Comments on: The Myth that One Raid Endgame Fits All

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 14:12:55 +0000

I only really started to see guildjumping here at the very end of WotLK, but this was more because the lower guilds ran into progression roadblocks (which then spiraled out of control as people started to leave, leading to guild failure.)

By: spinks

spinks — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 12:52:35 +0000

It did make a big difference to my raid group. In TBC, people who really wanted to see all the raid instances had no real choice but to leave. In Wrath, they could stay with the same group, raid at a more casual pace, but still get to see just about everything. We’ve actually lost very few people to more hardcore raid groups this time around and most of those actually had friends in the other raid groups they wanted to go and join.

The gear issue I don’t remember being so bad in TBC, true. It’s more that we used to recruit brand new raiders who had never raided before, teach them how to raid … and then when they started to pull their weight they’d leave for another more hardcore group. When I talk about being a feeder guild, I mean when it just keeps happening so often that you wonder why you bother. I know it was very demoralising and again Wrath really hasn’t been like that for us.

By: Shintar

Shintar — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 11:14:21 +0000

I honestly see no difference in the amount of guild hopping that happened in my immediate surroundings between BC and WOTLK. My guild “fed” raiders to the more hardcore guilds throughout both expansions. :/

Likewise, getting a new raider geared up wasn’t really that big a deal for most of BC either, as long as you weren’t trying to be a new main tank. If you had Karazhan loot (and even the more progressed guilds still liked to run Kara for badges, void crystals and to gear up alts) and a couple of badge items, you were good to jump into Hyjal or BT. The problem were things like the long attunement chains that required you to kill raid bosses, but Blizzard got rid of those for a reason.

I think they really missed a big opportunity with the weekly raid quest. They should have given you ten frost emblems for killing the last or near-to-last boss in each raid instead of the first. The current system doesn’t actually encourage anyone to still raid Naxx for example – it just means that people get saved pugging the first boss for the weekly and then you can’t make a guild run for a full clear later on.

By: Kring

Kring — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 23:21:54 +0000

With that you just outdate heroics. That’s not a better system, it just hit a different group of players more harshly.

By: Drew Shiel

Drew Shiel — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:27:49 +0000

It’s odd – I recognise what you’re saying about the emergent behaviour of past games being more hardcore, and yet, the raiding game has always felt more difficult (in social and logistical terms, not gameplay) than any of the spawn-camping, corpse-runs, or other issues of older games.

Hell, I quite enjoyed spawn-camping…

By: Regis

Regis — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:32:58 +0000

There must be a middle way between having new players grind through 2 raid instances before they can join the guild (TBC), and just giving out free epics from heroics (WotLK). I’m not too fond of either way, but from my feelings in Wrath I’d choose the first option any day.

By: Kobeathris

Kobeathris — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:22:26 +0000

Right now, gear basically gets reset every tier, since you can always purchase stuff one step back from the best with emblems that you can get from everywhere. The problem is, how do you make people want to do harder raids, when they can get the same basic rewards from running heroics?

I think the best solution for this is 2 fold. First, no Heroic should ever drop gear that is higher ilvl than any raid. I think this is honestly the biggest mistake Blizzard made in wrath. Second, keep doing upgrade tokens the same way they are done in ICC for all raids, but make the tokens for whatever is the “emblem of triumph” gear for that tier drop from every raid except the current top tier. That way, there is still something in older raids that is worth having over just going heroics > top tier raid.