A Lookback

Quoted "Blue" post from June 2007 regarding the Black Temple, when it had been cleared in a week due to extensive PTR testing:

(This wasn't posted on Blizzard forums, but a guild site forum run by players.)

"I've enjoyed reading this thread and I think there are a lot of valid points and views here.

(Disclaimer: I've also been following the threads on the WoW Forums that are similar and wanted to respond there but the forums are down!)

I think there is some nostalgia going on here though. Either that or we're watching a textbook case of the "grass is always greener" going on. In WoW 1.0, we faced many complaints about the lack of raiding options. We were often criticized with coming out with new raid content "at a snail's pace." In fact, I challenge anyone to find a thread from Winter 2005 where people are talking about how awesome the pacing of the raid content was.

Some other things to remember. You *could* skip some of AQ 40 in your progression if you wanted to. This was viewed as an interesting debate (having options is a good thing, yes?). Not a design flaw. We're always looking to give players options -- from PvP (multiple arenas, battlegrounds), to 5 mans to raiding. My biggest criticism of our 10 person raiding game right now (I have a few) is that there are no options beyond KZ. We're fixing that. But you get my point. Players need options.

I'll go ahead and make a controversial statement to illustrate a point. Let's pretend for a moment that Burning Crusade never came out and we were still in vanilla WoW land. The community, as a whole, would have eventually screamed bloody murder over the difficulty of the Four Hoursemen. The Four Hoursemen was considered one of our best tuned encounters in the game. But I'll argue that's because so few people actually progressed to the point of needing to beat them. And the ones who did beat them, were ok with going to extreme measures to do so (consumables, world buffs, server transfers for tanks in 4 peice dreadnaught). A fight that requires 8 tanks is *NOT* acceptable to the raiding community as a whole. A fight that requires 8 tanks was acceptable to the bleeding edge only (and their fans) and only because it seperated them from the rest -- not because that's what made a *fun* raiding experience. How fun was it for the hunter who got benched for Warrior #8? How fun was it for the guild who lost their main tank when he server transfered to be a part of one of the World Firsts?

For the place and time, the Four Horsemen were great. They were beatable and mostly bug free.

While we're on the topic of Naxx, I want to remind everyone that during it's initial opening, almost ALL of the bosses died within the same period that the BT bosses are dying. People forget that because of the Four Horsemen wall. If raid content is tuned correctly, it will die relatively fast (UNLESS it requires some sort of progression check -- Onyxia Cloak, resist check). Even straight up gear checks are very dicey. More often than not that lead's to excessive raid stacking rather than a true gearing up.

Another thing to keep in mind is the PTR. In order to release the highest quality encounters, we put the content on the PTR. This happened with Naxx as well. It's not surprising that the three EU guilds who have progressed the furthest in Black Temple are also the guilds that spent the most time on the PTR. While it's "only taken them 2 weeks" to kill most of the content in BT, we've been watching them rep on the dungeon for 2 months now.

Properly tuned and accessible raid content will die. It's ok. We'll make more. That's what we do for a living. What's really important is for the content to be enjoyable to do for more than just one clearing. Because after all, your priest wants his shoulders off of Boss X or your tank wants that shield off of Boss Y. It should be epic to kill a boss like Illidan or Kael. But it shouldn't be epic because no one is doing it because they are overtuned or bugged out.

My opinions on Black Temple? Najentus is tuned perfectly -- we wanted a "reward" boss for getting in. Akama is a tad easier than we had hoped but he's a really cool, fun fight so it works out. Reliquary of Souls is just where we wanted it to be -- it's very hard. Teron is a hard fight until people know what they are doing at which point it becomes easy. The more guilds that kill Teron, the easier the fight becomes for everyone.

I think the raid game is in a very good place right now. Raiders of all skill levels and time commitments have a variety of options. There *are* some extremely challenging and rewarding fights in the game (Kael, Reliquary, Archimonde, Illidan). Raid tuning walks the razor blade. Things that make raids *seem* more challenging (trash, raid stacking, consumables, resist checks, attunements, limited access, limited tries) are usually perceived as tedious or "progression blockers" and the complaints fire away. But I'll reiterate, a well tuned raid boss -- even a very hard and complex one -- will die quickly if it's tuned properly and bug free.

I'll leave you guys with a question. How many people posting in this thread that the Black Temple is too easy have killed a boss in Black Temple?"

Seven Marks Maximum

The Four Horsemen...

...Of the impending apocalypse!

Once among the hardest of raid bosses (from an execution standpoint) it still holds the record for being the longest undefeated encounter in World of Warcraft at seven weeks since the very first attempt by any raiding guild ballsy and skilled enough to get to this point.

Of the four wings in Naxxramas, the Deathknight Wing (or Military Quarter) was the last one guilds tackled before getting to the Frostwyrm Lair. The bosses in this wing were among the hardest of the first 12.

Four bosses, forty players, one room. The object of this encounter was to defeat the four horsemen before they cast 100 marks total or you just flat-out died. You couldn't just brute force this fight, though. Each marksman placed a stacking de-buff on players that dealt increasingly amounts of unresisted Shadow damage. This was called the Mark of [Horseman's Name]. This meant that the raid had to split into groups and rotate on the bosses with one group hanging around in the "safe zone", a spot in the center of the room that was out of range of each Horseman's mark (range was 50 yards). The marks could NOT be removed by ANYTHING except by death or letting it run its course.

Keep that up and you'd win. Just don't take longer than 20 minutes.

A good video of it in action!

The Problem In The Mists

The man in this video speaks well. I was there.

Years ago, the real motivation in the game was to become one of the stronger players in the game. All you needed were 9-24 like-minded players to take the lengthy journey. When I would take breaks from questing or dungeon crawling I'd inspect the stronger players and the stuff they'd worked so long and hard to get. To be like them and become well known among the playerbase was quite the thought.

I wanted to be like the max level guys that took the time to help out rookies like myself on my beginning journey to the endgame.

These were the days where planning ahead wasn't something you wanted to do, especially if you were in it solely for the loot. Guilds would spend a couple nights or even weeks on one boss until it died. Developing a guild strategy was extremely important. It required patience, but at the same time it was fun. In guild chat on off-nights or raid nights we'd be busy discussing boss strategies we could use or the gearing we would need, the kind of number crunching that's usually done on some website out there.

The end result of such demanding conditions in raid were players that were exceptionally sharp. Before then, you didn't need an achievement to prove that you killed a boss. If you had the gear you definitely had what it took to get your guild through it. And it showed. When I used to do pick-up groups for dungeons I'd occasionally get a player from one of the higher-end guilds on our server, and they kicked ass. It was pretty admirable. Sometimes I'd ask about where their guild was in progression and other things, stories about raiding, silly wipes, whatever.