Whoa..

[Guest]

Not replying to anything in particular, other than the topic of removing attunements. I think its a great idea, considering its timing. I think attunements are a very good thing, depending on when they exist.

Gruul's Lair and Magtheridon are introductory raids. They are (relatively) simple, short, and while they may seem like they require very specific compositions, they pale in comparison to the requirements of later raids. They don't have attunements because, as they are designed and intended, raiders should be cutting their teeth on them as soon as they are able to.

The actual experience of people in GL and Mags will vary, based on their collective skill and gear. This is meant to be a learning experience for beginning raiders. If you go into Gruul's and get torn apart, you realize that maybe you weren't prepared and go back to Kara, work harder, and come back to try again later. When you come back, inevitably you WILL be better prepared and you WILL make progress.

Those folks who want to experience the content right when it comes out have to work through a difficult attunement process to prove they are ready for the instance. This "proof" is important, both from a game designer standpoint (extending gameplay) and a raid leader standpoint. When you hear interviews with the developers, a lot of their incentive is to make the raid leader's job easier. If someone isn't attuned to something, its not the raid leader's fault they can't go. If there was no attunement, and someone who wasn't prepared WANTED to go, then it was the raid leader's "fault" for telling them no.

Before TBC, Blizzard shouldered all of the blame, for this. The huge casual player base (of which I am a part) hated the fact that they had no access to the higher end raiding content. Back then, a few hundred gold and some nexus crystals were a king's ransom for Naxx. Why was Blizzard blocking us from all this new content we -paid- for them to develop? Its one thing to get in there and fail, miserably, on the first boss. Its another thing entirely to be told that I'm not allowed to go, at all, because I haven't spent 100 hours farming rep or money.

Learning from this, I think Blizzard intends for all attunements to be temporary blocks. With MH and BT opening up, this patch, they've pretty much said "its not US holding you back, anymore, its YOU." A lot of guilds will probably throw 25 people together and try MH/BT, then come back with their tails between their legs. But now its not Blizzard's fault for stopping them. Blizzard tried to tell them, gear up first guys, get prepared. They recommended a path to get prepared (namely, the attunement process).

What this REALLY does is make the life of raid leaders on servers like this one, easier. When a raid on Silver Hand is missing 2 people for BT, tough luck, because there's not a soul out there who's attuned to help. I'm personally glad for being able to find people who might not have had the chance to kill Vashj AND Kael'thas, yet, but who are at least prepared in gear and experience to help out.

[Logros]

I think attunements are a very good thing, depending on when they exist.

Man, I hate agreeing with Elyana, especially publicly, but that's pretty much spot on, after some thought.

Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, Jiv reminded me that TK did have an attunement, long ago, which was killing Magtheridon (the 'Champion of the Naaru' questline). And thinking about it, that makes a lot of sense - Magtheridon is a good preparation for the first few trash pulls of TK :lol:

Blizzard tried to tell them, gear up first guys, get prepared. They recommended a path to get prepared (namely, the attunement process).

Yar, that's another good point. As much as I joke about being a jerk, as a raid leader, I really do hate having to turn someone away for anything. That's part of why I really, really like attunements.

I'm personally glad for being able to find people who might not have had the chance to kill Vashj AND Kael'thas, yet, but who are at least prepared in gear and experience to help out.

Yar, MH is about the only attunement I'm happy to see removed, if only because you don't need to have finished both SSC and TK to have a chance there. That folds into the BT attunement, since you couldn't have gotten attuned to BT without having gotten into MH. I still think it's a bit weird that BT is much easier to get attuned to

[Guest]

I still think it's a bit weird that BT is much easier to get attuned to

I consider MH/BT attunement to be the same quest, really. Rage Winterchill is supposed to be so laughably easy that he can be done with 20+ raiders (probably by intention, so that incompletely attuned raids could still kill him).

[Guest]

Yes but there is a problem with this Logros there are some people who can't even get into SSC or The Eye who would really like to see that stuff

There's lots of stuff that most people will never, ever see ingame. That's the nature of the beast. To keep the game going for a big chunk of people, you need to have progression available. Handing everything out to everyone undermines the premise of what makes MMO's so addictive - progression, whether it's skill points, levels, or raids. If you really want to see SSC, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from seeing it except the work involved. Attunements are used as one step of that required effort.

and in my personal experiance unless you can get into a raid in the first few months a raid patch hits you will likely never see it

That.. doesn't really make any sense. You can get to content whenever you can get people for it. Content gets easier as time goes by, not harder, because people's characters will improve, as will (hopefully) their player skill. We have more people available to do Kara now than we did 2 months ago. The only people that are pushing through content in a few months are solid raid guilds. For the rest of us, time is on our side

so there for the better armor for heroic badges and no attunment required is probubly meant to alow those of us who haven't been able to to see SSC, The Eye, Mount Hyjal, and the black temple before the next expantion hits

Well, honestly, if the attunement is difficult, then you've got next to zero chance of succeeding in the raid instance, with the exception of BT, since you could go in TK or Eye gear, not needing both. If you haven't learned how to raid by doing previous raids, the later stuff is just going to whup you in the coordination fights.

Attunement to SSC was a few heroics. No attunement to TK. MH requires beating Vashj (SSC) and Kael'thas (TK). BT, you have to beat a boss in SSC, TK, and then one in MH (all early bosses).

In a way, the attunement processes provide a bit of protection for the raids that have done them from what's often called 'Little Brother Syndrome'. Group A gets into someplace hard, puts in the hard work to learn it and get things figured out, and then 'farms' it. Once that starts, and the tough stuff is done with, lots of other people want to come along for the now-easier loot. I'm not saying that's anyone's goal, but it happens, and is more common than people wanting to come just for the sake of coming and seeing the content.

I personally see this in Gruul sometimes - when we get more than 25 people and I'm leading the raid, I have to decide who gets to go. Gruul has no attunement, so anyone that's level 70 can get into the instance. As a raid leader, I have to choose between what's best for the raid (someone well-geared and experienced) or what's best for one person (someone new and excited to go). I try to do as much of both as I can get away with (GL has been several folks' first ever raid!) and keep the raid successful, but having a slightly-difficult attunement would filter some of the new-and-excited folks out for a little bit, forcing them to take more time before coming, and presumably gearing up and learning to be a better player in that time.

Cause basicly the reason almost no one saw Naxx was cause the introduced it so near to the expantion

That I agree with. :o

and gave it a rather difficult attunement for most people

Attunement is a few items and rep, and always has been. Even if you were Honored with AD, it was only ever a few hundred gold to buy the stuff you needed. Again, if that was difficult, then you weren't ready for Naxx.

on top of rediulace gear requirements and a 40 man cordination content

Naxx was beat by guilds that were ready to beat him. Nothing ridiculous about that

so there for these changes may seem cheap and demeaning to you but for someone like me they are great I love to see all the content I can hell I haven't even seen BWL or Ony yet and I still want to.

That's the point I think you're missing, and it's one of my broken-record recordings over the last few months. Stuff like SSC and TK aren't like Molten Core was - you can't have 15 people that are experienced raiders with appropriate gear, and 10 or even 5 that aren't. In TBC raids post-Kara, you can rarely afford more than 1 or 2 people that aren't on par with the raid difficulty level. It's more forgiving on gear than it is on player skill - nearly all the fights have built-in mechanics where one person screwing up can wipe the other 24. Once you get any significant minority of people that aren't prepared for the raid, then it makes things a lot more difficult for the rest of the raid. Good of the many > Good of the few.

In its own way, it's also a reward.

To an extent, WoW is a very forgiving and casual-friendly game, but there are aspects of it that you have to work and invest serious amounts of time in order to access.

Yes. <3 Narnar

I think you misunderstood me Logros I know that it requires skill and gear and I know it requires effort to get attuned. But on my first main I was attuned for every raid in the old world but couldn't get into them because people tend to get into their own little groups of people and won't let anyone in. So I ended up falling in with Blood Cult who pretty much only couldn't do certain raids because we didn't have enough people to do them so we started off with going to ZG till we learned it and were killing Hakkar every week. Then we joined up with a Demon Knights group and worked our way through that (well mostly). Then TBC hit and all those instances went bye bye cause of the greens that were better than BWL gear in outlands and everyone rushing to 70. Well now we have these new raids with more difficult attunements so I get my rogue Khara attuned and start Raiding that and I work on getting attuned to the other raids. Then Blood Cult basicly falls off the radar and I'm left with no raids, no people to help each other out with Heroics, and PuGs that will fall apart as soon as a healer or tank or even a dps gets a peice of gear that they wanted. So therefore I just focus on my alts such as Bloodbound and Tutelary for several months till I finally got tired of waiting for BC to revive and put in a aplication with you guys (which I couldn't be more happy that I did you all are great.) So my point is that after the first few months that a raid has been out I have noticed that almost no one wants to let you into a raiding group even on a rotation untill about a half a year to a year later when they have more people wanting to go and the originals have already moved on to another raid. SO in my personal experiance It is extreamly hard to find the people who are willing to teach you a raid or even actually let you in to do nothing more than just do something as simple as "beat on this target".