25-man-raiding
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Race to World First documentary releasing soon
Looking for Group Productions has been hard at work on its documentary Race to World First for a good long while now, capturing many top-tier World of Warcraft guilds' attempts at claiming coveted world firsts in the raiding game as well as following Blood Legion's race to a top spot. Set to release in a few weeks, Race to World First looks like it's going to be an introspective look at the time and energy that many of these guilds put into the raiding game, as well as an examination of the multicultural nature of the game and the general excitement that goes along with MMO accomplishments. Each week, Race to World First looks at clips from players in guilds that have been fighting for or actually achieved world firsts. Looking back a bit, this clip with Narilka of Ensidia chronicles her time spent with the guild downing Kil'jaeden at the end of The Burning Crusade when she was still just 16 years old. We loved having the Race to World First production team at the WoW Insider reader meetup at BlizzCon in 2010 -- they were some of the nicest guys and had a blast talking to real players and real fans. I am excited to see this documentary. Check out the trailer -- you might even see some familiar faces!
Ask the Devs Round 8 answers your Firelands questions
The Ask the Devs question and answer series continues with Round 8, where Blizzard devs answered user-submitted questions about patch 4.2's raid content, the Firelands. Players are anxiously awaiting the next tier of raid content, and Blizzard has had a lot to answer for due to the changing nature of patches in the months to come. Blizzard answers some pretty good questions this time around and even addresses the melee DPS problem in many of the tier 11 raid fights. Some answers are a bit cryptic, however. When discussing the planned Abyssal Maw dungeon (we thought it would be a 5-man, but apparently, raid fights would have taken place there as well), Blizzard says that it believes that the Neptulon story is wrapped up fine with Throne of the Tides but doesn't make mention of the Abyssal Maw dungeons making a return. They only mention "for now," so hopefully the complete Neptulon story will be told in the depths of Vashj'ir. Another interesting point that the devs make is that they don't really understand the complaint that some aspects of the raid game are too easy, when they look at the number of people who have completed the 25-man heroic encounters in relation to the normal content modes. Also, the devs wanted to stress that they were not trying to turn 25-man raiding guilds into 10-man raiding guilds and actively tried to make the 10- and 25-man versions of encounters similar in order to stress that point. I am very excited for a new Lady Vashj bridge in the Firelands, though. WoW always has the coolest bridges. Read the full Q&A after the jump.
Officers' Quarters: Be careful what you promise
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Promises, promises. Politicians make them all the time. In fact, many of them get elected based on those promises. No one seems surprised anymore when a politician fails to deliver on a campaign promise, yet our guild members usually expect us to do what we say we will. Could it be that guild officers are actually held to a higher standard? Let's look at this week's email to find out! Hello I am an officer (well one of 2) in a medium sized semi raiding guild We also have a large number of "casual" players in our guild. During LK era, we had 2 different 10 man raiding teams going on. Both groups I took the time to rotate different players out each given week so everyone had a chance to raid.The second group was also made up of some of the first group's alts. This was very stressful on me due to I would take all week to get the groups ready only to have someone say at the last minute would say oh I can't make it 5 minutes before raid started, then I would have to rework the "group composition" in a flurry to be able to start the raid on time. Well during Cata we all agreed we did not want to do rotations and only wanted to do 10 man raids and wanted two solid 10 man groups with the same people every week ( with a stand by if needed), so we could work as a "family" unit and mesh well together.
Breakfast Topic: The changing face of raid group sizes
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. Sweat was beading on my face, and the pain just kept coming; it would not cease. I stood and could only gaze at my friends as they slowly fell one by one. As they dropped, that is when I snapped into action, for I was the harbinger of more repair bills. I was the out-of-combat rezzer. This is what I imagine my priest felt as I ran him through the Molten Core. I am glad that spot went the way of the dodo. Indeed, there are a lot of things that I do not miss from raiding, and there are a lot that I do. One of the new changes, 10s and 25s sharing raid lockouts, made me think of the changes that we have seen at each expansion. As the game seems to gear itself towards the more casual raider, I find many things much more to my liking. Yet I do remember that feel of fighting a 40-man raid boss, and that is one of the epic feelings I miss. The problem I have found with casuals, whether we were running 10/20s or alliance-guild 25s/40s: We almost always came up too crowded or short-handed, depending on the week. Either people had to be cut, or people had to be pugged. This also got me thinking, why not 15s? If we had too many for a 25, we could get two 15s; too few, one 15. Then I thought, why not just have instances scale? The more folks, the more gear, the tougher the fights -- from eight to 40 and anything between. It probably is too complicated for the programmers, but fun to think about nonetheless. What do you miss and what don't you miss about the older raid group sizes? If you could have one WoW raid group size wish come true, what would it be?
Officers' Quarters: The great raid-size debate, part 3
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Welcome to the third and final column exploring the various pros and cons of raid size in WoW's upcoming Cataclysm expansion. Before we talk about the final category, let's recap. In part 1, I examined the various gameplay considerations that come along with the different sizes. Gameplay We can only speculate about relative difficulty. 10-man raids offer fewer options for dealing with specific boss abilities and/or adds. Position-based abilities are easier to deal with in 10s. Player deaths are not as crippling in 25-mans. It's easier to cover for someone else's mistake with 25 players. In part 2, I talked about the logistics involved in running each size and the rewards you can obtain from them. Logistics A 25-man raid requires an intense recruiting effort. "Cat herding" is flat-out easier in 10-man raids. More raiders mean more attendance issues and technical issues. Subbing is easier in a larger raid. Scheduling difficulties are easier to manage with more players. Loot is easier to distribute in 10-man.
Officers' Quarters: The great raid size debate, part 2
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Last week, I received an email asking me for my thoughts on raid size in Cataclysm. As it turns out, I have quite a few thoughts -- three columns' worth, in fact, covering four different categories: gameplay, logistics, rewards and intangibles. My goal is to help officers and their guild members to choose which raid size is best suited for their guild. A week ago, I wrote about the gameplay category. This week's column will cover two topics that have been linked together throughout the history of the game. From the very beginning of WoW, Blizzard has made a connection between more difficult logistics and greater rewards. Molten Core, Onyxia, and later 40-man raids rewarded the best available gear in their respective heydays. Throughout The Burning Crusade and Wrath, 25-man content yielded the best items. For Cataclysm, this paradigm is shifting. Let's take a look at the logistics involved with the two raid sizes and the rewards that each size offers.
Officers' Quarters: The great raid size debate
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Cataclysm, as you are probably already aware, brings with it massive changes to the raiding scene in World of Warcraft. Certainly the most controversial change is Blizzard's desire, announced in April, to balance and separate 10- and 25-man raids -- namely, both sizes will share the same lockout and loot tables. The 10-man scene, widely regarded as inferior throughout WoW's history, will be designed to have approximately the same difficulty as its 25-man counterpart. Reports from the beta dungeon forums indicate that 10-man bosses are currently much easier to bring down than their 25-man versions, but we can only assume that Blizzard will take steps to even out the difficulty according to its stated goal. In the weeks following the expansion's launch, it will be extremely interesting to see how this whole situation shakes out. These changes will force most guilds to choose one size or the other as their primary raiding focus. As I've previously stated, this is a good thing. Many officers right now, including the one who wrote this week's email, are wondering which size to choose. Officers' Quarters is here to help! Hail Scott, What is your take on 10-man versus 25-man raiding in Cataclysm? Our guild would like to continue raiding 25-mans, but several of the other raid guilds on our server have apparently decided to switch to 10s. Are they jumping to conclusions, or are they on to something? Is this the end of 25-man raiding, and are we in for a repeat of the guild implosions and massive raider unemployment we saw when 40s were dropped to 25s?
Cataclysm Beta: Select guild raid achievement requirements reduced
I admit it. I'm an achievement-holic. I'll repeat the most idiotic, mind-numbing task for hours on end just to earn a handful of achievement points. It doesn't matter that I can't do anything with those points. I want them. I need them. And I know I'm not alone in my obsession -- some people play World of Warcraft just for the achievements. (You know who you are.) Once Cataclysm launches, there will be a whole new set of achievements just for guilds, only compounding my poor, crippling obsession. A metric ton of them are for completing old instances and raids as a guild, and grabbing those points requires 80 percent guild participation. Under the guidelines laid out earlier in September, that meant you'd need to take along at least 20 guildies to conquer Serpentshrine Cavern (a BC 25-man), even if you could easily complete it with fewer. Well, for those of us who are obsessed with collecting achievement points, there's good news -- Blizzard just cut the required participation rate for all the old school Burning Crusade raids. On the official forums, blue poster Mumper confirmed that they're treating all old 25-man raids as 10-mans -- instead of needing 20 guildies to take on Lady Vashj and Kil'jaeden, you will now only need 8. The full blue post is after the break.
The shape of raids to come: Guild leaders look ahead
Now that we're past the initial shock of Blizzard's revelations about the balance and progression path of 10-man and 25-man raids in Cataclysm, it's time to saddle up and move forward again. We may not know exactly where the guild progression path ultimately leads -- but experienced guild leaders are already moving into position, planning for the journey ahead with insight and a steady hand. We tested the temperature of guild and raid leaders in guilds across Azeroth as they look ahead to the shape of guilds (and raids) to come. Competition: A good thing The issue my guild will be facing will be the unified lockout each week. While it makes sense to only kill each boss once per lockout, regardless of raid size, my guild has been running two or three 10-man raids in addition to our 25-man raid group. This allowed a higher flow of gear and emblems and allowed the 25-man raid group to gear up at a considerably faster rate than if we could only run one size of the raid each week. This will most likely make us require our raiders to "put up or shut up," letting only the top 25 performers into the 25-man lockout for increased valor points and more chances at loot. The remaining raiders will be designated to the 10-man version, where they will most likely have to run more daily heroics in order to gear up at the same rate as the rest of the guild. Each week the rosters will churn a little bit, allowing players to experience both versions of the encounters amd also creating some healthy competition for the "more valuable" 25-man spots. -- Scott Carson
Call for submissions: The shape of guilds to come
How will Cataclysm's evolving raid progression plans shape your guild? We're betting that many of you raid leaders, guild officers and GMs are already making plans for what's ahead -- growing to accommodate an additional 10-man team, stretching to resize or reschedule your existing groups, maybe even shrinking down to become that tight-knit squad you've always dreamed of. Now's the time to begin considering the possibilities. WoW.com is looking for submissions for a roundup article on how the changing face of raid progression will be affecting your guild. We're looking for thoughtful reflections, between 50 and 200 words, on the road that lies ahead for your particular guild or raiding group. Preferably, you're the GM or an officer of a guild or the leader of a regular raiding group (although we won't discount submissions from other types of players). No Chicken Little or QQ submissions, please; our comments runneth over with delicious tears already, thanks. As with all guest post call-outs, only the best submissions will be accepted. Here's what to do: read up about the Seed program, sign up and then submit your article (you can't see the article page unless you have a Seed account). Unfortunately, we are currently only able to take submissions from individuals living in the United States; we hope to be able to accept international submissions in the future. We'll accept submissions for this call-out until 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday, April 29 -- that's right, just a couple of days away. Good luck!
Guildwatch: No tabard, no loot
Some stories of drama on the realms aren't directly guild-related, but they're just too good to pass up. The one above is just such a story -- one of our tipsters was just flying around Azeroth one day when a conversation in General caught his eye. One unlucky Time-Lost Proto-drake seeker ran into his very own Griftah, and ended up with 425 less gold and a very "unusual" toy item. That story and more in this week's Guildwatch, which starts right after the break. If you have downed, recruiting, or drama news for us, feel free to send a tip in to guildwatch@wow.com, and you might see it here in the future. Read on for more!
Officers' Quarters: On the brink
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.A few weeks ago, I talked about the difficulty of maintaining an active raiding schedule all summer long -- and what you can do about it. This week's e-mail is from yet another victim of the summer raiding slump, but his guild has some other issues going on here, too. Hey Scott,I'm an officer of a relatively new raiding guild (3-4 months old). We formed a few weeks before 3.1 and built the guild up from almost nothing besides the group of friends we had. The core group started out almost in Best in Slot gear but most of the people we recruited were undergeared so we ended up having to run Naxx for almost a month after 3.1 before we had the gear to really push Ulduar. That being said we have done phenomenally well in the time we have spent in Ulduar. We have downed all the watchers[. . . .] We consider ourselves way ahead of where we should be for such a young guild.However we seem to have numerous problems.
Stars snag world-first legitimate Alone in the Darkness
World-first Heroic: Alone in the Darkness? "Didn't Exodus already get that?" you may ask. Well, they did get the achievement, but they used an exploit, and were slapped on the wrist to the tune of a 72 hour suspension. Which means: the stage was open for a legitimate world-first! In a break from the tradition of European guilds getting major world-first accomplishments, Chinese guild Stars (playing on the Taiwanese servers) has apparently completed the achievement legitimately. They got that nifty Mimiron's Head mount, too. In case you're scratching your head wondering what this is all about, during the Yogg-Saron fight (the last boss of Ulduar), the four Keepers of Ulduar (Freya, Thorim, Hodir, and Mimiron) help you out. You can choose how many of the Keepers you want to activate for the fight, and if you use fewer than all of them, it's hard-mode. "Alone in the Darkness" is Yogg-Saron with zero keepers: as hard as it gets. Congratulations to Stars on a truly impressive feat.
How will they do the loot in Trial of the Crusader?
For my money, the most interesting things they're doing in patch 3.2 are the changes to the badge system and the reimagining of the 10- vs. 25-man raiding paradigm. The new raid, Trial of the Crusader, will be available on both normal and heroic difficulty mode for both 10- and 25-man groups (the heroic mode is called Trial of the Grand Crusader). In other words, there are a total of four versions of the raid: 10-normal, 10-heroic, 25-normal, and 25-heroic. They're all on separate lockouts Those of you who know certain past posts of mine could probably predict what my mind jumps to from that news: how will the loot be done? I see four three major possibilities. 10-normal and 25-normal drop the same gear, while 10-heroic and 25-heroic drop a tier above (10n = 25n < 10h = 25h). 10-normal drops one kind of gear, 10-heroic and 25-normal are equal to each other and better than that, and 25-heroic is best of all (10n < 10h = 25n < 25h). All four raids drop different levels of gear, 10n < 10h < 25n < 25h. If you've read my past stuff, you could correctly guess that #1 would be my favorite option. I don't really want to argue it here (or in the comments), because I've had that conversation more than I care to already.
Several Ulduar weapons buffed
Apparently a few tweaks to items were either too random or too last-minute to make it into the patch 3.1.2 notes. Three weapons have had their stats improved, "to match their appropriate item level:" Icecore Staff Boreal Guard Malice You can see a screenshot of the new stats at right. Additionally, eight weapons have had their speed changed, "to make them more optimized when used in PvE content compared to equivalent weapons obtained in the Arena." I read that as "Arena weapons were too good, so we changed the speed on these ones to make them better." Golden Saronite Dragon: 2.6 -> ? Remorse: 1.6 -> 1.5 Stonerender: 1.6 -> 1.5 Voldrethar, Dark Blade of Oblivion: 3.4 -> ? Dark Edge of Depravity: ? -> ? Aesir's Edge: 3.5 -> ? Hammer of Crushing Whispers: 3.5 -> ? Caress of Insanity: 2.6 -> ? If anyone can fill in the question marks, please leave the information in the comments.
High-level ranged weapons getting buffed
Well-geared hunters, rejoice: you're getting buffed. According to Ghostcrawler, hunter DPS is too low at the moment, so the damage of all ranged weapons with ilvl 226 or higher is being increased by about 30 DPS. This includes drops from Kel'Thuzad-25 and Ulduar-25, as well as Furious Gladiator gear and Ulduar-10 hard modes. This is estimated to result in an overall DPS increase for the hunter of "a few percent." The reason this change ended up needing to be made has to do with what they wanted to do with ammo in patch 3.1. They had grand plans for an ammo revamp (which I don't think they've ever quite revealed), and as a result they stopped designing new tiers of ammo, so raiding hunters now are stuck with the same bullets they were using at the start of Wrath. This change rolls the DPS from non-existent higher tiers of ammo into the weapons. Ghostcrawler also mentions that they think hunter DPS will need more improvement, and that there is another buff that they're trying to roll out "sometime in the next couple of weeks." We will, as ever, keep you posted if we hear anything.
Chinese guild heads to Taiwan, kills Mimiron on hard mode
WoW has been in a state of flux in China lately, with the9 failing to gain approval from the government to publish Wrath of the Lich King, which in turn may or may not have lead to Blizzard licensing the operation of WoW in China to Netease instead. In the midst of all this, it has been the players stuck in the middle, their play availability up in the air, stuck killing Kil'jaedan over and over and over as they wait for Northrend with bated breath. That said, there's still been a few players who have taken matters into their own hands.
The Azeroth Ethicist: Special I.W.I.N. edition
In reading the commentary on the site concerning the brouhaha surrounding Martin Fury and The Marvel Family's steamrolling of raid content, there were a lot of assertions made that left an impression on me, but the overwhelming feeling I had coming away from it was the players were treating it as a TOS issue when ultimately it's not. For obvious reasons, Blizzard doesn't spend a lot of time creating specific rules for what happens when players get ahold of items that are not officially supposed to exist. I do, however, believe it to be a moral issue.Was Karatechop wrong to use the shirt, or just wrong past a certain point?Someone made of stricter stuff than myself would probably say that it was wrong to use the shirt at all, but I have to admit -- I don't have it in me to condemn Karatechop's initial impulse to try it out. GM items don't officially exist for players; we know about them only because they've been data-mined, and you'd have to be a fairly frequent habitué of Warcraft fan sites to have any inkling that they're in the game at all. If I'd been in Karatechop's position, like many players I would've believed that Martin Fury was a joke when I first saw it. Who honestly expects to run across an item like that, let alone one that was mailed to a guildie's level 13 Warlock? I don't believe Karatechop was wrong to try the shirt when he had no reason to believe it was anything other than a joke or some bizarre glitch.
Ulduar "tuning tweaks"
Ulduar nerfs continue, tonight being called "tuning tweaks" - but nerfs they are, at least the vast majority of them. Several hard modes have been made easier (XT-002, Assembly of Iron, and Hodir). I'm told that the change to Hodir-hard is particularly significant - the timer on the hard mode was increased from 2 minutes to 3 minutes, which means this encounter might actually be possible on 25-man now. The Hodir change will not go live until maintenance. There were also normal-mode tweaks to Auriya, Thorim, and Freya, and some of the trash (Conservatory, Vezax, Sappers) was beat up a little bit. The Ulduar nerf parade may have slowed down over the weekend, but it's back in force for Monday. I'm starting to feel a little sorry for all the bosses, seeing their power slowly drained away.
Val'anyr explained
In an unusual move, Blizzard has spelled out exactly how the proc on Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings works. There are probably one or two of you who consider it a spoiler, so I'll put it after the cut.
