuff out, really. They probably just get hints and spoilers from the dev's monitoring the testing.

[K9]

No hotfix for Sarth3D.

Those speed kills are normally the kind of thing we would fix in some way or another because those cross the line in our opinion. It's a subjective line though, and we don't always want to stomp on every creative solution that players come up with. In this case, so many groups already had Sarth on farm and the solution would have involved hitting group dps pretty severely that a quick fix didn't feel warranted. If say that was the solution that players came up with to deal with Algalon within the time-frame where only a guild or so per server had beaten him, then we'd probably have been more reactive.

[urlhttp://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/14637425299-25-man-raids-more-difficult-false-assumption.html]Source[/url]

[Setanta]

things like Flame Wreath, stupid.

Huh? The only Flame Wreath I can think of was Aran's and that was actually a pretty cool mechanic in my opinion.

Except in the very early BC/Kara days when Aran could cast Flame Wreath and Blizzard at the same time 

I hated copping both, knowing it was a guaranteed wipe - thank god they fixed it.

And hell - if you missed the big red fire circles around you, you deserved to wipe - I'm not sure they could have made the wreath any more obvious. 

[Setanta]

And in the case of Aran....get fucking lost on the way back.

Fucking hate the god damn MC Escher part of that place.

Heh - the nightmares from that place, getting lost was the worst.

Mind you, it was one of the most enjoyable raids I've done, I'd rate it up there with early Scholo Raid, BWL and AQ40 for fun factor (MC made me cry with boredom). Actually, I really liked all of TBC's raids, I just don't get that feeling as much with Nerfed-Naxx. Comparing TBC to WoTLK isn't fair though - WoTLK doesn't offer anywhere near as much depth and variety at the moment and the heroics are a joke.

[Paelos]

Kara was a yummy raiding truffle with a trash-filled shitty center.

[Merusk]

I just wish they'd have cleared out more of that annoying back door trash.  The front section wasn't bad at all after the 2nd zone nerf, but the back end never got any better.

[K9]

Kara was a really good raid zone, with the exception of the trash between Opera and Curator (If people find it quicker to leave your instance and use a different entrance you know your trash pacing is wrong) and the Trash between Curator and Aran. Once you were past Aran the trash thinned out.

[Fabricated]

Kara was a really good raid zone, with the exception of the trash between Opera and Curator (If people find it quicker to leave your instance and use a different entrance you know your trash pacing is wrong) and the Trash between Curator and Aran. Once you were past Aran the trash thinned out.

Well, the trash in the viewers gallery included several mobs who dropped 1-1.5G for -each- raid member. We killed them off to cover repair costs. Clever design really.

The shit sandwich was all the trash AFTER the curator.

[koro]

And hell - if you missed the big red fire circles around you, you deserved to wipe - I'm not sure they could have made the wreath any more obvious. 

Unless your spell effects were turned down low to avoid framerate issues on low-end machines with a raid casting spells in that tiny room, in which case they were either invisible or very hard to spot. 

[Ingmar]

And hell - if you missed the big red fire circles around you, you deserved to wipe - I'm not sure they could have made the wreath any more obvious. 

Unless your spell effects were turned down low to avoid framerate issues on low-end machines with a raid casting spells in that tiny room, in which case they were either invisible or very hard to spot. 

Also it just didn't put the circle around everyone.

[Paelos]

Kara was a really good raid zone, with the exception of the trash between Opera and Curator (If people find it quicker to leave your instance and use a different entrance you know your trash pacing is wrong) and the Trash between Curator and Aran. Once you were past Aran the trash thinned out.

Well, the trash in the viewers gallery included several mobs who dropped 1-1.5G for -each- raid member. We killed them off to cover repair costs. Clever design really.

The shit sandwich was all the trash AFTER the curator.

It was reallly terrible after Curator. I think if you counted up all the mobs, it was well over 50 elite trash kills and 20 something pulls before you got to a boss in that middle section.

[K9]

The shit sandwich was all the trash AFTER the curator.

Doing the fish with a caster-stacked raid sucked so bad.

Really though, other than that retarded section, the rest of the instance was paced well and the whole place had really great zone design.

[Ingmar]

Yeah all it would have taken to fix that bit is to move Illhoof downstairs a bit - as it is he's sandwitched right in there with Aran.

[Fabricated]

I actually find myself being really nostalgic about Kara. It genuinely felt 'epic'. Naxxramas was paced better overall, but after finally seeing it top to bottom I'm not particularly blown away by its design. Kara was visually -amazing-, I never got tired of looking up into the library. Naxx I can't hardly tell where I am.

[Malakili]

I actually find myself being really nostalgic about Kara. It genuinely felt 'epic'. Naxxramas was paced better overall, but after finally seeing it top to bottom I'm not particularly blown away by its design. Kara was visually -amazing-, I never got tired of looking up into the library. Naxx I can't hardly tell where I am.

Its the winged design.  Kara is relatively linear compared to Naxx, but you can really imagine it as a tower of an eccentric old mage.  In Naxx, you are sitting in what is obviously a raid zone.

[K9]

I agree that Naxx feels like a raid zone, but I don't think this is really a winged vs linear debate. Winged worked for places like SM while retaining the "feel' of the zone. What made Kara great was that it was believable for what it was, a house gone mad. The place had all the elements of a mansions, hell you get to fight in the stables, the kitchen, the bedrooms, the library and eventually the roof. Each room made sense, and the layout and progression between the sub-zones made sense. Naxx on the other hand does just feel like a bunch of corridors with mobs in. I can't tell you what the point of Anub's room is, or Gothik's; but I can easuly make sense that Moroes, as Medivhs butler and steward, would be haunting the banquet hall.

Having done naxx a lot, there are a lot of fun fights in there still, but the zone itself is horrendously bland. Tempest Keep was the same. Conversely the AQ zones (to me) make sense, as do ZG and ZA. MC makes sense too, but in a horrendously boring way. Sunwell is sort-of there, but not quite.

[Merusk]

I had the notion last night that Uldar is too fucking big.  I'm already tired of the run from the entrance to the teleporter platform and wish they'd put it at the entrance, not down the damn ramp.   I think it's just that the zone itself feels like MCII, even though it's not a cave.  Wide-open spaces you just run forever to and fro in aren't inspiring.