raid-lockout
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The Daily Grind: What's the ideal MMO raid length?
I thought it was interesting earlier this month when Bungie explained Destiny's raids: They're smaller than what MMO players would expect from a raid (six players), but they come with some rather old-school MMO lengths, lockouts, and death penalties. One test group, the devs said, took 45 minutes just to get to the front door! Bungie doesn't expect MMO-savvy players to take nearly that long once they've soaked up some internet guides, of course, but the article did make me wonder what gamers are willing to tolerate raid-length-wise nowadays. I remember giant raids that went on for days in EverQuest all the way up to quickie group-finder raids in World of Warcraft. Making them shorter (and cutting out the trash) didn't really make them easier or less fun, but it sure did enable more people to play them, which seems like a better way to justify the dev time spent on them. What do you think: What's the ideal MMO raid length? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Patch 5.1 alters US and Oceanic realm event times
Blizzard Senior Community Manager Zarhym has posted on the US forums, informing players that, with the arrival of patch 5.1, substantial changes have been made to realm reset times throughout the US realm region, including oceanic servers. The reason behind this is the impact of cross-realm zones, or CRZ, on times events such as the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza. Previously, players were able to manipulate the new feature to "realm-hop" to hand in the quests the moment the tournaments began, so Blizzard shut them down while the devs worked on a solution. The solution they've reached for patch 5.1 is to normalize event times across the US, and set up a different group of normalized times for the Oceanic region. The EU's servers have worked like this for many years, and it seems a viable answer to the problem, although some adjustment will be necessary for those who are inconvenienced by the changes. Due to the huge time difference, as noted, Oceanic servers have different reset times, but they continue to share raid and dungeon lockouts with US servers as Blizzard's team wish to maintain the large player pool for their matchmaking systems to draw from. Hit the break for Zarhym's full post and to see when your new reset times are.
Perspectives on the raid lockout system
Even with a week that was jammed to the rafters with non-WoW issues for me to deal with, I paid attention to the news, and one of the biggest stories was the news that Korean realms are going to split the 10 and 25 man raid lockouts in patch 5.1. Now, I have opinions about this, because despite my notorious preference for 25 over 10 man raiding, I'm not completely behind this change. I was surprised to realize this, actually, but reading the announcement got me thinking. First off, I don't like the idea of giving 25 man raids better loot and uncoupling the lockouts. I think that goes too far in terms of setting 25 man raids on a pedestal. Believe it or not, what I personally want is a system where if you prefer 10 man raids, you can do them, and if you prefer 25 man raids, you can do them. It may not be possible for both raid sizes to be equally viable, but making it so you can run 10's and 25's on separate lockouts and then putting the better loot in 25's just cements 10's as the also-run raid size. Now, if you put better loot in 25's but keep the lockouts shared between them, the relative ease of organizing 10's and running them would balance that out to some extent, but I actually prefer the idea of separating the lockouts but not giving 25's better loot.
LFR, lockouts, and why Blizzard isn't your nanny
Hi. I'm Matt Rossi, sometimes called Ol' Grumpy. Now, let me first present my credentials: I raided hard modes up until the very end of Cataclysm and finished out Madness of Deathwing a few months back. In fact, I ran the raid finder to get my tier 13 four-piece tanking bonus after our previous tanks had vanished. By some logic, this meant I was "forced" to run the raid finder. Poster Myshkka certainly seems to feel that unless we put LFR on the same lockout as normal raids, progression raiders (which we both are) are then "forced" to run LFR. My take on it is simple. When Blizzard took the step of merging 10- and 25-man raids to the same lockout, I was one of the few who really hated that change, and I still do. One of the reasons I hated that change was it took an option out of my hands. I don't like it when the game does that. We've already locked out how many times you can get valor points in a week and will be capping valor in Mists. We've put 10- and 25-man raiding on a shared lockout and even put heroic and normal raiding on a shared lockout. We've already seen numerous posts from Blizzard on the role of the raid finder, and at some point I feel like we have to ask when it becomes the job of the hardcore progression raiders to police themselves. Why does the game have to lock out people who primarily use LFR and who might get the occasional pickup group or join a raiding guild for a week just to save poor, put-upon progression raiders from being bored in a raid finder group that they really didn't have to run? Blizzard isn't our nanny. At some point, we need to take responsibility for how we consume content, not demand the game be changed to prevent us from doing so.
Cataclysm raid progression refinements
Today Blizzard released some stunning new standards for raids in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. Chief amongst these changes, which every WoW player should be aware of, is the combining of 10- and 25-man loot tables, 10- and 25-man raid lockouts, and the continuation of gated content. No longer will 25-man raids provide better gear than 10-man raids (although they will drop more of the gear), and no longer will players be able to farm both the 10-man and 25-man version of a raid dungeon each week. The following are the bullet points of this announcement: 10- and 25- man raids in Cataclysm will share the same lockout Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel 10- and 25- man bosses will be close in difficulty 10- and 25- man bosses will drop the exact same items 25-man bosses will drop a higher quantity of loot, but not quality For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid. Content will continue to be gated First Cataclysm raids will be tuned for players in dungeons blues and crafted items The full statement after the break.
Officers' Quarters: Casual raiding 2009
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. I feel like it's been a while since I wrote a column about casual raiding. I posted a four-part guide to making it work back in April 2008. Since then, I've pointed most people who write me about this topic in that direction without writing a full column on their questions. A lot has changed in WoW since then! It feels like the right time to revisit the topic. First, here is this week's e-mail: Scott, First, let me thank you for publishing such a wonderful column. I read it religiously and find the topics and information extremely helpful. I am writing to you with a problem in the hopes you may have some advice. Let me start from the beginning to give you a more clear picture. Pre-Wrath Currahee had a solid core group of players and we were progressing forward with heroics and beginning to enter Kara. About this time the guild began to crumble as the core players left for raiding guilds that were progressing into further content. Wrath comes out and most of our core players are gone, those that remained leave within a few months after Wrath is released. This summer, the guild leader handed over the reigns to me and left the guild to focus on school as he was returning to college. There was a drop in membership as he left (from about 100 to around 50), though the ranks have held pretty steady, increasing by a few players under my leadership. Today I am facing unrest in the guild as folks are unhappy that there is "never anyone online". I do my best to recruit, I have posted on the official forums, setup an account on WoWHeadhunter, I have joined forces with a small guild <Punisher> on my server to run ToC 5-Man on a near nightly basis. As we typically only have 4 members online, we usually have to find our 5th. If they are any good, I ask if they are interested in joining Currahee (no new recruits from this method yet).
We Have a Tabard: It's not cheating if...
Looking for a guild? Well, you can join ours! We have a tabard and everything! Check back for Amanda Dean talking about guilds and guild leadership in We Have a Tabard.As I've mentioned before I'm not totally against PUGging raids. I find its actually an excellent way to get to know people on the server and sometimes a handy recruiting tool. Depending on your guild rules, there are some raids to PUG and some raids to save your lockout for your guild.I had a guildie today all distraught because he was saved to Naxx 10 helping a guildie out. He apologized profusely when someone was putting together a "Badge Run Blitz" but couldn't heal it. At this point Naxx 10 is like running an extended heroic with more gold and shards. We've progressed beyond it, so lockouts are fair game.I get a wee bit crabbier when folks get locked out of our current progression. We're actually still working on Ulduar 10, and need to draw upon any available resources to move forward. Guildies can feel free to run Naxx, Vault, and Obsidian Sanctum to their heart's content. Usually when someone asks for my blessing to run with another group, I give it if they have to miss guild times or we're unable to get into the group.
Breakfast topic: Are manually extended raid lockouts a good thing?
Hands up who remembers running Karazhan back in the days when it took a week to clear and you needed every one of those nights to do it? Are you currently spending your evenings raiding in Ulduar? Is Ignis taking more time to down than you anticipated? I think we've all been there, you're in the zone but just can't kill that pesky raid boss before the raid timer goes ding and everything resets. I've once did an early morning raid (we're talking like 2am here) through Kara, powering through all the bosses, because the timer was due to set that morning and it was fun, even if we didn't quite clear Medivh's tower out. I think we stopped after Prince as none of us could keep our eyes open. But there's something heartbreaking about getting down to that final boss and calling it a day, knowing that you have to start all over again the following day. It's kind of soul destroying.Patch 3.2 finally offers an answer in the form of a raid lockout extension. If you're mid-raid and haven't a hope in hell of finishing by the reset, you can manually extended it for another week. But I wonder, constant readers, are you going to use it? Will it motivate you to finish a raid or do you think it slow progression down?
Patch 3.2's raid extension feature clarified
About a week and a half ago, we spotted the new raid lockout extension feature on the patch 3.2 PTR. It's not until this morning that Blizzard (specifically Eyonix and Vaneras) officially announced that the feature was coming, along with some clarified details.The details are mostly what we expected: Extending your lockout will let it roll over into the next lockout period, consuming your instance ID for that day (in the case of heroics) or week (in the case of raids). You can extend your lockout more than once, probably indefinitely, but Eyonix wasn't specific on how many times you can do it in a row. I assume indefinitely. The extension is also on a per-person basis, meaning if you PUG someone into your 25man run, they can't screw you by extending their lockout. That also means it's not a raid leader decision. At least, not mechanically. It's up to the individual to click that extension button.
Officers' Quarters: Managing your lockouts
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Last week, our very own Michael Sacco broke the news that raid lockouts will be extendable after Patch 3.2. Reading through forum comments about this exciting new feature, I found the varied reactions quite amusing. Hardcore raiders seem to think that Blizzard is catering to casuals with this change. They think you should have to earn your kills by reclearing bosses if you can't make it all the way through a raid zone in one week. On the other hand, casual players seem to think that Blizzard is catering to the hardcore, since it's so much easier now to work on hard modes and other achievements without the threat of a looming reset. Casuals need as much loot as possible, they say, so why would they ever want to extend a lockout?Despite the hardcore/casual debate reaching a new all-time low, the good news is that, in a sense, they're both right. Blizzard is catering to all of us. Regardless of playstyle or progression, all guilds will benefit from having this option. However, there are decisions and tradeoffs to be made. Let's examine this new feature in more detail.
The Queue: RaF'd dailies are delicious
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.I have to admit, o' faithful Queue readers, that I considered pawning off answering questions today to someone else so I could have more time to catch up on other work. Patch days can get quite busy around the WoW.com head quarters. Last night for example. Alex, Mike Sacco, and I had heard that there was a new raid lockout extension feature in place, so we rushed onto the Patch 3.2 PTR to grab some screenshots. Of course that meant we had to deal with the thing crashing every few minutes. And once we finally did make it into ZG to get a quick boss kill, Sacco disconnected and the server announced a shutdown in 5 minutes. But hey, we got the kill off and the screenshots captured with 15 seconds left until the shutdown. We won!Aideros asked..."When are more "hero classes", like the Death Knight, coming out? What are the speculations? Has anything been said about them since WotLK?"
