Cataclysm

[Mattemeo]

Wow. I just posted that because it was topical. I wasn't looking to strike any nerves with it. Sorry bro.

I wasn't aiming that at you...   

[Rokal]

I'm fairly certain your warrior screwed you.  I'm fairly certain I've had to kick multiple LDs before, but you only get one live kick, which counts if you kick an LD.  So if you had kicked the pally first you then could have kicked the priest.

Which is still completely stupid. If the priest just went afk like our pally, we'd have been stuck with at least one of them and forced to 4-man the dungeon anyway.

[Simond]

For everyone else playing dress-up with their e-dolly looking for items for transmogrification: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/mogit.aspx

[Lantyssa]

That is the most awesome add-on.  Ever.

[Rendakor]

With the final showdown against Deathwing approaching, we’ve been keeping a close eye on players' progress through the current Firelands raid content. Before patch 4.3 is released, we want groups who are working on Heroic-difficulty content to be able to get as close to Ragnaros as possible, and we want players who are tackling normal progression to be able to experience as many of the encounters as they can. To achieve these goals, we’ll be toning down the difficulty of both normal and Heroic raids through hotfixes in the coming weeks. In general, we plan to reduce health and damage of all raid bosses in both normal and Heroic Firelands by around the same percentage we brought difficulty down for the original Cataclysm raids when Rage of the Firelands (patch 4.2) was released.

We're looking forward to seeing more groups of players face off against the Fire Lord in the weeks ahead. However, before we make these changes, we want to give everyone a final shot at the bosses at their current difficulty level -- so this is a heads up that we’re planning to apply the difficulty hotfixes beginning the week of September 19.

Stay tuned to the Patch 4.2 Hotfixes blog for these and other live updates to the game as they happen: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3019413

Sauce

[Paelos]

Interesting to tell the world they are going out of their way to nerf content instead of just implementing buffs ala WotLK

[Nevermore]

I guess that catering to the hardcore raiders idea worked out really well for them, eh?

[caladein]

Interesting to tell the world they are going out of their way to nerf content instead of just implementing buffs ala WotLK

There was some whinging regarding the hotfixed nerfs that went in this week to Rag and Beth'tilac as well as the change to legendary rates in Heroic 25s.  Having a heads-up post heading into the raid week is probably in response to that, although I think they would toss it out even without that considering its apparent scale.

As for the buffs you're talking about, that was just for ICC and I'm still not sure how I feel about them.  I liked that they preserved the feel of fights versus just taking an axe to difficult (and probably interesting) mechanics but it certainly didn't do my guild a lot of good.  It felt like we got worse by the month more than the buff's amount .

[Rokal]

I guess that catering to the hardcore raiders idea worked out really well for them, eh?

When there is nothing else to do for people at 85, no.

So in less than a week T12 will see a ~20% nerf? Terrific, there is no way my guild will run out of interesting content to do before 4.3, which is probably going to arrive in Nov/Dec.

It took my guild a long time, but we finally downed regular Ragnaros this past weekend. I was looking forward to smoothing out our execution and gradually moving into heroics, but if the T11 nerfs are any indication, none of these fights are going to be fun/interesting in less than a week.

I think I'm done. I don't care about the Deathwing fight that much, and this change is a pretty clear indicator that they want to go back to a Wrath-style difficulty.

[Rendakor]

I'm looking forward to the changes. We've gotten Rag to the second phase transition (~40%) exactly once in...4 weeks of attempts? Granted we haven't been extending, and we've had a LOT of DCs/no-shows/late starts, but still. I'm tired of wiping on this fight because one person didn't pay attention and stood in a lava wave, failed to kill their add, stood in the middle when the seeds were spawning, etc.

[Rokal]

I'm looking forward to the changes. We've gotten Rag to the second phase transition (~40%) exactly once in...4 weeks of attempts? Granted we haven't been extending, and we've had a LOT of DCs/no-shows/late starts, but still. I'm tired of wiping on this fight because one person didn't pay attention and stood in a lava wave, failed to kill their add, stood in the middle when the seeds were spawning, etc.

We pretty much had the same problem. Every week we'd have a new person, and we'd spend a few hours wiping while they learned the fight (or other people died to stupid stuff like engulfing flames or lava wave). We probably did the second phase transition about ~8 times total, all of our other wipes (many, many wipes) were before transition 2. Our winning attempt was actually only the second time we'd seen phase 3, and the first time we'd spent more than 30 seconds in phase 3.

Eventually we actually got a raid group that had all seen the fight on previous nights, and it clicked.

Basically: After phase 2 transition is nailed, if you're all up and your ranged is paying attention to meteors, you win.

Or I guess you could just wait a week for a 20% nerf, after which none of the mechanics will pose much of a risk, and you can collect your free loot and then be bored for another 3-4 months.

[caladein]

If your group has just finished up normal mode, even a 20% across the board nerf isn't going to make heroics trivially difficult.  And unless you've been two-healing everything (in 10s) they're pretty much new fights anyway.

[Merusk]

My crazy guild leader was whining about this last night.  I didn't quite understand why, but he kept returning to the idea that it was ridiculous that it was happening so soon and that 4.3 wasn't even on test yet.   I don't see how it's too soon as they're already killing Heroic Ragnaros and we're not nearly bleeding edge. *

He stopped when they got on the topic of a possible new expansion next summer, meaning there wouldn't be a year-long raid of the same content, like happened with Icecrown.

* The only reason they're killing H-Rag is because we're still a 25-man guild for all intents.  They aim for 25's then split into 1 or 2 10s if there aren't enough people to do 25 that day.  The H-Rag kill came on a day they could only do 1 10-man so they had all the best players who'd already seen the fight there.

I'll note it's been harder and harder for them to get 25 sign-ups.  Even though they do focus on rotating people and making sure there's not an "A raid" and a "B Raid" you still wind-up leaving people out and folks quit (plus the increased Cata attrition).  As predicted 10s and 25s with shared lockouts has all-but-killed 25-man raiding.

[caladein]

I imagine that it's quite deliberate that they're not waiting until Firelands has been superseded to nerf it.  Maybe the whole "We made T11 a lot easier." thing didn't really drive much extra traffic to it because it was "old".  Not to project, but it's been pretty much impossible to get certain people in our 10-man to go want to go back for Heroic T11 stuff like Al'akir and Sinestra on our spare hours even though it would be brand new for us and drop useful gear (and pretty titles!).

It does seem like they've been trying new ideas about how to mix content difficulties out of the same tier at around the same time for three straight years now and maybe they'll be able to learn something from trying it this way.

[Fordel]

They just need more fucking content basically.

[Paelos]

I think I'm done. I don't care about the Deathwing fight that much, and this change is a pretty clear indicator that they want to go back to a Wrath-style difficulty.

 

[Jayce]

They recently said that they start the nerfs when their internal metrics flatten out, indicating that fewer people are beating the content. Presumably that's what they are doing now, but the very scientific straw poll I've just taken of the respondents to this thread seem to indicate that people are still progressing.

[Lakov_Sanite]

They recently said that they start the nerfs when their internal metrics flatten out, indicating that fewer people are beating the content. Presumably that's what they are doing now, but the very scientific straw poll I've just taken of the respondents to this thread seem to indicate that people are still progressing.

Oh people are progressing, there's just a LOT less of them bothering to try.

[Lantyssa]

They recently said that they start the nerfs when their internal metrics flatten out, indicating that fewer people are beating the content. Presumably that's what they are doing now, but the very scientific straw poll I've just taken of the respondents to this thread seem to indicate that people are still progressing.

Anyone in this thread at this point in time is either still playing, watching the train wreck, or crazy.  Your straw poll is horribly biased in favor of people still playing the game.

[Shrike]

They recently said that they start the nerfs when their internal metrics flatten out, indicating that fewer people are beating the content. Presumably that's what they are doing now, but the very scientific straw poll I've just taken of the respondents to this thread seem to indicate that people are still progressing.

Most of the raiding guilds in FL on my server (Aerie Peak) seems to be hung up at 6/7. That includes mine (though, we just go to Rags last week).

I brought the nerfs up to our GL last night. She seemed a bit surprised by how soon (well, presumably), but it is what it is. I'd like to beat his ass as he is now, but frankly, I want my trinket and don't much care how I get it... 

Although, we only got one night of real attempts on him (relatively--a significant part of the raid was dead nuts drunk), we were having issues with the adds. Last night was to be a real throwdown with him, but one of our tanks went AWOL. The RL seems to think we'll have him down in a week of solid attempts. I think he's still drunk (I recall the month and a half we spent on Al'Akir). Whatever. I'm in for the long haul to the next expansion regardless of nerfs at this point.

Or at least until ToR goes live...

[Jayce]

Your straw poll is horribly biased in favor of people still playing the game.

I'd guess that Blizzard's raid progression metrics are biased the same way  :)

That said, I'm curious what everyone else's impression is, because I'm not sure how closely they stick by the "nerf when people stop progressing" rule. They nerfed 4.1 when 4.2 came out, which is suspicious timing.  Unless they had a previous round of nerfs I'm forgetting.

[Miasma]

My anecdotal impression is that firelands is unpopular.  My casual guild was raiding and having fun in t11, we were 9/12 normal before the nerfs and then killed the final bosses after them.  We managed to kill shannox our first week in firelands but got destroyed by the dps requirements on beth'tilac and rhyolith.  We could basically only kill shannox and people were too burned out on the troll dungeons to farm valor to improve dps.  Eventually people got fed up of clearing all that trash just to down one boss and we stopped going, went and did some old raids for guild achievs and mounts instead.

More anecdotal: it really seems that the number of people milling about outside firelands while their raid gets together is only equal to the crowd in front of either BoT or BWD whereas it should be equal to both combined.

[Sheepherder]

They just need more fucking content basically.

They need to stop deprecating old content every time they launch a new raid.

[Paelos]

They just need more fucking content basically.

They need to stop deprecating old content every time they launch a new raid.

You're wrong. They need to make content accessible on the front end and then dump it when then next iteration comes out.

You'll never get people to love doing something that's not new in a game where they are paying for the priviledge, and you'll never get people excited about dragging people through old content just to get them geared for the stuff they really want to be doing.

[Evildrider]

I just think they need to do something more than "Look they are getting bored, let's release a new raid and a new tier of loot!  That'll keep them playing!"

[Rokal]

You'll never get people to love doing something that's not new in a game where they are paying for the priviledge, and you'll never get people excited about dragging people through old content just to get them geared for the stuff they really want to be doing.

Speak for yourself. I loved the linear gear progression of TBC because it gave me more stuff to do on all of my characters. I was excited about gearing new players up and doing pugs, because that meant my alts got to run older content that still had meaningful rewards.

5-mans in TBC never gave you a near-full set of gear that was better than what you could get from raiding, so there was always something worthwhile to do in the game. You did 5-mans>Heroics>Kara>Gruul/Mag/ZA>SSC/TK>Hyjal>BT>Sunwell. I geared up two alts up through SSC/TK, and that was a lot of fun repeatable content. In Cata both the difficulty and the rewards are so temporary. I don't have any interest in doing T11 on my alts when they nerfed it into another boring faceroll with gear rewards that will be replaced by running ZA/ZG 80 times in 4.3. The disposable content model emphasizes how little content is in Cata instead of giving players more.

[Merusk]

You are literally insane as nobody did that in BC.

By the time Sunwell was out you got better gear from heroics (or better heroic gear by running Kael's heroic) by farming badges than running old content.  Just like today!  Barring that your guild dragged your ass through the current raid until you were geared.  Least that's what we did with the few quasi-geared folks we brought along.

[Rokal]

Emphasis on 'by the time Sunwell came out'. Badge gear started off very limited, so you could only approach a full set by the time Sunwell hit. Before that, Badge gear only augmented gear you got and gave you a 'boost' to catch up, it wasn't a total replacement for raid gear like current badge loot.

As for the Sunwell 5-man? I believe the gear was on-par with Karazhan loot. This meant you still had a reason to run T5/6/7.

[Nevermore]

I think I'm done.

Again?  How many times does this make now?

[Miasma]

I think I'm done.

Again?  How many times does this make now?

I'm guessing every content announcement since, sunwell.

[Paelos]

You'll never get people to love doing something that's not new in a game where they are paying for the priviledge, and you'll never get people excited about dragging people through old content just to get them geared for the stuff they really want to be doing.

Speak for yourself. I loved the linear gear progression of TBC because it gave me more stuff to do on all of my characters. I was excited about gearing new players up and doing pugs, because that meant my alts got to run older content that still had meaningful rewards.

I'm sure you did. And if people liked what you like across the board, the game would still be gaining subs or at the very least retaining them.

Except it's not. And it isn't. And it won't as it continues into the near future because they tried to make people like you happy.

[Rokal]

I think I'm done.

Again?  How many times does this make now?

Suppose it'll be the third time since release. Quit after M'uru during Sunwell. Picked up Wrath after it had been out for a few months, only played about a month before quitting again. This makes three. Unfortunately I'm paid through to late October.

I'm sure you did. And if people liked what you like across the board, the game would still be gaining subs or at the very least retaining them.

Except it's not. And it isn't. And it won't as it continues into the near future because they tried to make people like you happy.

You are still assuming that everyone quit the game because the expansion was too hard or inaccessible. There were like a hundred different reasons to quit during this expansion.

I'm sorry not standing in fire was so hard. Hopefully the next expansion lets you and your guild stand wherever you please.

[Paelos]

And you're still assuming that the majority of people quit for reasons other than content and difficulty. People say shit all the time, and they act for different reasons altogether. Nobody is making posts when they quit saying, "The game is too hard, I'm constantly in the fire, and I'm done." No, they blame all kinds of other stuff when the reality is they just sucked or were tired of others sucking. If people played as good as they think they do, Cataclysm wouldn't have caused as much sub loss. And, if the world drove as well as they say they do, we'd have no car accidents.

[Nevermore]

I think I'm done.

Again?  How many times does this make now?

Suppose it'll be the third time since release. Quit after M'uru during Sunwell. Picked up Wrath after it had been out for a few months, only played about a month before quitting again. This makes three. Unfortunately I'm paid through to late October.

I was referring to the number of times you've said it just in this thread.  And yet haven't actually quit.

[Outlawedprod]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112981-WoW-Producer-Discusses-Killing-Deathwing-Raid-Finder-and-Everything-Patch-4-3

Rogue legendary dagger incoming