As some of you have noticed, we're dangerously close to raiding UBRS and ZG. It's a transition that's been on my mind a lot, mostly because I think about this crap too much.

Anyway, while checking google for decent raid management guides (of which there are none, btw), I found this lengthy blog post.

http://www.brokentoys.org/2006/01/30/casual-friday/

Not only is it fascinating, the comments are equally insightful. Why can't we 5-man MC? Why aren't there quest chains that require puzzle solving & not just killing?

Regardless of what we do, I'm sure we'll have fun. But I like that there are people out there thinking beyond the 40-man raid box.

It looks like Blizzard is finally thinking more along those lines as well. If you look at the known details so far about the Expansion pack, there are a few interesting notes. The new instance in Deadwind Pass is 5 man (60+ only) and looks very complicated with some puzzles as well. In the new outworld continent area, so far one of the major knowns is that there will be one area with 4 instances rather like SM. To my understanding, 3/4 of those are 5 man and the last is a 40 man major boss.

In my experience, there has only been one quest chain that required puzzle solving, and it was far and away one of my favorite playtimes in WoW: it started with a discarded scroll in the very bottom of one of the pirate ships off the coast of Booty Bay, and each scroll you picked up was a riddle that led you to the next clue. The final prize was a 14-slot bag (!) and a pile of gold and mana/heal potions. I LOVED it, and I would LOVE to have more.

Yeah, I think I posted about Hellfire earlier. 5 man winged dungeon. Hooray. And there's a 10-man as well that's supposed to be very hard.

Cortello's riddle was fun, although finding the things you had to click on was kind of a pain.

That is one thing I noticed about WoW, it doesn't even make use of the randomly-generated puzzles that old text games used to use (the need for randomness, in my mind, has to be pretty big otherwise people will just google the directions through the maze or what have you). Even a big enough pool of pre-set puzzles to keep people guessing for a while would be something.

C'mon Blizz, pay some grad students 5 dollars per Azerothian riddle they can write and get cracking!

Seems they may just be addressing one of my major complaints with this game, about damn time too.

One of the things that makes me happiest about the 10-man Glej referenced is that it's Medivh's tower. I LOVE MEDIVH.

The main reason that the 40-man raids make the Baby Ing cry is that they have a LOT of the plot in them. It's nice that with the smaller dungeons, everyone gets the plot.

I was never particularly interested in MC in anything other than an "I'll go if my friends go" basis, but the fact that only a 40-man could hit BWL and see the culmination of Neltharion's (right Aro?) issues making his eldest son's life hard made me the SADDEST.

So anyway, yay smaller dungeons, and yay puzzles, and yay plot!

In other news, it always irritates me when "hard" is equated with "40 people." The whole point of shutting down the 10-man raids into Strath and Scholo was to preserve the challenge of the instances, which is understandable. As we've all noticed, the Baron is no pushover for a five-man, and I like that. I like that Glej was excited the first time he took the Baron down. I like that it took me several trips to Scholo before I was in a group that took Alexei down, and I like that feeling. Like the article says, no one is disputing that the hardest encounters should give the highest rewards. Unfortunately, "hard" is equated completely with "forty-man."

The other point that the article fails to make is that PvP is not a good alternative to raiding at level 60. You can love PvP desperately, but if you're a casual gamer, it can be very frustrating, because you will always, always, always be steamrollered by a group of raiders. They will have weapons that cut through your blue set like a chainsaw through butter, never mind a hot knife. They will have armor that your weenie blue mace will not even scratch, much less dent. They will take the flag and run away laughing while your pitiful attempts to stop them bounce off like pebbles. Blizzard tried to rectify this by creating the PvP gear, but as it's a reward for winning tons of matches... welcome to that whole, "What part of 'we don't have twelve hours a day to hit this shit' do you not understand?"

In Blizzard's defense, though, there are a lot of casual gamers who only THINK they are out of stuff, when in fact, they are not. There is a fishing contest every Sunday. Hit that. There are rare spawns all over. Hunt those bitches down! There are quests I never even knew existed until I ran around exploring, fun quests that tell you thinks like, where example, the Moonkin came from. (Winterspring, if you want to know!) Hit that!

I have totally lost my original point now, so as the Emperor says, "Well, there it is."

Not only do you get owned by the people with better gear, if you want the 'rewards' you can get for having a bajillion HKP, then you have to PvP for 28 hours a day 347 days a year.

Gear does make a difference though, more then I wish it wouldn't... or something.

For instance, remember when we were all doing BRD 10 man? Whiped in the first room, died horribly shortly after? Ok.. fast forward a couple months to the group I was in last week. 5 man, two rogues (*gasp!* unheard of) two paladins (OMG no chance in hell) and a shadow priest (wtf, why bother?) and we OWNED.

Yeah, no lyceum stuff, but who cares? We did a LOT in our run. I'm so proud *sniff*

I think I'm actually having more fun figuring out how to get AROUND the holy trinity than I would running WITH the holy trinity. It's like a jigsaw puzzle of strategy, like with Scholo where Glej betted on Pally X 2 making up for our lack of CC. And it did! The only room where we had a rough time was the viewing room, and once I quit dropping consecrate until AFTER Aro shackled, we were golden.

For instance, remember when we were all doing BRD 10 man? Whiped in the first room, died horribly shortly after? Ok.. fast forward a couple months to the group I was in last week. 5 man, two rogues (*gasp!* unheard of) two paladins (OMG no chance in hell) and a shadow priest (wtf, why bother?) and we OWNED.

Yeah, no lyceum stuff, but who cares? We did a LOT in our run. I'm so proud *sniff*


That was good times, I liked that run. Heresy and blasphemy such as TWO ROGUES or DISC PRIEST + SHADOW PRIEST, it seems like all these are doable under the right circumstances -- you just gotta figure out your new strategery. And now that droods all will have NINERVATE LOL the possibilities open up even more for classes and spec combinations, possibly, hopefully? Fun fun. <3

... I'm sure this isn't what I'm supposed to take away from this post, but ... people think they can run out of stuff to do?

The mind boggles! and quails. Simply kuh-wails.

(FISHING CONTEST eeeee)

Interesting Blog. I went into the game at release with a casual mindset, as did some long time gaming friends of mine (they became elitist raiders, who woulda guessed). The game wasn't advertised as "raid intensive at 60", so working this odd schedule I have, I had no fears about what timezone I'd be in or If i'd have to worry about scheduling anything ingame. Turn it on and play, right? 1-59, sure. A "what's next?" feeling seemed to be ingrained in every activity and that was exciting and most importantly, fun. I hope the expansion brings that back because right now it's lacking at 60. I think it will, for 10 levels at least.

I can't wait for more 5/10 man instances. Yeah! New content. In my eyes, completing something 5-man is pretty darn epic. I just wish they'd scale it as such reward wise. Gear progression for casuals is long overdue and the options out there are pretty underwhelming. Pvp isn't a solution either. Trying to rank up with rank decay is disheartening to say the least. There are some insanely geared players in pvp, I agree with Ingomar. Although good teamwork will always give epic geared players a run for their money.

I enjoy UBRS and wouldn't mind seeing ZG again someday. Both are fun and neither have ever felt like a MC type raid.

Some details on what instances we'll see in the expansion:

Q. Can you walk me through some of the high-level instances in Burning Crusade? We already know about Karazhan and Hellfire Citadel, and I guess the final dungeon where Illidan hangs out is the Black Temple, yes?

A. Right, and then there’s Tempest Keep, which is sort of right before the Black Temple, and that’s where you’ll find Kael’Thas Sunstrider. Tempest Keep is one main building and three smaller satellite buildings floating off it. That’s all off the tip of an area called Netherstorm.

And then there’s Coilfang Reservoir, which is a slightly lower level instance, and that houses Lady Vashj. Coilfang Reservoir is in an area called Zangar Marsh and you’ll obviously find a lot of naga in there. It’s not a totally underwater instance, but parts of it are sort of underwater, kind of like the Sunken Temple. That has a raid part in addition to five-man parts to it. In that sense Coilfang is a bit like Hellfire Citadel, where you have two 5-man wings that are what I call level-up content: a level 58 to 60 wing and a level 60 to 62 wing. Then you have a level 70 five-man wing and then Magtheridon’s Lair, which is a quick 40-man raid like Onyxia.

And I was wondering this myself:

Q. In terms of how Burning Crusade players will be able to handle older content, how many level 70 characters, for example, do you think it will take to kill Ragnaros?

A. I’m not sure because we’re actually about to start testing on that, but I would guess 10 to 15.

AWESOME.

10-15 going through MC to Rag. Wow. I would love to see that content someday.

Also, that's the first i've heard of Coilfang and it sounds really interesting. Can't wait.