Raid-ID
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Mythic difficulty lockouts explained
For some folks, mythic raiding is causing a bit of a problem. Not that it is hard in any way, but rather that they don't understand the specifics of its lockout system as compared to LFR or Normal/Heroic raiding. This is understandable - with all the changes to raiding, it can be hard to keep track of how everything has changed. Rygarius has taken the time to explain the system, and to anybody who raided before Mists of Pandaria it should look pretty familiar. Rygarius - Question about Mythic I've seen some confusion over Mythic raiding lately and wanted to clarify. Mythic difficulty's lockout works differently than the other raiding difficulties (Raid Finder, Normal, Heroic). In Mythic difficulty, you are bound to the raid ID. This means if you join a Mythic raid, defeat the first boss (thereby binding you to that Mythic raid ID) and leave; you'll return to the same raid. If the raid continues on to defeat bosses 2, and 3 while you were gone, you will return to the raid with those bosses already defeated. For that reason, it is important to stick together with the same group of people as much as possible for Mythic difficulty. When joining a Mythic raid that's already in-progress, read the notification box that pops up carefully. It'll let you know how many bosses have already been defeated and ask for confirmation to be saved to that raid. If something's not adding up, you can refuse to be saved and be teleported out without being saved. source Yes, it's the old raid ID system. It's understandable that it might confuse folks used to the more flexible loot-locked system we have in Normal/Heroic - with those raids, if you leave after three bosses into a raid, you can come back on a fresh clear and kill stuff until you get to a boss you haven't looted yet and start getting loot again. With Mythic, you and everyone in the raid who kills the first boss are bound by the raid ID - the 20 players who killed that boss are basically in the exact same instance of said raid, and if two people step out on boss 6 and are replaced, and the raid continues on to kill all the bosses, that's their raid ID - if they formed a raid and zoned in after the clear, they would arrive in a cleared out instance. It's clearly all part of the design to keep Mythic as something more akin to the old days of raiding, where server communities formed and fought for realm firsts. I admit, it's not a raid ID system that appeals to me anymore, but it's not complicated - it's the raid ID system that we've always had.
The pros and cons of extending raid lockouts
All through Wrath of the Lich King, I raided in a hardcore progression guild for 16 hours a week. We ran 12 hours in 25-mans and another three or four a week working on hard mode 10-mans. A lot of it ended up feeling like clearing content to get geared up to clear the exact same content but with more bells and whistles (especially Trial of the Crusader, where we often ended up doing the same raid four times a week). So when Cataclysm came out, I shifted to a more casual, purely 10-man, six-hours-a-week raiding schedule with a new guild. For the most part, it's been pretty great, but one aspect of it is that with two hours a night, three nights a week, it can be a challenge to get through the farm content fast enough to get to the new bosses, especially once most of an instance is farm content. Even when you know all the fights and can burn through them, five bosses can take a lot of time to get knocked out in order to get face time on a new boss. One of the innovations of Wrath of the Lich King was extending raid lockouts. What this allows you to do is to skip the bosses you already have on farm by, in effect, picking up where your last raid left off. Cleared everything but Nef last week and needing to work on the new encounter? Now you can just start up with everything you killed last week still dead. What could be the problem, you ask?
In the category of "finally": Raid ID confirmation windows in 3.1
The 3.1 PTR has brought a lot of wonderful quality of life improvements, but here's one that players and GMs alike will undoubtedly appreciate more than a lot of them: you finally, finally get a confirmation window when you enter an instance that would lock you to it. You get the option to accept the lockout and stay in the instance or leave the instance and save your ID for later. You have 15 seconds to make said choice. This means no more getting screwed out of heroics by some idiot who forgot he already ran Violet Hold today or any other of the myriad ways you can lose your ID for the day (or week). It's about time. Our good friend BRK found this feature without even realizing it, as WI reader Brandon Tilley discovered it in BRK's screenshots of a PTR raid last night. Thanks for the heads-up on this exciting change, Brandon, and way to miss the boat, BRK! Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
Guildwatch: A little raid ID problem
Sure, it's a lot of good items being nabbed from the guild bank there, but how much will those really be worth in the expansion, right? Look on the bright side -- you'll have a bunch of new gear, and that former guildleader will still have a bad reputation.Downed and recruiting news and the ever-popular drama can be found as usual in this week's Guildwatch. To read, just click the link below, and don't forget to send all your tips to wowguildwatch@gmail.com -- things are a little slow before the expansion, so if you've got news of progression (or a nice juicy drama story), please do share it. We thank you, and a host of drama-hungry readers will thank you as well.
Raid ID stolen? Blizzard says report it.
Apparently the new policy on raid stealing is to report early and in detail. Blizzard poster Belfaire, in a thread entitled 'Raid Harassment' explains in response to a post about a couple of people using a gullible guildmate's trust to snag his raid ID by 'asking for help on quests' and then wiping them repeatedly on Illidan attempts. Seems that now, if this kind of thing happens to you, (I once zoned into MC to find that, instead of half done, it had been cleared up to Ragnaros by another guild that had just accepted one of our mages as a member... he brought our raid ID with him, so they decided to take advantage of not having to do the first three bosses.)The change in policy may not make much of an actual difference in some situations... if someone's wiping your raid on boss attempts, the GM's probably won't be able to act before your raid is done for the night... but it's miles ahead of the 'there's nothing we can do' policy that's been enacted in the past. After all, it is possible for GM's to teleport jerks off of the Isle of Quel'Danas when they're making the badge vendor impossible to reach, so maybe they'll start porting griefers like the ones in Ironhide's post. I can only agree with poster Podric, and Belfaire himself, when they say that it's about time for this change.
