Cataclysm

[Simond]

The fate of every character in World of Warcraft is to become a raid boss. The only question is when and what lame excuse is Blizz going to use to justify it.

See also: What they're doing to the Zandalar tribe in 4.1

[Paelos]

Not sure if this is a good sign or a bad one. More polished, less buggy, impossibly hard encounters?

Any kind of Q&A they do on their raids is a good thing imo. I believe the hardcore helping with implementation would be better than these current clowns trying to figure it out in house. They wouldn't be designing it.

[ajax34i]

So these players get hired, and then what?  Will their bosses listen to them?

[caladein]

They're just standard QA jobs, that's all.

I'd assume they're asking for experienced high-end raiders, who are good technical writers, this go around because per some convention panel, they sort of don't have a lot of those in their QA bullpen.

[apocrypha]

Will their bosses listen to them?

No. Their bosses will monologue loudly, enrage in phase 3 and drop the wrong epics.

[Soulflame]

Maybe I'm off-base here, or maybe the people I hang around with aren't representative of the high end raiders, but don't most high end raiders already have jobs that far outpay QA jobs at blizzard?  I know that when people think high end raider they think a jobless shut-in catass who lives in his mom's basement, but I can't think of anyone like that who does high end raiding.

[Paelos]

Maybe I'm off-base here, or maybe the people I hang around with aren't representative of the high end raiders, but don't most high end raiders already have jobs that far outpay QA jobs at blizzard?  I know that when people think high end raider they think a jobless shut-in catass who lives in his mom's basement, but I can't think of anyone like that who does high end raiding.

Depends. Usually high-end raiders have very flexible job schedules, but there are a lot of factors to that. Some are independently wealthy, some are retired, some are in college, some are unemployed, and some are on someone else's dime.

[Paelos]

4.1 is coming out tomorrow. I'm interesting in seeing the reception of the ZG overhaul amongst the casual community.

[Sjofn]

Having only heroic versions of that still makes me go "wat."

[Miasma]

I'm hoping to use a bad pug of the "new" troll dungeons as an excuse to ragequit.

[Paelos]

I'm hoping to use a bad pug of the "new" troll dungeons as an excuse to ragequit.

If you do, please recount it in detail here. That would be hilarious.

[Minvaren]

1.1GB patch for 2 dungeons?   

[Simond]

It must be all the new zone geometry and mob model dat....no, hang on. 

[Fordel]

That's probably preloading a bunch of art for the eventual new raid.

[Soulflame]

I BE DA PREDATOR, YOU DA PREY
 

[Sjofn]

I BE DA PREDATOR, YOU DA PREY
 

Man, I can so hear that guy in my head, and it's been forever since I died to killed him last.

[Minvaren]

That's probably preloading a bunch of art for the eventual new raid.

Plus another 350MB today.  Something's gotta be preloading here....

[Soulflame]

I BE DA PREDATOR, YOU DA PREY
 

Man, I can so hear that guy in my head, and it's been forever since I died to killed him last.

It's why I picked that guy.  Probably the most irritating boss on the bear run.  First the gauntlet (mind control the add as long as possible!  run up the ramp!  pull more up the ramp!  oh god the add broke MC and the healers are getting beaten!) then the eagle boss himself.

One time, we were setting up to pull, and our mage hit blink.  Blinked right into the boss, who of course yelled the above, and we promptly wiped.  Pretty sure he did the same on bear another day.

We had a lot of failed bear runs.   

WHO YOU BE MORE AFRAID OF?  DEM?  OR ME?

I can't really remember fire guy or jaguar guy, but I'm sure they had equally pithy things to yell at us in their delightfully faux Jamaican accents.

[Sjofn]

I'm pretty sure we didn't actually kill him until the giant nerf (we were a 10-man-only-two-guilds-working-together-to-even-get-that-organized monstrosity at the time), they might've gotten him down on my week off or something though. We definitely didn't clear it until the nerfs came, that's for certain. We found that place incredibly frustrating, so it was basically a combination of us sucking and us not wanting to even work on it.

I have absolutely no recollection of any of those fights mechanically, except for the bear dude. I was an offtank or a (paladin) healer, so most of the time I didn't actually have to do anything special beyond taunting when appropriate. Paladin it was just FoL ftw still, I believe? Maybe it was holy light by then. The single button I would push runs together.

[Shrike]

I don't remember too much about ZG, other than it had lots of poison and pretty much sucked as a warrior. I think I hit the place twice before the guild moved it to weekdays and I never saw it again. Always did want those 1h swords...ah well.

ZA I did get to mostly do. Guild wouldn't touch it, but I was in a quasi-PuG collective "guild" that ran it pretty regularly for a couple of months. Too much trash in there, but I had fun. Since we rarely had anything like a balanced group, any fight could (and did) get pretty exciting. Since I was a shaman now, fuck all their poison (miss my totem). What stands out most clearly in memory was the bear god fights. I wanted those shoulders in the worst possible way. When they finally dropped, I won them on a roll (against another enhance shaman and some damned hunter). Minutes after I got them, the power lines went down and I didn't have electricity for a week. Was interesting when I finally got back on line and could talk to everyone again.  

Ah, a final thoguht. Kinda looking forward to the new 5mans, but I'll probably have to PuG this stuff and I'm sure it'll be epically (so to speak) painful. Warm up the Bad Groups thread. There's going to be incoming.

[Malakili]

I don't remember too much about ZG, other than it had lots of poison and pretty much sucked as a warrior. I think I hit the place twice before the guild moved it to weekdays and I never saw it again. Always did want those 1h swords...ah well.

I actually think ZG was pretty great for its time.  Very non linear compared to the other raids that were out at the time, some really solid gear for filling in slots that yu were unlucky with in 40mans, and some vanity stuff (like mounts), that kept them worth doing even when you were way out of the normal gear level.  The fights were generally speaking pretty fun as well.

[Ingmar]

I'm pretty sure we didn't actually kill him until the giant nerf (we were a 10-man-only-two-guilds-working-together-to-even-get-that-organized monstrosity at the time), they might've gotten him down on my week off or something though. We definitely didn't clear it until the nerfs came, that's for certain. We found that place incredibly frustrating, so it was basically a combination of us sucking and us not wanting to even work on it.

I have absolutely no recollection of any of those fights mechanically, except for the bear dude. I was an offtank or a (paladin) healer, so most of the time I didn't actually have to do anything special beyond taunting when appropriate. Paladin it was just FoL ftw still, I believe? Maybe it was holy light by then. The single button I would push runs together.

We got eagle down a couple times before the nerf, then stalled mightily on lynx guy until the nerf came. Eagle dude was never a *consistent* kill though til after the nerf for sure.

[Sjofn]

I must've been in my traditional pre-expansion funk by then, I totally don't remember downing him pre-nerf. I could just be forgetting, of course, I don't specifically remember the first time we killed some of the Karazhan bosses, but of course we did, because we ran it a MILLION BILLION TIMES.

I remember wipes better, like Kildorn running into the red beam on Netherspite and then being mad I couldn't hold aggro through it somehow. 

[Soulflame]

Which giant nerf?  As I understand it, there were two.  One that happened a bit before I saw the place (before that nerf it was REALLY hard) and then the one that happened when they removed the mount.

Firehawk was step on eggs to spawn firehawks then round up and blow up while not standing on top of explody things the boss threw at the raid.

Jaguar was omg cleanse heal heal crap he split please pick up the other one yay bear mount!

[Ingmar]

The 'giant nerf' we are referring to is the 3.0 one when all the bosses in all the raids got nerfed by 20% or whatever number it was. Before that we (as a guild that ONLY raided 10s, so our gear was Kara-level plus whatever people managed to farm badges for) had only managed to down bear (and occasionally eagle), we didn't kill Zul'jin until after the huge pre-Wrath nerf.

[Soulflame]

I think I came close to ragequitting on Zul'Jin a couple of times.  So many hours working on phases.   

[Samprimary]

4.1's droppin as we speak, let's see how fun ye olde rehashed content is, weh?

[Evildrider]

You mean the new 5-man raids?   

[caladein]

Servers up.

[Paelos]

Servers up.

Status reports! I'm still at work!

I'm probably going to log in with my remaining time (I think it runs out in early May).

[Rokal]

They're not really up. LFD tool isn't working at the moment for "new" dungeons, and lots of people reporting being unable to zone into them manually either.

[Merusk]

Huh.. what about the normal instances. Are they able to get into those, or is everyone only trying the new ones.  I'd expect them to run into the "no instance servers are available" problem again.

[amiable]

All I know is that I am trapped at load screen for the new dungeons and I have to hard quit he program to get out.  Clownshoes.

[Sjofn]

Huh.. what about the normal instances. Are they able to get into those, or is everyone only trying the new ones.  I'd expect them to run into the "no instance servers are available" problem again.

I got into a normal instance around 1pm, I think, then after I got out the server was resetting for whatever reason. The thing *I* noticed wasn't working was fishing, of all things.


EDIT: 1pm PDT that is, so about three hours ago.

[caladein]

Well, aside from a hilarious bug with DKs that got fixed with rolling restarts an hour or so after the server's came up, it's been okay for me.

Had to try twice to port into ZG but guildmates have reported getting kicked as soon as they go into an instance and general lag.  Also, any addon that used the combat log is in need of an update, which most of mine didn't have available yet.

Edit: Also, purchased Conquest Points count against your cap which sort of ruined my plan of grabbing my bow this week.  Aaaaaaaaaaand server crash, at least we're still saved to our instance.