Ghostcrawler on Current Raid Difficulty
Says the designer crab:
“A couple more points about Naxx: many of the guilds who cleared it quickly already knew the encounters from 40-player days, AND were allowed to practice extensively on beta. By contrast we gave players very little exposure to Kil’jaeden on the PTR.
But really, trying to slow down worldwide progression by making encounters insanely difficult is a losing proposition. We’re in the world now of professional guilds with corporate sponsors and players willing to put in enormous numbers of hours and attempts. We can certainly (and will) make very challenging encounters for which guilds can take pride in server firsts. However, I would not expect to see encounters that are so difficult that the entire WoW community wipes on them for months before achieving success. I just don’t know if that game exists anymore.”
That pretty much sums up everything there is to say. As much as Nihilum Curse SK Gaming 25th November Ensidia Whatever-They’re-Called-This-Week and the other handful of überguilds hate it, the C’Thun days appear to be gone for good.
There’s another piece of wisdom hidden in that statement. When the world’s biggest überguild has fully beta access, sees the content, remains absolutely silent about the difficulty then race through the content on release in order to bitch about the lack of challenge, it isn’t just faux outrage and manufactured controvery. It isn’t just a clear demonstration that whatever firsts they achieve in the future is no longer properly legit and completely meaningless (as opposed to the merits of every single guild who was NOT in beta, clears the content and remains out of the limelights monopolized by what has in the meantime devolved into WoW’s biggest collection of attention whores and drama queens). It also shows that they are a total failure as beta testers and haven’t understood the purpose of all these shiny passes they have recieved.
The game too easy for you? Sod off. You should have said so in beta. Now get off the headlines.
No, they stayed quiet because of the same reason many did, Naxxramas is not set for Raiders, its set at Below Kara level, with gear at starting approaching the T5 equivalent (running heroics / Naxx at the moment is the same feeling as hitting Kara in T5/2.3+ badge gear).
Raiding should have progression, and it should get easier over time to open it up more. However at current it is not challenging, it is set at a level that you can pug it successfully (how many Kara pugs got past Curator?). GC is wrong in many ways, and right in others. There is no way they can make a fight that will realistically stop a guild for months without making its tolerances incredibly tight (best in slot + stacked raid + full consumables + no errors), and RNG based, because otherwise the top guilds who already do all of the first bit, have the experience and skill to do it right and easily.
You make fights difficult by making them impossible, and forcing a gear up to challenge it, for example ZA or the 3 drake version of Obsidian. These let you tune much tighter, and can force massive compromises on you (imagine having to do a 25 man raid with 10 people so you have 3x 5 man groups to do something else, each designed for 10 man). These are all doable, a 5 man pug I was in recently hit 9.6k dps, in contrast the 10 man I pugged Naxx with hit 9.2k, so its possible to adjust difficulty by forcing fights to be interesting rather than simply numbers checks.
No, they stayed quiet because of the same reason many did, Naxxramas is not set for Raiders,
Which would pretty much be yet another excellent reason for them to stfu.
Raiding should have progression, and it should get easier over time to open it up more.
That would be the kind of thinking which GC refers to as “I just don’t know if that game exists anymore.”
The challenge nowadays, as you implied, is in the particular achievements tied to the encounters, not the barebones basic one. Doesn’t mean Blizz couldn’t change their minds again, but it appears to be their current thinking.
I personally am happy the game is on “easy” mode. When I spent all this time leveling and found out I just couldn’t run heroics because I was under-geared, it almost ruined the game for me.
I think there are far more people like me who just want to accessorize their characters and see content then there are people who want to be “challenged” – which I think is just another way of saying die a lot.