Whatcha all think of the Burning Crusade update news?

25 man Raids, a lot more 5 man dungeons etc.

Might actually make me play the game again.

What do you uber high lvel raiders think?

40 was always a to high number for raiding. But to change something 2 years later is kinda ****ed.

Quote:
So here I am, once again, hijacking our front page for my own personal soapbox. As we know, there was a recent announcement regarding the size of raids in BC, and I've spent the last few days trying to quantify in words why it bothers me so much, why I am so disapointed by the change. Eventually I came to realize that what really bothered me about it was the people. The people are the reason I log in every day, the reason I'm willing to throw myself against impossible odds, to do things as mindnumbing as farming potions for hours. Loot will come and go, and be outdated by the evolution of the game, world firsts will come to be long forgotten in the sands of time, but the people we play with, the people we experienced the game with, will we ever really forget them.

Raiding guilds were designed around 40 people, plain and simple. It's been that way for 2 years, and to change it now is so ridiculously shortsighted. I've been raiding with the same core for nearly 2 years, the same core of people necessary to facilitate 40 man raiding, and now I'm supposed to tell a good portion of them to what, **** off, get on the bench because you pompous pricks arbitrarily decided to change the ****ing rules.

Tigole, you say that with the entrance of BC there will be a high turnover on raid guilds. What the **** do you know. You expect me to believe that the same people who poured hours of time and effort through your arrogant ****ing cockblocks at Ragnaros, at Chromaggus, at Nefarion, and at the mother of all **** ups C'thun, will suddenly turn their backs on us because it's a convenient time to bow out of the game. Suddenly people who devoted the time to the rest of us to throw themselves multiple days a week at a C'thun we didn't have a ****ing prayer of beating are going to say, sorry I have better things to do just because the expansion comes out?

So what the **** are we supposed to do now. How do we look at our guildmates, our friends, the people we've known for a year, two years, maybe longer and tell them, "Sorry, you aren't good enough", or "Sorry we don't have room for you". It's not about raids being 40% smaller, it's about us having to tell 40% more people sorry, you're going to have to sit outside and hold your dick every night.

Now you'd say, well why not use 2 raids. Who decides who goes in each raid, who leads the raids, how many people do we need on standby for each raid, what kind of class stack do we need for the encounters, how many people do we recruit to deal with the challenges ahead, what happens when group B's tanks are online, but they don't have enough priests, and A has priests, but no tanks. And by the time we're done separating people into 2 categories, we might as well be 2 completely ****ing separate guilds. Why the **** should we have to endure this bullshit because you decided you wanted to change the rules halfway through.

Let me leave you with a final thought, one you may see repeated in the upcoming days, because it was included in an article I was asked to contribute to. When Death and Taxes kills Illidan, and we stand over his corpse for our screenshot, will our first thought be: Where are the other 15 people who stood together with us for Onyxia, for Ragnaros, for Nefarion, for C'thun, and finally for Kel'Thuzad.

These are my thoughts, for now.

Im with that guy. Killing off 40 man raids is ****ed up beyond all belief IMO. Sure, add smaller stuff as well, but for the love of god add another 40 man dungeon as well.

From what I've heard there will be a 40man dungeon as well as 25's.

20-25 man raids will be the future of WoW imo.
40man raids are a pain in the ass to work with and were always too big. I know that a good % of our guild alliance is looking forward to this change.

AQ20 and Zul'gurub are great examples of how smaller raid instances work.
While they might be 'nub' raids in comparison to what will be contained within the burning crusade, they are still a decent indicator of the organisational time required.

Bring it on I say and bring on more 5mans.
While the guy that evil posted had some very very good points, those initial problems will fade out when they organise themselves and start raiding the new instances.

The guy Evil posted from is the leader of Death N Taxes I think, one of the leading progression guilds. However these guys play 10 hours a day and have for 2 years so I think they are sad more than anything :)

no more 40 man raids. good idea imo, and all those bitching about 'onoes our 40 man core is going to die' are pretty much just loot whores.

more importantly tho is the pvp change - honour points as currency instead of a ridiculous grind!

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3152830

link for info

one thing i hope for is an item system geared to toward more D2, where there are alot more epic and unique items that just as good as sets.

this expansion is going to be awesome.

Quote from HeReTiC:
one thing i hope for is an item system geared to toward more D2, where there are alot more epic and unique items that just as good as sets.

Except that for people who love the asthetics of set gear (and theres alot of us :P), we will take the lesser stats (to a point) in the name of Vanity :p
Set gear just looks so ****en mad at the moment.

Currently in AQ40/BWL there are quite a few non-set drops that when combined make up for gear thats on par or slightly more diverse than set gear. I know Joink and Hocken use alot of non-set gear for their serious raids as well. But I agree, bring on more. Especially when socketed items come out ;)

Quote from CoCoBuckeTs:
The guy Evil posted from is the leader of Death N Taxes I think, one of the leading progression guilds. However these guys play 10 hours a day and have for 2 years so I think they are sad more than anything :)

Yeh I know who DnT are :P
While i can understand why he's a dirty at Blizzard for breaking up his 40man core; he should be looking at the question of does he want another 2 years of 40man grinds, or something new to break up the monotony? :)

**** the asthetics. its too limited if you already know 80% of the gear you want to get. i loved d2 becuase it was always unknown what possible gear you could be wearing next act. i dont pay money to play computer based orc dressups.

Im talking about dropping 10stamina or +20 to healing in favour of looking awesome vs looking like a patchwork quilt.

WoW cant survive with a loot system too similar to D2. Blizzard's instance and encounter designs are based intensively around existing and known loot/raid configuration.
Throwing randomly generated loot into the game is like throwing a spanner in the works in that regard, which is incidently also their explanation for bringing Shamans/Paladins to both factions,
It makes their life easier, when they try to design instance encounters.

Well I for one am all for everything. Will definatly be rolling a Pally on Horde just to be a pain in the ass. The 25 man raids are a perfect idea, 40 man raids where just too big IMO.

if you're talking about so different classes dont fight over loot, i know what you mean. They do it over weapons anyway, and im not saying get rid of it. what im saying is put in more uniques and epics that are just as good as sets, so that someone can make a character thats different than every other priest with benedition, teir 2 armour set, healing rings and trinkets. because right now only set items are the best for PVP or PVE, and introducing more sets is so...boring. seen as you not only find out everything about the sets from the wow website, but its just more +skill or +stat than the last set with a new look. diablo 2 was always random and alot of people love that.

it seems all they are doing is trying to make everyone happy, so they can't complain, hence the pally and shammy thing. which is shallow if you ask me.

edit: i just read more about the pally/shaman thing. and it really does make me sick. horde pally. right. you can't ****ing STEAL FAITH which is what pallys are ment to be all about. evil paladins ahahahaha bullshit.

heretic has a point. everyone strives for pretty much exactly the same gear, to the point where everyone ends up as a clone of each other. talent trees are identical, and gear goals are identical.

im all for more 5, 20/25 man instances there needs to be more for lev 60's to do and get something out of.
but for gods sake dont kill the 40 man raids already inplace.

the thing im really looking forward to is the journey from 60-70
it will give me something to aim for in the game now. i can log on for a hour or 2 and go venture off on my own and atcually achieve something

Quote from Knight Of Nih:
im all for more 5, 20/25 man instances there needs to be more for lev 60's to do and get something out of.
but for gods sake dont kill the 40 man raids already inplace.

the thing im really looking forward to is the journey from 60-70
it will give me something to aim for in the game now. i can log on for a hour or 2 and go venture off on my own and atcually achieve something

Existing raids will not be removed.
Im also really looking forward to the 60-70 progression :)

Quote from paladin:
heretic has a point. everyone strives for pretty much exactly the same gear, to the point where everyone ends up as a clone of each other. talent trees are identical, and gear goals are identical.

Dont get me wrong, i completely agree with it also.
I do dislike the clone armies wow is creating.

yeah 60-70 will be pretty cool, and i always am looking forward to all the smaller instances. that will solve the problem many casual players face. not getting a 40 man group. alot of good memories in 5 mans :)

well if existing raids stay the same then there is nothing that bothers me at all

heh, levelling to 70.

i feel a great disturbance in the force, as though thousands of priests had respecced shadow, to be able to solo grind once more.

Its Raid or die which I believe is the main issue with Wow, you CANT get that sort of equ outside of raids, no way to craft it and no 4 month quest you can do to earn it. In L2 you could get any item in the game yourself, it just took ages, Raids were a way to get the equ faster if you had a bunch of friends.
In wow they took out the option, raid or you will never see the top end equ.

I think thats the crux of their issue.

correct. and they are going downhill with this paladin horde and shaman alliance bullshit. ffs just bring out new shit dont **** with the story line so much.

Coco's last post hit the nail on the head.

The objective of Silithis PvP?
Hand in Sand.

Caus apparently there's not enough of it in Silithis.

Quote from HeReTiC:
correct. and they are going downhill with this paladin horde and shaman alliance bullshit. ffs just bring out new shit dont **** with the story line so much.

There is a hilarious animated gif (or was it a ytmnd?) of orcs dressed in Lawbringer and a nelf in Ten storms :P

Quote from paladin:
heh, levelling to 70.

i feel a great disturbance in the force, as though thousands of priests had respecced shadow, to be able to solo grind once more.

I dont know, my brother went from 1 to 60 pure holy spec in what can only be described as power levelling service speeds himself. Instance grinded the whole way.

Either way this shit is gonna happen and we will have to get past it. Me Im gonna have to instance grind my way to 70. My guild will be doing 5 man raids whenever possible. We already have it sorta worked out and cant wait for the changes. As for the 25 man raids it will be more about a smaller guild being able to do their own runs without an alliance or even test each other in the runs. I think our alliance will have some hardcore movements with this coming up but will still be the tight bunch we have always been.

we can get SB back together and do the 25 mans :D

best reply on wow forums:

Quote from some dorf:

Lol@raiders and their "breaking up the guild..."

Over the last year-and-a-half I have watched more real friends and smaller family-oriented guilds be utterly destroyed by your !&$%ing raids. Players who felt they had no choice but to lose their identity and join massive guilds or give up all hope of ever playing this game past 60.

Raid guilds gutted and destroyed more smaller guilds than I care to count. And now we're supposed to give a crap because you arrogant powergaming pricks can't handle adding TEN MORE PEOPLE to your roster to handle a second 25-man team?

Die in a !&$%ing fire. Slowly and painfully.

The only guilds that will be falling apart are guilds of pricks who put loot and their own personal progression ahead of these people they claim they have been "friends" with for so many years...

thats not a bad idea, field a few Sb runs again from time to time

nice find pala. my guild is having the same prob. we get to 5 or 6 60's and then they turn tale to a bigger guild so they can do the high instances. I have one guy who has come and gone aboutt 5 times for that reason. the only 60's that stay are those intrested in PVP mor than raiding.... As a guild we will never amount to anything cause all the talent keeps leaving for a bigger guild...

Its a fact of life.
If you want to see the end-game, you either merge into an alliance of guilds, or you join a larger guild.

25man instances will not be a casual run at first either, so dont compare them to a 5man in your minds. They will be offering epic rewards and as such, they will require A) Good gear and B.)Time and raid experience.

im not talking about pugs, im talking casual as in playing 2 or 3 times a week, not having to spend 8 hours in one dungeon, not having to "earn respect" of some loser i dont know to actually get into group for some pretty items.

i dont expect them to be easy or quick, but it'll be casual compared to AQ, BWL and MC. at least i'd would like to hope so.

mc is pretty damn casual, apart from the number requirement. we've only been working it for about 6 weeks now and we can clear to domo in 4 hours, then take him down the next day and begin rag attempts.

Nah what i was saying was more aimed at Knight's comment of raiding 'from time to time'.
Ie, cant just raid these instances from time to time, they need a certain level of dedication to learning and wiping on it over and over.

Im not expecting them to be casual, but they could very well turn out that way and to be honest, I really hope that they do.

MC and even BWL are a cleared in a few hours once on farm status; so in that regard the new instances will most likely be alot more hardcore than MC/BWL currently are :P

i dont want them to be as, stratagy operated. more just your hack and slash. that'll be good. not standing around for 20 minutes buffing and planning only to be wiped then do it 5 times in a row :p

Quote from HeReTiC:
i dont want them to be as, stratagy operated. more just your hack and slash. that'll be good. not standing around for 20 minutes buffing and planning only to be wiped then do it 5 times in a row :p

So are you gonna wait for some strats to come out?...

Because me I wish I could have been a part of the first guilds to get into NAXX and learn all the new encounters and help other major guilds and have them help me too. I know for a fact that the best guild in our realm (Pacifist) helped the top US Guild (Death and Taxes) get some of their biggest bosses down. I WISH I WAS APART OF IT.

I WILL BE a part of the first 5 man groups going through the new instances learning everything I possibly can about them. Sadly our heavy raid schedule does not permit me to do this (unless we run it on an off night) but either way I hope to get in there and get it done. That way in such a large international game I can say "I did this off my own bat without reading Strats".

BTW this is no personal attack at yourself I just believe that we do things for a reason. It may be a game but whats a game without actually completing something by yourself.

what i was saying is that i dont want the instances to be that at ALL. not that i want to wait till someone else does them. why would i want to waste my life studing a computer game?

and plus what i want and what will happen is different, ill get over it, im just pissed off at the make everyone happy and have the same character attitude they are taking.

Quote from Smurf:
nice find pala. my guild is having the same prob. we get to 5 or 6 60's and then they turn tale to a bigger guild so they can do the high instances. I have one guy who has come and gone aboutt 5 times for that reason. the only 60's that stay are those intrested in PVP mor than raiding.... As a guild we will never amount to anything cause all the talent keeps leaving for a bigger guild...

Exaclty what happened with SB, some people couldnt wait to get their shiny purples and left, so we merged with a bigger guild to keep people happy and now hardly anyone plays. I learnt a lot from this game believe me. :)

Yeh the clone army has jumped off the big screen and into our game...

Wonder what will happen once WoW hits the big screen!?!

blizzard gets rich and we all get goosebumps :)

Quote from CoCoBuckeTs:
Exaclty what happened with SB, some people couldnt wait to get their shiny purples and left, so we merged with a bigger guild to keep people happy and now hardly anyone plays. I learnt a lot from this game believe me. :)

Yeah it's kinda sad. I hardly play my druid anymore. I'm going down the path of <Mystical Accent> Lenko, one of thousand alts. </Mystical Accent>

I personally hate 40 man raids. Too many people together and there is always a fight breaking out somewhere. Purples bring out the selfishness in people. And I don't usually like it.

On the other hand I like ZG and AQ20. Less people. Although there is still the same kinda fights when purple text is involved.

And there is the point that everyone is striving for the exact same gear. And in the end everyone does look the same, very little individualality (Word?).

all i can say is

warhammer online

just hope it doesnt flop like D&D:O

yeah that was dissapointing.

D&D died when Wizards bought them out....3.5 was an abomination I thought.
At least Warhammer has 20-30 years as a trusted battle system behind it..ie its already balanced.
Looking forward to it bigtime :)

Its the translation from Table-top to MMO that concerns me.
Just look at what Blizzard did to the Warcraft Lore. They hacked it with an axe to make it fit into their packaging.

I'm definately considering warhammer for my mmorpg so cant be bothered with Blizzard and their crappy service and even crappier game

2nd :)

its not the tabletop game being ported Milenko its the Warhammer Fantasy system which is a RPG.

Quote from Milenko;276178:
Its the translation from Table-top to MMO that concerns me.
Just look at what Blizzard did to the Warcraft Lore. They hacked it with an axe to make it fit into their packaging.

Warhamer also has a pen and paper rollplaying game that has been around for a long time,that they can draw off of as well and the fact that Wizards of the Coast are involved with the production/design of the MMO it should be good

All I have seen so far looks awsome can't wait :)

yeah, lets hope it holds more than just looking good :p which most of the time is all game deveopers seems to be focusing on.

Quote from CoCoBuckeTs;276180:
2nd :)

its not the tabletop game being ported Milenko its the Warhammer Fantasy system which is a RPG.

fo'sheezy?
Damn...I was kinda looking forward to being a Space Marine :(

Hehehe yeah I miss my Plasma gun as well :)