1.11 Dev Notes -- 40 person raid coming

[Rasix]

And yah, Emeriss is a dumb encounter, but no one should ever die on it if people know what the fuck they're doing even if they get the corruption. (Assuming that's what you're using as an example.)

Well, there are bosses with disaster causing debuffs/DOT's/bizzaro curses in all of the raid instances.

Yah, but most you can deal with through ways other than collecting 8 new pieces of equipment. You know, use the tools available.  I'm not sure what's exactly wrong with this. 

[Telemediocrity]

Question about "hardness" that occurred to me while reading the exchange between Fabricated and Rasix:  Do you guys think hardness is being overvalued by current dev teams, or perhaps relied upon as a crutch where other forms of handcrafted content would take more effort to produce?

I ask because I think back to most of the Single-player games I played - everything from Metroid to Zelda to Mario and Sonic - and the parts of the game that took me a million tries to perfect my strategy weren't by any means the most fun or the most rewarding.

Edit: Explicitly keeping the comparisons limited to between WoW and singleplayer games so as not to hijack the thread off of WoW.

[Rasix]

Question about "hardness" that occurred to me while reading the exchange between Fabricated and Rasix:  Do you guys think hardness is being overvalued by current dev teams, or perhaps relied upon as a crutch where other forms of handcrafted content would take more effort to produce?

I ask because I think back to most of the Single-player games I played - everything from Metroid to Zelda to Mario and Sonic - and the parts of the game that took me a million tries to perfect my strategy weren't by any means the most fun or the most rewarding.

Edit: Explicitly keeping the comparisons limited to between WoW and singleplayer games so as not to hijack the thread off of WoW.

Well, I think the matter at hand is the manner in which they are making these difficult by requiring a certain level or a certain type of equipment to even have a possible shot at beating these encounters.  Quite often the baseline requirement for these encounters is derived through being part of the game and partaking in the raiding portion of the game for a rather long time.  You can't throw 40 joes together just because they're all the same level and expect to beat encounter x. 

This sort of difficulty is over-valued.  Problem is, WoW is what it is. It's game that has a set raid progression where diffculty not only takes into account execution and strategy, but what equipment you're bringing to the table.  I don't see this changing due to a lot of reasons.

[Telemediocrity]

This sort of difficulty is over-valued.  Problem is, WoW is what it is. It's game that has a set raid progression where diffculty not only takes into account execution and strategy, but what equipment you're bringing to the table.  I don't see this changing due to a lot of reasons.

Agreed.  The question is:  If it could change, would you want it to?  And if the raids didn't have the progression, but mastering the tactics required to defeat a difficult raid was still the 'endgame', would it be to your liking?

In other words, what proportion of your total WoW enjoyment comes from mastering a challenge over time via repeated attempts?

[Zane0]

I'd argue that it doesn't seem possible to accomodate or satisfy the cravings of the PvE diku playerbase without some sort of gear progression.  So, fuck raiders and all that, but I don't think WoW of all MMOs is going to depart overmuch from this model. 

In fact, in my experience, WoW seems to have more of an incidental progression rather than an overly forced one.  Consumables can make up a lot of the difference until gear gets to where it has to be.  The larger problem is usually getting enough skilled and dedicated people to do encounters with.  Indeed, what does gathering enough good people have to do with item progression at all?  The skills you develop in MC/ZG/AQ20 are skills that are put to the test and expanded on in BWL and AQ40.  Incidentally, the three former instances all reward gear at about the same level.

To answer your question Tele, I don't think the gulf between gear and mastering challenges is as large as some would say.  There are some resistance and health "blocks", but there are a lot of ways to overcome many of them in a fairly short period of time.

[Rasix]

This sort of difficulty is over-valued.  Problem is, WoW is what it is. It's game that has a set raid progression where diffculty not only takes into account execution and strategy, but what equipment you're bringing to the table.  I don't see this changing due to a lot of reasons.

Agreed.  The question is:  If it could change, would you want it to?  And if the raids didn't have the progression, but mastering the tactics required to defeat a difficult raid was still the 'endgame', would it be to your liking?

In other words, what proportion of your total WoW enjoyment comes from mastering a challenge over time via repeated attempts?

Depends on how repeated.  Similar to single player games in that respect. 

I'm too tired to discuss theorycraft at the moment. Interesting question(s) might be, how to you set an attainable baseline that everyone from the casual to the catass can obtain to try these encounters?  Do you have difficulty sliders, do you have auto-adjusting encounters that calculate item and personnel levels and spit out a baddie based on that?  How do you reward people that beat these encounters? Do you scale the rewards based on difficulty? How do you wrap your brain around this given that WoW is  doing as well as it is?

[Phred]

Have they ever made uber-content that offered no reward whatsoever, that people simply attempted because it was actually fun of its own accord?

Ya. AQ40 for hunters.

[Simond]

There's a bunch of comical Engrish babelfish-translated 1.11 Chinese test realm patch notes floating around out there, apparently.
I'd link, but most threads on it are being deleted as soon as they're posted.

[Modern Angel]

Here goes the cut and pasted translation:

All new 40-men instance
 In EPL…after Baron Rivendare in Strat Dead Side is the gate into Naxx, which is the floating necropolis.
 Description: Four areas, which are Hate Area, Necromancer Area, Deathknight Area and Spider Area. In the end, you will face Kel' Thuzad. There are 18 bosses, be ready for some frost damage.
 All new class sets: Higher than any from before, gotta finish a series of quests, and you will get 8 epics. All classes have their own.
…… (Skip boring general changes)
PvP
 Battleground winning and losing honor points reward has been decreased a lot. Every time you cap flags, the honor points reward has been increased. If before battle starts, one side didn't have enough people, this match would not give any rep and honor.
Druids-
 Cure poison- mana cost decreased, but can not cure poison higher than level 50.
 Destruction?- fixed the bug where if it was parried, dodged or resist, the skill would still hit (I could not find which skill this was talking about)
Hunters-
 Feign Death- fixed that if you had a DOT on the target, you could not get out of combat by using feign death.
 Distracting Shot- Will have a taunt effect instead of causing huge amount of threat like before.
 Serpent Sting- now correctly deal more damage due to certain spell damage buffs.
 Multi-shot- now correctly deal more damage due to certain spell damage buffs.
 Scatter shot- now all hunters can train this skill at level 30, replaced the talent (OMFGWTFBBQ, thank you Blizzard, I will never forget your mercy to stop nerfing hunters)
 New talent- Stabilize- replace scatter shot, when used, can end the cooldown on aim shot, multi-shot, and arcane shot. The cooldown of this skill is 10 minues.
Mages-
 Talent re-spent due to talent changes, and all talent respec costs has been reduced.
 Evocation- all mages can learn this skill at level 20. (Buff)
 Arcane explosion- instant cast no matter what, the talent has been removed. (Buff)
 Mana shield- redesign, lowers all damage input, 30 charges. When mana shield is on, mages will not be affected by burning and drain mana effects, but burning and mana draining effects can destroy the shield really fast.
 Frost magic will now receive a 15 second diminishing return effect, and they will now correctly receive curse of elements’ effects.
 Polymorph- lower ranks will not sheep higher level targets.
 Counter-spell- decrease cooldown.
 Flamestrike- direct damage increased, DOT decreased, the overall damage isn’t changed. (buff)
 Arcane Power- cause a cooldown when used on some trinkets, can not be used with trinkets to wtfpwn people (I added the last part)
 Dampen Magic- redesign, now a percentage of spell damage and heals will be decreased.
 Amp Magic- redesign, now a percentage of spell damage and heals will be increased.
 Detect magic- longer duration.
 Frost armor- redesign, decrease all physical damage on mage, increase frost resistance, lowers all frost spells used on mage. When having frost armor, the frosting slowing effects used on the mage will be on a diminishing return. Also, all melee attacker’s attack speed and movement speed are decreased. (small buff)
 Mage Armor- redesign, lowers all magic damage on the mage, all school resist are increased. When mage armor is on, there’s a small chance to reflect magic back. Can not be purged, dispelled, and cleansed. (small buff)
 Fire ward- absorbs more fire damage. When on, will not be affected by fire stunning effects and flame shock’s effects. ( I guess this is taking about that new debuff flame shock gets)
 Frost bolt- slowing effects decrease in effect, but increase in duration
 Frostbite- lower rank frost spells will not proc this as often, and frost armor will not proc this ever again.
 New spell- magic steal- when used (I guess a self buff), the next non-aoe spell can be stolen, canceling its effect. If the spell was resisted, you can not steal the spell. After stealing the spell, you can release this spell, which deals the same damage it would have dealt at the mage, but will not be affected by spell damage increase buffs and trinket effects, but can be increased by Arcane Power. Holy spells can not be stolen. (Wow, nice, very nice spell, skipped the example part) (Hardcore buff)
 Um… the last skill, I did not know which spell it was, but it said that now it is fixed so you can correctly remove it, and now it can not be dispelled, purged, or cleansed.
 This is my personal note: please, no more combustion, more decrease its cooldown. Please some good talent revamp…
Paladin-
 Holy shock- effects increased, can not be resisted. (buff)
 This spell I did not know what it was- it said it is fixed that it can be correctly removed, and it can not be dispelled, purged, or cleansed.
 Judgment of crusader- now it doesn’t just increase holy damage taken, it also increase the amount healed slightly. (wtf?)
 Judgment- can not re-stealth after being judged (gg rogues…)
 Redemption- can not used lower ranks after learning higher ranks.
 Divine Intervention- can not be used on mind controlled targets.
Priests-
 Touch of Weakness (Undead) - can not stack the different ranks.
 Um… did not know which spell this was, it says the effects will now be 5/10/15% instead of the original 8/16/25%
 Feedback (Human) - shadow damage increased.
 Desperate Prayer (Human, Dwarfs) – will now correctly be affected by talents and spell increasing effects.
 Revive- can not use lower ranks after learning higher ranks.
 Mind Control- if you deal damage to the target of mind control, the target have additional chance to get out of the effect.
Rogues-
 Slice and Dice- fixed so this skill can not be blocked, dodged, parried, or missed. (??)
 Sap- lightning shield will not get you out of stealth.
 Blind- can be correctly resisted.
 Adrenaline Rush- the energy recover method is now changed, but the recover speed did not change. (I guess its that Adrenaline rush will half the time it takes to get 20 energy, but not normal time with 40 energy.)
Shaman-
 Talent re-spent due to talent change, and all talent repec costs has been lowered.
 Now all totems will not create hate with neutral targets, but wont have any effects either.
 All earth totems… didn’t understand this one.
 Stormstrike- (please buff this…) will not be affected by Lightning shield and windfury effects. (ha, no more 6 hits in a row :)
 Mana spring totem- area of effect increased, mana recovered increased.
 Healing spring toem- area of effect increased, health recovered increased.
 Flurry- will be in effect for the next three landed hits. (buff)
 Fire nova totem- damage increased, cooldown increased.
 Magma totem- will now correctly be affected by fire damage increase effects.
 Stoneskin- (please buff this…) area of effect increased, effect increased as well.
 Flame Shock- redesign, after you get shocked, you get a DOT effect, and the next 4 fire spells and damage will be increased by 10%. (buff I guess)
 This is my personal note, please have a good talent revamp, no more elemental mastery, or decrease its cooldown. And please, please, Please!! Let us have Bloodlust…
Warlock-
 Summoning- if your target is too close, you may not summon.
 Shadow burn- if the target took too much effect and the shadow burn’s effect disappears, you will not get a soul shard. (kinda confused)
 Soul-link- when the pet gets damage, you share the damage as well.
Warrior-
 Flurry- only affects next three landed hits. (buff)
 Two-hand specialization- you get 1/1/2/2/3% to improve hit, and you get 1/2/3/4/5% extra damage. (hardcore buff)
 Enrage- redesigned, now when you get crit, you get 8/16/24/32/40% increase in melee damage, whenever you landed hit, this effect will decrease in 1/2/3/4/5%. Lasts for 12 seconds. (can be considered a buff base on the situation, if you get crit again in four afters going into enrage, it will be a buff. Also, Blizzard, mind changing this to be fair to dual wielders? We attack very face, and the hits will be wasted away, this will only benefit the two-hand users…)
 Blood Craze- redesign, now after a crit, you get 2/4/6% of your health back. (I do not know if its instantly gain those points back, but if it is, then OMFGWTFBBQ, because if you have 5k health, which is easy to do, every time you get crit, you instantly get 300hp back.)
 Dual-wield specialization- not only do you get offhand damage increase, you also get 1/2/3/4/5% improve chance to hit.
 Charge- fixed a bug where you can charge too far. Now charge gets rid of all slowing effects.
 Intercept- Fixed a bug where you can intercept too far. Now intercept gets rid of all slowing effects.
 Berserker rage- you are immune to death coil, but still take damage.
 Death Wish- you are immune to death coil, but still take damage.
 Did not know which skill this was- you are immune to death coil, but still take damage.
 Mortal Strike- now correctly decreases the effects of certain healing skills like vampric embrace. (I didn’t want to look up the other skills)
(Didn’t bother to translate the changes in items, quests, reputation, and dungeons, it is basically which boss got buff, whic got nerfed, etc)

Grain of salt. Apparently came from a site called wow.1713.com or something like that. Completely unsure of what that site is but it's very much in Chinese.

[HaemishM]

Have they ever made uber-content that offered no reward whatsoever, that people simply attempted because it was actually fun of its own accord?

BWAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

[HaemishM]

I'm just getting more and more uninterested in progression in the game since it's like Blizzard is flat out not interested in making content the majority of players can see without having to go through horribly uninteresting/unfun content like MC and spending so much time gearing up they get sick of the content that provides it.

You do realize this mantra is on a plaque in the Blizzard office of Furor and Tigole. Both masturbate to it daily before beginning their work.

[Trippy]

I'm just getting more and more uninterested in progression in the game since it's like Blizzard is flat out not interested in making content the majority of players can see without having to go through horribly uninteresting/unfun content like MC and spending so much time gearing up they get sick of the content that provides it.

You do realize this mantra is on a plaque in the Blizzard office of Furor and Tigole. Both masturbate to it daily before beginning their work.

And don't forget that Rob "Ariel" Pardo, WoW's Lead Designer, was guild leader of Legacy of Steel before Tigole took over (since Rob was too busy at Blizzard).
 

[Dren]

I'm just getting more and more uninterested in progression in the game since it's like Blizzard is flat out not interested in making content the majority of players can see without having to go through horribly uninteresting/unfun content like MC and spending so much time gearing up they get sick of the content that provides it.

You do realize this mantra is on a plaque in the Blizzard office of Furor and Tigole. Both masturbate to it daily before beginning their work.

And don't forget that Rob "Ariel" Pardo, WoW's Lead Designer, was guild leader of Legacy of Steel before Tigole took over (since Rob was too busy at Blizzard).
 

This direction of content is most likely going to make me try out EQII.  It sounds like they learned their lesson on several aspects and turned it into a more casual game.  I might be fooled, but worth a shot.

I still have weeks of Oblivion cravings to get over though.  It has taken all my desire for MMOG's away, which hasn't happened for a very long time.

[Triforcer]

Reduce cooldown on CS and a "steal spell" skill that basically acts as a hyperadiant flame deflector?  Even with a 60 mage waiting in the wings for this patch, that sounds crazy overpowered if the cooldown on the second is anything less than a couple minutes.

[Telemediocrity]

Have they ever made uber-content that offered no reward whatsoever, that people simply attempted because it was actually fun of its own accord?

BWAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Hey, other games did it.  White Bunny Rabbit in AC1 springs to mind - I think DAoC had something similar?  And wasn't there some uber dragon in EQ that dropped a hat or a loaf of bread or something if you killed it?

[Evil Elvis]

The white rabbit in AC was more of a joke/homage, than content.  Plus, he could be solo'd by life mages when the game first came out.  He was killed all the time for the experience, and I think he had a chance to drop high level loot, too.

Then they buffed him a little bit, and put an item on him that gave you unique shoes.

Then they buffed him even more, and made him drop a unique, and very noticable wand.

[El Gallo]

Anyone melee with item magic cold solo the rabbit.  My gimp staffer did it early on.  Just buff your shield so he can barely hurt you and wait for him to run out of stamina.  Just keeping the tangent alive.

[Simond]

The original Engrish version of the patch notes.

[Telemediocrity]

The white rabbit in AC was more of a joke/homage, than content.

How so?  He was an uber-mob in a cave that took a while to kill.  Also, with enough time and effort and corpses, you could lure him into town to destroy the local populace.

Plus, he could be solo'd by life mages when the game first came out.

True, but for 90% of the game's life he's been seen in his more buffed form - where he casts unique spells such as Bunny Smite that can whack you for 350+ damage.  Also, he drops no loot worth mentioning.

Then they buffed him a little bit, and put an item on him that gave you unique shoes.

Then they buffed him even more, and made him drop a unique, and very noticable wand.

Neither of which provided any stat bonuses - in gear terms, they'd make you no more powerful than a level 1.  That's nothing like WoW, where the different tiers of raid loot form prerequisites for content.  If anything, wading into combat wearing bunny slippers and the Orb Of Bunny Booty as your caster would make life much more of a challenge.

There's been a lot of content like that in AC1 recently - a very difficult temple on the 'hardest' island in the game, that when defeated simply gives you new dye colors for your armor.

Why couldn't WoW do this?  Why not make every level 60 raid a 'sidegrade' to one another, so that there's no 'tiers' of level 60 loot - what you can get solo is the same power as what you'd get in a raid?  And instead, simply make the raid loot more visually interesting or otherwise 'fun' somehow?

Again, I'm only bringing up AC1 to the extent that it could be prescriptive for WoW (feasibility wise, not necessarily would-the-devs-do-it wise).  Why not have this new guy, Naxx, drop armor dyes instead of uber loot, or special particle effects that you can apply to your weapon and make it glow differently?

If they really want to make people grind it over and over, they can make it so you only get a drop of dye each time, and 20 drops equals a full vial, heh.


I do think it's really interesting, though, that someone implied the White Bunny 'wasn't really content'.  What makes him more or less 'content' than a dragon in WoW?  Time it takes to kill him?  If he had 100x the HP's, or hit twice as hard, would he magically become 'content' whereas otherwise he is not?

In the context of WoW, this makes the discussion more interesting.  If every raid in WoW was re-designed around single groups and on average a decent team would win (As in DDO), would there be a bunch of people on the boards complaining about how the game didn't have enough content?

I think I'm seeing an odd assumption here - that if you take the exact same dungeon/quest/encounter and make it more difficult to beat or otherwise increase the length of time a player spends on it, that's the same as having 'more' content.

[HaemishM]

Why couldn't WoW do this?  Why not make every level 60 raid a 'sidegrade' to one another, so that there's no 'tiers' of level 60 loot - what you can get solo is the same power as what you'd get in a raid?  And instead, simply make the raid loot more visually interesting or otherwise 'fun' somehow?

Because many of the people developing it are uber-raid loving douchebags like Furor and Tigole.

Oh, and 6.5 million people are paying to play it the way it is.

[Fabricated]

Personally, if they're gonna do raids it would be nice if there were 3 or more for each difficulty level progressing up, so while people who want bigger badder harder content and scaling loot don't HAVE to grind a SINGLE raid over and over and over and over and over before they can grind the next.

Like, if they reitemized/rebalanced AQ and MC so their gear compliments eachother, and released one more equal toughness/gear level raid (like a raid in the Caverns of Time, which is slated to have multiple instances in it for all group sizes, including possibly more than one raid).

That way you'd have a shitload less burnout. "MC tonight?" "Nah, we've done that shit 3 times in a row. We're doing AQ or COT tonight." "Thank god, I was getting disgusted with killing Rag over and over. Maybe we'll be geared for BWL and Raxx after this."

Of course, this requires more content.

[Telemediocrity]

I've never understood the WoW team's slowness of content creation.  They have a much bigger team, I presume, than pretty much any other game on the market - and yet their content comes along so slowly.

[SpaceDrake]

Burning Crusade.

That, and their entire original art team apparently bailed on them after finishing AQ.

[Merusk]

PvP
 Battleground winning and losing honor points reward has been decreased a lot. Every time you cap flags, the honor points reward has been increased. If before battle starts, one side didn't have enough people, this match would not give any rep and honor.

Well this just sucks for those realms with more of one side than the other.  This is a crappy change that's only necessary due to their crappy queue system. Whee.

Hunters-
 Multi-shot- now correctly deal more damage due to certain spell damage buffs.
 Scatter shot- now all hunters can train this skill at level 30, replaced the talent (OMFGWTFBBQ, thank you Blizzard, I will never forget your mercy to stop nerfing hunters)
 New talent- Stabilize- replace scatter shot, when used, can end the cooldown on aim shot, multi-shot, and arcane shot. The cooldown of this skill is 10 minues.

GLEEE.. this looks like fun, and I was wondering if we'd ever get something like this.

Priests-
 Um… did not know which spell this was, it says the effects will now be 5/10/15% instead of the original 8/16/25%
 Feedback (Human) - shadow damage increased.
 Desperate Prayer (Human, Dwarfs) – will now correctly be affected by talents and spell increasing effects.
 Revive- can not use lower ranks after learning higher ranks.
 Mind Control- if you deal damage to the target of mind control, the target have additional chance to get out of the effect.

The first spell is Blessed Recovery, the holy talent that restores 8/16/25% of your health over 6 seconds if you're the victim of a critical strike.  I didn't think it was very useful, as it doesn't stack. (Get 2 critical strikes inside of 6 seconds, and you've only restarted the regen ticks, not doubled them.)  I dunno why they'd nerf it.

Desperate prayer keeps getting better. Not using lower ranks of revive will suck for rezzing large raids, and yeah Mind Control was strong, but the aggro it generated in PvE and that you were defenseless in PvP kinda balanced it.  Then again, MCing 3 mobs at a time in a group of 5 /is/ a bit overpowered.

Edit: Pwned by a 5 hour drive and UBB code.

[HRose]

Guys at FoH rant endlessly that AQ is not a significant upgrade over BWL.

And you know what is Blizzard target. You know the background of their devs.

The game is about "loot whoring", if they cut out the upgrades it's like shooting themselves in the feet.

P.S.
Everyone hates raids. Even the raiders. They are there for the loot. If you remove the loot you bare the suck.

[Zane0]

Meh, some of the new stuff is very entertaining to do.  The lack of loot progression is a downer though.  See, there are those who raid for loot, and those who raid for the challenge.  Lots are a mix, but you're going to hear more whines about loot when there are still challenges in AQ40. (Several bosses not downed; lots of strategies are unrefined)

EDIT

Like, if they reitemized/rebalanced AQ and MC so their gear compliments eachother, and released one more equal toughness/gear level raid (like a raid in the Caverns of Time, which is slated to have multiple instances in it for all group sizes, including possibly more than one raid).

That way you'd have a shitload less burnout. "MC tonight?" "Nah, we've done that shit 3 times in a row. We're doing AQ or COT tonight." "Thank god, I was getting disgusted with killing Rag over and over. Maybe we'll be geared for BWL and Raxx after this."

Could you not split the 40 man raid in half and do ZG/AQ20?

[Paelos]

Everything is about challenge/reward balance in MMOGs. If the quest is too hard yielding little reward, people will skip it. I know I did on several quests, Heroes of Darrowshire for example. Sure it would be nice to do, and maybe fun, but the fact is that assembling a bunch of idiots to do something makes people automatically balk at doing it. Add in the fact that you won't get much out of assembling those idiots, and people get extra pissy. Add to that the fact that it's extra hard for those idiots, and they just say fuck it.

[Telemediocrity]

Everything is about challenge/reward balance in MMOGs. If the quest is too hard yielding little reward, people will skip it.

No, not in MMOGs.  In the MMOGs you play.  "That's just how it is" is the biggest copout on this, and it's inaccurate to boot.

[Calantus]

I like instanced the first few times I do them most of the time. Once you get past a certain point... they are not so much fun anymore.  That goes for singleplayer campaigns too, I onlu ever completed BG2 once, even though I love it. I just don't see the need to do it all over again. Thing is, no way in hell can a game company come out with enough content to satisfy players if people only go through it once. So you gotta repeat. Raids then become social experiences where you get your loot, talk some shit, and get the hell out. Without the loot carrot you don't do them after a couple times. Once there's nothing else to do... you get bored and quit. That's why WoW raiding is like it is.

[Dren]

Everything is about challenge/reward balance in MMOGs. If the quest is too hard yielding little reward, people will skip it.

No, not in MMOGs.  In the MMOGs you play.  "That's just how it is" is the biggest copout on this, and it's inaccurate to boot.

Paelos is correct.  Reward doesn't mean just lewtz.  People won't do something that is more difficult than the "reward" they get from it.  If they made you collect 40 people to work on an instance for 7 days just so that at the end you get a screen that says, "Congratulations, you've beaten Nastocon! Print this screen and send to Blizzard for a free Diablo eraser to put on your pencil!" not very many people would do it.  Some.  Not many.

For some, the reward is the raiding itself.  They like it.  Grape jelly versus strawberry, whatever.

[Modern Angel]

Notes were confirmed as fake.

[Shockeye]

Notes were confirmed as fake.

All early release notes Blizzard claims are fake no matter whether they turn out to be true or not.

[Modern Angel]

Yeah but these were cut and pasted from a few "wishlists" on gamefaqs and other places by some chinese players and then put up on their site. The 11713 or what the fuck ever it's called looks exactly like the WoW site so I can see some confusion arising due to the language barrier.

[Morfiend]

P.S.
Everyone hates raids. Even the raiders. They are there for the loot. If you remove the loot you bare the suck.

BS. I was a PVPer, a big time one, but the current system is just not very interesting for very long, so I have devoted my time to raiding, and leading raids. I really enjoy it now that the raids are more challanging than MC. I have a blast in AQ and BWL (We just downed Chromaggus last night on our second night of tries). Yeah, I like the loot, but I get more satisfaction from watching my guys learn an encounter and then executing the stratgy and finally killing a hard boss. I honestly cant wait for Naxx. I think it will be great fun, and it probably wont be red or green or yellow in color. Which reminds me, I WISH they would mix up the colors in their raids a bit. I never want to go in a dungeon with a red undertone ever again after MC and BWL. Hell, when ZG came out, a bunch of guys wanted to run it solely for the fact it wasnt red.

[Telemediocrity]

Paelos is correct.  Reward doesn't mean just lewtz.  People won't do something that is more difficult than the "reward" they get from it.  If they made you collect 40 people to work on an instance for 7 days just so that at the end you get a screen that says, "Congratulations, you've beaten Nastocon! Print this screen and send to Blizzard for a free Diablo eraser to put on your pencil!" not very many people would do it.  Some.  Not many.

For some, the reward is the raiding itself.  They like it.  Grape jelly versus strawberry, whatever.

The problem is, you're painting yourself into a box by assuming that the hard content isn't fun, in and of itself.  Some games (perhaps not WoW, but some games) actually have fun content.

I re-played Zelda 64 on the equivalent of 'hard' mode by only using the original 3 hearts the game starts with - never expanding my health bar.  By about halfway through the game, pretty much anything that could touch me would one-hit kill me, making the game more difficult and adding absolutely no reward in the process.  I still played it, because the game itself was fun.

Christ, it's like people are so used to MMOGs not being fun for their own sake that they've forgotten what that feels like.