While noticing the recent developments with the raid bosses in the Burning Crusade I thought about how this could possibly affect the player base. Is this merely in response to the lack of Mana batteries and Heroism/Bloodlust Stacking? Or are they making a push to get more people to see end game raids?
I think this is a step in the right direction when it comes to bosses if it’s to enable more players to see the content. I understand that “hard-core” raiding guilds will quite possibly be upset with this sort of thing for the simple fact that less people will be “earning” it in their eyes.
Personally, as a casual raider (1-2 nights a week), I think this and the 10-mans are all great steps in the right direction. According to www.WoWJutsu.com, just over 5% of RANKED guilds have downed Illidan Stormrage.
That number seems wrong to me. Statistically, there are over 10 million ACCOUNTS, WoWJutsu has 4.5 Million ranked TOONS. That means if each person has only one ranked toon, and personally I have 3, that approximately 2.5% of people who play this game have seen Illidan. Not to mention Sunwell. So Illidan’s number is probably closer to 1%-1.5%.
While I think that hardcore raiders should be rewarded with something, I do not believe it should be that they see content that 98% of us don’t.
In my opinion PVP is more the “hardcore” part of WoW. And by PVP, I mean Arena, which does reward the best of the best and that’s super. But 98% of the player base can’t afford 6 hours a day/night, 6 days a week. Many of us have busy lives, families and jobs.
While I don’t believe ALL the content should be handed to us, I believe the curve of the Burning Crusade was too steep and after Kara, there should have been a few more 10-mans along the difficulty of Gruul’s and Magtheridon’s Lair and moving into TK/SSC level difficulty. Blizzard did well with this with the addition on ZA, which was a superb instance, with a great mix for the hardcore and the casual. The hardcore could pound through it and get the bear mount while the casual could take their time and spend an hour downing 2-3 bosses a week for fun!
I’m hoping WotLK is a step in the correct direction and will provide more casual players with the fun and enjoyment of raiding at our level and still keep the harder, last few 25-man raids for the hardcore.
As a player, do you feel that WotLK might cheapen the experience by easing up on the difficulty? Or is this a step in the right direction?
An interesting issue for sure. I also have absolutely no qualms with high end raiding guilds getting significant gear rewards for all their effort - as you say, we could all technically drop everything we’re doing in ‘real life’ and become hard-core raiders if we wanted to. Content wise though, it does seem like the casual players are being a bit ripped off as whenever an exciting new raid is announced, it’s unlikely they’ll ever see it. So - I think it’s a great idea to tune down the raids that the hardcore have already ground through once there are new, more difficult targets available. Who knows…maybe I’ll even get to see BT one day