When I first read that a weekly raid quest would be introduced in patch 3.3 I was very enthusiastic about the idea. Finally there'd be a reason to do all the WOTLK raids again, even if nobody was running them for their gear drops anymore!
From what I've seen in my guild, this weekly raid quest has been a resounding success in practice too. As soon as a new quest is out, groups for it form left and right, and then again because people want to do it on their alts as well. However, me personally? I haven't completed a single one so far, and it's not for a lack of grouping opportunities. I actually ended up disliking the whole concept!
The thing is, in the past few weeks the weekly raid quest on my server has been Ulduar three times in a row. First it was for Deconstructor, then for Razorscale, then for Flame Leviathan. So what did people do? They quickly formed a raid, went to Ulduar to kill just those bosses (they are all right by the entrance after all) and then went home again. It's encouraged people to go back to an instance they were starting to lose interest in, but only to kill the first and second boss, which I find extremely unsatisfying. When I go into a raid, I want to clear it, or at least make a decent effort at doing so. Going in with the expressed intent of just killing the first one or two bosses feels wrong to me in so many ways that I find it hard to describe it. Imagine if the daily random heroic gave you frost emblems just for killing the first boss in each instance. Nobody would ever run a complete heroic again!
I really think that Blizzard made a mistake in making those raid quests all about the entry bosses. It's like the weird loot issues with Trial of the Crusader all over again, where a way too easy and bland raid made a much more fun and interesting one completely redundant by outclassing its loot by a mile. It felt wrong because the best rewards came from something that was extremely easy and thus encouraged you to skip a lot of harder content.
Blizzard managed to make heroics relevant and popular again by rewarding you with top tier emblems for their completion. I thought that they would do the same for the "old" WOTLK raids, but in fact very little has changed - people still skip most of the instance because the emblem reward is given out right at the start. Why bother with killing any more bosses if the effort will result only in minimal rewards compared to just taking the time to kill the quest boss? I can only imagine that getting a "proper" group for any of those raids is now going to be harder than ever, because unless you manage to pull one together on the very first day after the reset, half your guild will already be saved to a dozen different raid IDs from pugging the first boss for the weekly quest.
31/12/2009
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I think it's just bad luck that it's always been Ulduar for you. I mean, Ulduar is pretty long! I've gotten Naxx (Razuvious), ToC (Jaraxxus), and ... uhm some other guy. With the exception of Naxx, since we were already there, we cleared everything. And even with Naxx, we still went and killed Saph and KT, since you no longer have to clear the whole place to do them anymore. I think you may find that it's more likely people will do more of it when they are the slightly shorter duration raids.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, it hasn't re-vitalised raids, it's just encouraged people to piss all over them. We had Naxx (Patch) recently it was a miserable experience - the worst of sloppy pugging, the tank didn't wait for me at all, pursued Patch past the frogger-slimes and then got half the raid killed, but we were super-over-geared so we downed him anyway, and nobody gave a damn. It was really grim.
ReplyDeleteOur server got Maly 1 week (you cant skip anything there) and Naxx the next followed by Razorscale and finally Ignis. It is what it is - Fast easy badges. we do it as a guild - a well oiled machine - in and out.
ReplyDeleteSomething our Guild is doing for our members is farming the mounts from Hardmode Ulduar (before Blizzard takes them away) - so we work the weekly into our farming.
I agree that it hasn't revitalized raids. But what could? I hate to be pessimistic, but I'm not sure any reward beyond a dozen frost badges would get many people deeper into the raids. This is one of the negative side-effects of farming raids: being completely sick of them. And some are so long that even if someone wanted to go, these days no one spends hours at a time with a PUG unless it's a trash farm.
ReplyDeleteI hate to be pessimistic, but I'm not sure any reward beyond a dozen frost badges would get many people deeper into the raids
ReplyDeleteTrue, but what would actually be *wrong* with giving a dozen frost badges for downing - say - Yogg Saron? After all, doing a full Ulduar clear is by pretty much any measure harder than any other activity that could get you an equivalent number of emblems.