Naga and Nerfs

I've been spending a considerable amount of time in Serpentshrine Cavern and The Eye over the past few weeks, especially considering that I haven't actually returned to core raider rank. The guild has managed to find some promising new recruits on Nethergarde Keep, but with several people having to sign as absent for real life reasons every night, there was usually still a spot for me. And in my head it still matters that I haven't committed to being there - I just happened to have time.

SSC in particular has felt like a good place to be. Practising the Lady Vashj fight reminded me of how much I loved it back in the day too - I generally like fights where a lot of players have to fulfill different jobs, and where a certain degree of unpredictability forces people to communicate. Back in the day my shadow priest was one of the people burning down striders; this time my hunter was the dedicated elemental hunter for the southern side of the boss's platform. I enjoyed myself either way.

We'd gotten to the point where we could make it through phase two reasonably smoothly, but then things tended to fall apart quickly during phase three once the unstoppable mind controls kicked in (affected targets receive a huge buff to their damage done and couldn't be crowd controlled, only tanked). A few weeks ago there was talk from Blizzard about nerfing this slightly so that the mind controlled characters could at least be CC-ed, but they quickly backpedalled on that particular suggestion for reasons unknown to me. Instead they decided to wait a little longer and then apply one massive nerf bat all at once, with the associated changes going live yesterday.

Going into SSC after this nerf felt very weird. The trash absolutely melted. Lurker died in half the usual time. Morogrim Tidewalker's murloc adds, which had previously been a tight AoE dps check, were reduced to about a quarter of their previous health and our warlocks struggled to get even two Seeds of Corruption off before they were all dead. When we got to Vashj herself, we one-shot her, and the cheers on Discord were very subdued. Where her third phase had previously been a crescendo of chaos after an already challenging phase two, it was now just another tank and spank similar to phase one, making the fight conclude with a whimper instead of a bang.

I found myself remembering the day we killed the final bosses of tier 11 back in Cataclysm, as well as the massive Black Temple nerfs hitting just after my BC guild had killed Mother Shahraz (something I also discuss in the linked post). In hindsight, I was right that none of those post-nerf kills were ultimately very memorable to me, as I can recall virtually nothing about any of the mentioned bosses that I first killed in their post-nerf state.

I can't help but find myself wishing that Blizzard hadn't decided to push us forward quite so hard. Trawling my way through old patch notes, it was interesting to see how targeted and gradual their raid nerfs were originally: remove a trash mechanic here, tone down the damage of an ability there. The aforementioned mind control mechanic on Vashj for example was initially changed to allow players to be crowd controlled after all, and only removed entirely much later. And I think the big nerfs to mob hitpoints didn't actually come until the Wrath pre-patch back in the day. Seeing it all applied at once was honestly a shock to the system as it just changed everything so much.

Yet at the same time I can't claim to not understand their intent behind this. With BC's attunements, there is some sense in doing everything to ensure people could kill Kael and Vashj in time, as this is required to be able to enter Mount Hyjal and Black Temple at all - and people expect those raids to open early in the new year. Might as well make sure that players have the appropriate gear and that all raiders can get attuned in time. And I'm not going to lie - I'm looking forward to seeing Hyjal again! It was another BC raid that I really enjoyed - Black Temple was more of an "eh" from me.

Monday will be the guild's last progression raid before the Christmas break, and they're planning to clear Tempest Keep (I'll be busy elsewhere). I'm thinking that might still be a bit ambitious, because as far as I'm aware they haven't had a chance to practice Kael at all and he's still got a lot of mechanics to wrap one's head around. But even if he doesn't die before Christmas, I'm sure we'll get him down in the new year for sure.

I suppose I'm just feeling a little melancholy about how much Classic has turned into just another rat race. I mean, I've kind of known this for a while, but nothing drives the message home like Blizzard nerfing the content hard to make sure you move on already, damn it. My original dream of Classic being this evergreen MMO that we'd all be happy to come back to now and then on a casual basic is pretty dead at this point. However, I'll try to enjoy what's there while it lasts, because looking at the Classic era servers I don't expect Classic BC to have much of a future in the long run either.

A Trip to SSC & Tales of Attunement

When I stepped down from progression raiding, I didn't intend for that to mean that I wasn't planning to set foot into another Burning Crusade raid ever again - I mentioned I've been enjoying the casual tier four community runs, and I also wasn't opposed to the idea of visiting some of the later raids at some point. I just didn't want to put in the effort that was expected of core raiders in my guild anymore and commit to dedicating two days a week to being at the (relative) cutting edge as it were.

The little guild drama not too long ago combined with some other happenings left the Forks' core raid team somewhat below strength recently, and with my SWTOR ops team going on a break with the expansion looming close, I suddenly found myself with a lot more free evenings and told one of the officers that I'd be happy to help out in SSC on Wednesdays in the meantime - better for them to have a slacker along than to underman it for sure.

So it happened that my hunter made her first trip to the Serpentshrine Cavern a week ago, and I'm not going to lie: I had a good time! I thought I was off to a good start when - despite of remembering very well that the elevator at the door was an infamous death trap - I promptly stepped onto it too late, something that was followed by a long fall during which I had plenty of time to think about and regret my mistake before going splat at the bottom, right in front of two of the officers. Glorious!

We killed all the bosses bar Vashj with little fuss - if anything it was the giant bog lords between them that still gave people some trouble. Tidewalker was pretty hilarious as we were drowning in a sea of murlocs by the end and it was just AoE and fears and shouting on Discord and I loved it. At the end we even had time for a couple of tries on Vashj herself. I was pretty happy with my own performance too, considering my non-raid spec and the fact that I still haven't even got my four-piece Beast Lord set bonus. (I've run the Mechanar more than a dozen times and have seen every single drop from Pathaleon the Calculator except for the helm...)

That aside though, I was also touched by how many whispers I got from people excited to see me in a progression raid again, though I also felt a little bad letting them down by reaffirming that I wasn't returning "properly". I'm not exactly hugely chatty in raids, so I didn't think people really had reason to miss me.

I actually kind of liked the idea of doing this a few more times, but then I overheard them talking about swapping Wednesdays to The Eye and moving SSC to Mondays, one night on which I'm still busy. I also knew that I wouldn't be able to help out in The Eye because I still wasn't attuned (insert sad trombone noise here). I was at the stage where you need to do two group quests in Shadowmoon Valley and both of my previous attempts to get into a group for them had ended in failure.

For the briefest moment I was starting to think thoughts like "maybe I could make a push for the attunement now to be able to help out more", but even as I did so another part of me was cringing away in terror. I wanted to earn my Champion of the Naaru title on my own terms and in my own time, not rush through it in a desperate attempt to get to spend some more time wiping in 25-mans again. Not to mention the amount of begging and arm-twisting I feared I'd have to do to get through all those group stages sooner rather than later, when it might not necessarily be convenient for other people.

It did make me think about the Eye attunement in general though. I guess back in the day I didn't find it so bad because my guild didn't actually go there until attunement had become optional, so it was just a cool quest chain that earned you a title. I still think it is that, but as a requirement to even enter the raid it's honestly pretty harsh, not so much due to the overall length but due to the strange mix of solo content, group quests, heroic dungeons and raids, which forces you to change gear at several steps along the way.

And you can tell that guilds are struggling, based on the recruitment spam and LFM requests to plug those last few holes on progression night that fill the looking for group channel night after night. I wonder if all those guilds aren't missing a trick by not advertising with something like "guaranteed attunement runs every Sunday" or whatever. Yeah, it would be work for them, but at the same time it might draw in some more people with a casual interest who just don't have the stamina to spend days in the LFG channel, repeating "looking for more for heroic Shadow Labs/Shattered Halls/Arcatraz".

I know that immediately after launch the "raiding economy" was effectively an employer's market, with more people looking to raid than guilds had room for with the reduced raid size, but recently things seem to have shifted the opposite direction, and if you're desperate for people to commit to raiding, maybe offer them something in return other than a bunch of rules about how to gear and what consumables to bring? Guild membership should involve both give and take, and while it's possible to keep both of those to an absolute minimum if you don't want to get involved, I don't think you can ask players to put that much effort in while not giving much in return.

And on that somewhat sour note the first draft of this post would have ended, but the day after I'd written it, I happened to be online in the early evening alongside only three other guildies, and somehow the subject of my lack of Tempest Keep attunement came up. I explained how I was stuck on the Shadowmoon group quests but didn't want to stress about it. Imagine my surprise when one of the guildies online at the time - our sole raiding shadow priest since I'd first joined the guild - spoke up to say something like: "Why not do those quests now? I could tank them on my alt and I'm sure the others wouldn't mind helping!" I was positively abashed that someone else actually cared more about my attunement than I did, and within a few minutes we had a group and gave both Ruul the Darkener and Cyrukh the Firelord a proper spanking. I thanked everyone for their generosity and time and got the - again very surprising to me - reply: "We're just being selfish in our own way, wanting you back in our raids."

Finishing those two quests unlocked the Trials of the Naaru - three quests to complete four heroics, followed by a raid quest for Magtheridon. I think the heroics are generally considered the most unpleasant part by most, but not for me - after all, I have friends now (?!) that also enjoy running heroics, so we blasted through them all over the next couple of days without any major issues. I expect to have my Champion of the Naaru title and Tempest Key by tomorrow evening.

And I'm feeling very conflicted about the whole thing! I am, above all, grateful for the friends who reminded me how fun this game can be and have shown that they clearly value me as a person regardless of what class or spec I play. However, my emotions about the wider guild are more confused. I didn't feel like there was actively bad blood between me and anyone when I stepped down from core raiding, but there was definitely a certain sense of not belonging and not fitting in anymore. None of that came from the people who are now telling me that they've missed me, but it definitely felt like their way of thinking and approach to raids were on the way out.

I do wonder whether things have somehow reversed course and the Forks are actually working their way back towards something closer to what they were before TBC launch in terms of atmosphere? I would certainly welcome that and would want to help with it too, even if there's a more cynical part of me that's like: "Oh, now that all those other people have left, they suddenly care..." I suppose I'm just not entirely sure how much I trust it, and how much I'd really want to reinvest myself into guild progression business at this point.

Questing: now mandatory

There's been a fair bit of discussion about the linearity of the new Cataclysm quests already, but the fact that considerably more quests than before are also mandatory for things other than their follow-ups hasn't got as much attention as far as I can tell.

Using quests as a prerequisite for other parts of the game is hardly anything new. The feature already existed in Vanilla and BC, and we called it raid attunements. I didn't really mind them much myself, because while they weren't without issues, I liked the general idea of making players work a bit for their endgame content.

WOTLK introduced a different kind of quest "attunement": phasing. To get access to the flight paths at Nesingwary's Safari, Crusader's Pinnacle and the Shadow Vault for example, you first had to complete some quests in the area or else they simply didn't exist as far as you were concerned. I didn't bother with unlocking them on most of my alts, but I didn't really mind either since those flight masters weren't exactly crucial to anything else I was doing.

Quartermasters that were hidden behind phasing were a different matter however: for example the aforementioned Shadow Vault quest line was also a requirement for getting access to the Knights of the Ebon Blade quartermaster. That's something I found rather annoying. The quest line wasn't terrible or anything, but the fact that it was a requirement for even accessing the quartermaster just ticked me off. Why make me jump through extra hoops when I already have the required reputation to buy the items? It's not as if they sold anything totally amazing either, why do I have to "attune" myself just to buy a jewelcrafting recipe or a piece of levelling gear?

The Sons of Hodir were even worse if you think about it, because their introductory quest line is much longer, and what with them being the only suppliers of WOTLK shoulder enchants for non-scribes, they were a pretty important faction if you were in any way trying to gear up seriously. Luckily for me I really liked the Sons of Hodir quest chain, so doing that one over and over again wasn't actually a problem for me. Still, the way Blizzard made the shoulder enchants bind on account eventually struck me as an acknowledgement that maybe requiring attunement quests for something as comparatively basic as a vendor wasn't such a great idea.

And yet they gave us Cataclysm. It's probably not as obvious if you're still focusing on your first character and eagerly ploughing through all the new content, but try getting an alt from eighty to eighty-five.

People have compared the new story-focused approach to questing to reading a book or watching a film, and I agree: the problem is, after doing either of those things I generally don't immediately want to read or watch the whole thing again the next day. Likewise I have no particular desire to repeat the questing experience on my alts just yet, but I figured that shouldn't be a problem as there are so many alternate ways of levelling now. Right?

So I start off gathering some experience by working on my professions on an alt, which involves mining. Hm, where can I go to mine these new ores... Vashj'ir is pretty! Except, I can't survive or move around there without having done the introductory quests. Balls. Mount Hyjal it is then. After I've exhausted Hyjal's supply of obsidium and want to move on to elementium I think about going to Deepholm... except that you can't even get to the zone until you're level eighty-two and can pick up the intro quest (assuming you don't have a higher-level warlock friend who'd be happy to summon you or something). Twilight Highlands? Not impossible but still very annoying to get to as Horde without the portal, and again it's something that you can't unlock until you're a certain level and have done a certain amount of quests. I guess that explains why there are so many ore farmers in Uldum - unless you're willing to invest time into questing to unlock all the other zones, there simply isn't anywhere else to go for elementium!

Okay, who wants to level up purely by gathering anyway? Let's do some instances. I open the dungeon finder and everything is locked because I haven't discovered the entrances on my alt yet. Fair enough. Blackrock Caverns is not a problem because you can simply fly there, or alternatively there's a shortcut from Hyjal. Throne of the Tides is a problem again though. Unless you have someone who's willing to summon you, you can forget about doing that one without having quested in Vashj'ir first. Without the Sea Legs buff you'll probably drown before you even get there.

Stonecore suffers from the same Deepholm restrictions mentioned above. Since I really wanted to do it however, I bit the bullet and let Aggra take me through her cut scene again while I tabbed out. The moment I'm down at the Temple of Earth, I fly up to discover the Stonecore entrance... and am still locked out, because the dungeon finder considers my ilevel too low. Never mind that I ran the previous instances for loot and that my old ICC gear is fully gemmed and enchanted, it's not good enough - go do those quests to replace all your gear with greens or else!

So you can waltz into a raid whenever you like now - but you can't access many quartermasters, instances and entire zones without having done the prerequisite attunement quests first. Am I really the only one who sees something wrong with this? I always thought it was worth having to put a bit of effort into unlocking a great raid instance for example, but I really don't see why all of my characters are supposed to take doomed ships to Vashj'ir just to be able to do bloody Throne of the Tides.

Attunements: sense and sensibility

I recently worked my way through the old Onyxia attunement quest chain for the Horde. If you've never done it yourself, this series of "interactive movies" by Wowcrendor gives a pretty good impression of how tedious and annoying it is, gameplay-wise. Though I really liked getting to dress up as a black dragontaur, something that is not shown in the movie. These things have a pretty ridiculous waddle.

Now, while I definitely wouldn't consider this chain a fun attunement as a whole, I have to admit that the idea behind it, that you need to acquire a magical item to access Onyxia's Lair, rang very true for me. She's a powerful black dragon, but she's not stupid. She wouldn't let just about anyone wander into her lair unchecked, would she?

This in turn made me think about WOTLK's raid instances, and how I really feel that they are missing something in terms of story by not having any kind of attunement. The only WOTLK raid that does have one is Malygos' Lair, which requires you to get a key from Sapphiron in Naxx. Sapphiron used to be a mighty blue dragon in life, so I guess it makes sense that he would have something that allows access to the leader of the blue dragonflight. That's fair enough. If we look at any of the other raids however... oh dear.

First we have Naxxramas. What, does the Scourge really have no magical wards or anything that prevent people from just wandering in? Even worse, there's nothing in the game that even encourages you to go raid the place. The Alliance NPCs in Wintergarde Keep are chatting about the floating citadel and its inhabitants for a bit, but there are no quests telling you to go there or anything. The Horde has it even worse, because they don't even acknowledge its existence. I think I once saw a line of quest text that said something about the Alliance being under siege from Naxx, but that this was something that didn't concern the Horde. Seriously, the only reason to go there was the meta-game knowledge about it being Wrath's introductory raid. Poor storytelling, that.

Sartharion is even worse, as there is absolutely no explanation for why he is even there or why we should kill him. I believe that I read somewhere that Blizzard did have plans to include a story for him but it was cut out due to time constraints.

Then we have Ulduar. This one gets a pass from me because even though they are not required for being allowed to enter the instance, there are quests in the Storm Peaks that serve as a sort of introduction to the place. There was also this video on the official website. And the fact that anyone can just go inside can be explained by the fact that Brann has already kicked down the door.

Trial of the Crusader not requiring any kind of attunement on the other hand was terrible in terms of in-game logic at least. The whole point of the Argent Tournament was to put together an elite team of fighters to face the Lich King. That's why you go from aspirant to champion to crusader, proving yourself over and over again along the way. Yet anyone can enter Trial of the Champion and Trial of the Crusader, even if they haven't proven their skills at the tournament in any way? No, just no.

This logical error then continues in Icecrown Citadel. Yes, the Ashen Verdict have kicked down the door and made the place accessible, but again, wasn't the whole point of the Argent Tournament to make sure that only the ones with the highest chances of survival would enter ICC? Yet once again, they take absolutely anyone. This is in direct contradiction of a whole patch worth of story. Bad Blizzard, bad!

That said, I think we can all agree that story and gameplay can easily come into conflict, and what's good for one can be detrimental to the other. For example, requiring people to actually have the Crusader title before they could enter Trial of the Crusader would have been the harshest attunement ever, seeing how the title takes almost a month to acquire even if you do all your daily quests every day. Still, I don't think that excuses Blizzard from making a nonsensical story just to facilitate easy gameplay. For example, they simply could have given the Argent Tournament instances names independent of the titles, such as "The Grand Coliseum" or whatever; that alone would have alleviated a lot of the concerns mentioned above.

Lately I realised however, that attunements are important for more than just story. People have derided them in the past as being nothing but artificial obstacles to keep content exclusive, but I think that this expansion has proven that hardly anyone really wants everything to be equally accessible to everyone anyway.

Why do you think Blizzard released TotC's bosses one at a time and delayed the opening of ICC's different wings? Because they didn't want everyone to complete all the new content right away. Why didn't they just keep attunements then? They serve a similar purpose and at least they leave the ball in the player's court and give them something to do: "Okay, you can't go in there - yet. But you can complete a couple of tasks which will then open the place up. Go work on them!" In contrast, the gating that we saw in this expansion gives people nothing to do but sit on their arses and wait, because they have no way of influencing their access to the raid. Dead boring if you ask me - I'd take a long attunement chain over that any day.

More importantly though, the players themselves also have an interest in keeping people out of content if they aren't ready to cope with it yet. That's why you see all these silly pugs that require achievement linking and GearScore numbers. After all, Blizzard themselves have drilled it into our heads that gear is the only thing that matters. WOTLK heroic dungeons require no attunement - the dungeon finder will only check your gear. And what was the argument for rewarding top-tier emblems from heroic dungeons again? To allow people to get the gear to raid ICC - the implication being that that's all they need, actual experience with raiding or other group content is completely optional.

Good attunements on the other hand can be so much more useful for judging a player's readiness for content. I always thought the heroic Magister's Terrace attunement was brilliant - all it requires is that you do a quest while completing the instance on normal mode. That way any person who joined your heroic group was guaranteed to at least have a clue about the instance.

The Karazhan attunement was pretty good as well in my opinion - a bit lengthy maybe, but it required you to take an interest in the instance and to tackle some reasonably challenging content with a group - if you couldn't make it through normal Black Morass for example, you really had no business being in Karazhan yet.

The way I see it, the main problems with attunements in BC were that some of them were way too convoluted, and that they were very alt-unfriendly. These issues would have been relatively simple to solve though by making keys account-wide (maybe leaving the quests as something optional for alts) and generally easing up on the complexity. Blizzard was making good progress on the latter towards the end of BC, but then they threw the baby out with the bathwater in WOTLK when they just got rid of attunements altogether (with the exception of Malygos).

Unfortunately I haven't heard anything good about Cataclysm in that regard either. From what little I've heard it sounds like instances and heroics will once again have nothing but annoying gear checks - I remember hearing a story of someone who had to go quest before an instance run just to get a new ring, which had worse itemisation but a higher ilevel, just so the game would allow him to enter an instance.

I don't mind having to work to get to see all the content, but it should happen in a way that makes sense story-wise. Doing nothing but grind gear to get to the next tier is boring and creates an environment where people are judged by nothing but the numbers on their epics.

Why is nobody running BC heroics anymore?

I've been working on the quest for epic flight form for my Alliance druid recently. I know I could just train it, but doing it the "proper" way just feels more rewarding to me, not to mention that it's simply an extremely cool and entertaining quest line. I now have Vanquish the Raven God in my quest log, and figured that with the dungeon finder it should be easy enough to get a group for it these days. Oh how wrong I was.

I don't know how much time I've spent sitting in the queue and waiting for a group for heroic Sethekk Halls in total by now, but it must add up to several hours. At no point did I ever see more than two other icons light up as the group was being assembled, even though I had signed up as able to fulfill all three roles to be as accomodating as possible. Often I'm utterly alone. It's discouraging.


I can understand that BC heroics are nowhere near as popular as the normal Northrend dungeons - there's no emblem reward and most drops are outclassed by Northrend greens. But still, I would have thought that there would still be some interest, be it for the achievements or simply a change of pace. I'm sure many altholics are tired of running normal Nexus for the umpteenth time, and I would have thought that simple curiosity would be enough to lure the occasional newbie into a BC heroic as well. After all I had little trouble getting into the old level seventy instances on normal mode, and that's with Blizzard removing the "random Outland dungeon" option from the dungeon finder at level sixty-nine or so, so you can only get into instances like Magister's Terrace if you sign up for them specifically. At least "random Outland heroic" remains an option for several levels. Why is that not enough?

My best guess at the moment is that the old attunements are simply too much of a stumbling block. I like attunements in general, but keeping them in place for instances that are nothing but levelling dungeons these days strikes me as a mistake on Blizzard's part. I know they are not at all difficult, and people might even reach the honoured requirement with various factions without as much as trying, but actually buying the keys requires knowledge that many curious newbies probably don't have, and effort that the jaded veterans might not want to bother with, as in: they might consider queuing up for an old heroic on a whim, but once they realise that they are locked out because they didn't think of buying all the keys while they were levelling through Outland, what are the chances that they'll actually stop their questing in Howling Fjord to march all the way back to Zangarmarsh or wherever just to buy those keys? Not very high, that's what.

The old Caverns of Time instances have the same problem, even on normal mode, seeing how you can't enter them without completing this quest first, which is a massive shame considering how much fun Escape from Durnholde and Opening of the Dark Portal are to play through. But again, a new player simply receives no pointers that this attunement is needed at all, and a veteran might simply not want to bother with flying down to Tanaris and then trudging in a circle for ten minutes just to unlock another instance that he'll soon outlevel anyway.

I did get lucky with Old Hillsbrad myself as I got a group almost instantly, but it was telling that one of the dps immediately exclaimed: "Finally, we've been in the queue for this one for three hours!" And the only reason that I got the Black Morass completed as well that day was that the group from Durnholde wanted to continue straight towards the followup really badly, probably knowing full well that they might not get another chance at finding a high enough number of attuned people anytime soon.

Really, it is just bizarre that it requires more effort to get into an Outland heroic than to get into a Northrend one, even though the former is levelling content that provides very little reward. I'm all for making people work to reach the top of the game, but if you want people to group while levelling as well, you really mustn't throw hurdles like that in their way (or even leave them as forgotten leftovers from a different time).

Pondering those five percent

Last night my guild had its first raid with the buff. On a sidenote, what's the Alliance version called? And does it produce similarly amusing reactions along the lines of "Has Garrosh always been in Icecrown Citadel or am I going mad?" and "Can I stab him?".

Opinions on the buff are strongly divided, both in the blogosphere and in my guild. Just before we started clearing trash last night, my boyfriend whispered two different people, asking them what they thought of the buff. One said that being able to do five percent more damage sounded cool, the other one thought that it sucked and felt like using a cheat code. I'm a bit unsure what to think of it myself.

First off, I'm not against nerfing content after some time to allow more people to have a shot at it. I remember back in BC when they removed the attunement requirements for Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep. My guild's twenty-five-man raiding progress was still quite shaky at that point, and for us that particular nerf was simply awesome, because I'm not sure we ever would have got into those raids at all otherwise. We just weren't that organised yet, and running all the raiders through the attunement quest chain would have been beyond our abilities I think. Thus that nerf had no downsides for us, it was a hundred percent beneficial in that it allowed us to access content that we wouldn't have seen otherwise.

By the time the same thing was done to Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, things were a bit different. We were still trying to down Kael'thas, and felt a bit ashamed when we started working on the first couple of MH bosses as well because it felt like we were unfairly skipping content. We did keep working on Kael at the same time though and eventually got him down, which fortunately ended all arguments about the matter.

When the infamous patch 3.0 hit and gave everyone access to the WOTLK talent trees while also nerfing all raid bosses by thirty percent, we had just downed Mother Shahraz in BT. We continued to take down the Illidari Council and Illidan after the nerf and still had fun, but not without that nagging feeling that it didn't quite count in the same way. I remember watching the raid take huge wads of damage on Illidan while I spammed my suddenly stupidly overpowered raid-wide circle of healing, and thinking "We are doing this completely wrong, if it wasn't for the nerf, people getting hit by those fires would be obliterated." We still achieved something, it just wasn't quite the same - there was always this nagging feeling that if Blizzard had only let us, we could have taken down those last two fights the normal way as well, given enough time. However, WOTLK was just around the corner and in all honesty we wouldn't have kept raiding BT after the expansion release, so we kind of shrugged it off.

And now we have the buff in ICC. What makes this one interesting and different are two things really:
1. It's optional, and
2. It's incremental.

In regards to point one, I feel a bit sorry for Blizzard because it's one of those things where you just can't win. If they hadn't added the option to turn it off, people would be complaining about having it forced on them, and why couldn't they allow the more hardcore guilds to raid without it if they wanted to? Now they've given us exactly that, and already people are wishing that they didn't have any choice, because it just leads to guilds arguing about whether they should use it or not.

There's also complaining about the fact that choosing any option one way or the other isn't recognised in any way, with some players suggesting that there should have been different achievements depending on whether you did things with or without the buff. Now, aside from the fact that this would be a bit of a logistical nightmare, considering that the buff increases over time so you'd need like seven different achievements for killing each boss (Saurfang with five percent, Blood Queen with twenty percent etc.), I also think that it's simply asking a bit too much of the achievement system. I mean, it also doesn't differentiate between whether you cleared the Deadmines at level fifteen or eighty, or whether you killed Marrowgar with a full raid or while five people were disconnected. I remember when killing Archimonde was an achievement without anyone actually having any text pop up that said "wow, an achievement". It just was. Not using the buff works the same way and I'm okay with that.

One thing I find interesting (and that others have commented on as well) is the fact that the buff is opt-out instead of opt-in, which means that it's on by default. It's interesting because it sends the message that Blizzard wants people to consider having the buff turned on the default option, while turning it off is a sort of hard mode. If you had to actively sign up for the buff, it would feel more like not having it is the normal way to go, while activating it is a conscious choice for "easy mode". This is a purely semantic distinction as the buff would still be the same, but that kind of thing matters to people. I would think that a lot of middle-of-the-road guilds especially must be quite torn about whether using the buff is hurting their cred or just means playing the game as intended.

The fact that it's incremental is a bit weird as well. I can see the logic behind it of course, as it should allow everyone to progress without feeling that content has been nerfed too hard. It buffs you just enough to get you past the wall you're currently hitting, and by the time you hit the next wall even with the buff, it increases some more just to let you overcome that next obstacle.

However, it also adds another dimension to the "should we raid with or without it" question. A guild that thinks that it should theoretically be able to clear ICC without any buffs might accept a five percent buff to make things go faster, but if it's ten percent a few weeks later, then what? Personally I'm quite inclined to accept a five percent boost for the time being, but I feel like it's leading me down a slippery slope, because a few weeks later it will be ten percent, then fifteen and so on... do I want to accept that boost as well or possibly set us back a boss kill or two by suddenly turning the buff off completely after all?

All in all, I find myself asking a lot of questions without being able to come up with definite answers. I think at the end of the day I value "seeing content" more than the perceived difficulty of the encounter, so I'm inclined to leave the buff on to help us progress, regardless of the slippery slope it might lead me down. Last night we killed Putricide for the second time - with the buff. And even though our first kill had been without it, we still struggled while having the buff to help us last night. Without it we might not have made it at all yesterday, but would that have made it a better raid night? I don't think so.

On the other hand I can understand why some of my fellow raiders might feel hurt in their pride if they think that we should be able to do it all "unbuffed". I'll cast my vote pro-buff if it comes down to it, but if the raid's final decision is to turn it off, I think I'll be able to accept that as well.

But I like the Sons of Hodir!

One small tidbit of news from Blizzcon that really caught my attention was this: While explaining the new Path of the Titans feature that's planned for Cataclysm, it was specifically mentioned that this addition wouldn't be "grindy" like the Sons of Hodir. This surprised me in so far as it implies that people think working for the Sons of Hodir isn't fun. I'm currently making my way to exalted with them for the fourth time and thoroughly enjoying it.

Maybe I'm strange but I actually quite like doing dailies. Not for gold, mind you... but then I haven't been short on cash since I bought epic flying for the third time back in BC. However, as a general rule I like the comforting sense of routine that dailies provide, and as a means to gain reputation they feel more natural than anything else.

For example I like the championing system as it was introduced in WOTLK, but in all honesty I don't think it makes much sense. Do the Kirin Tor really care that much if I smack around some random vyrkul in Utgarde Keep just because I wear their tabard while I'm doing it? Sorry, but I'm not quite buying it. Levelling reputation by killing hostile mobs à la Timbermaw makes more sense, but it's still kind of dull - surely killing things can't be the only thing those furbolgs care about? Finally, doing nothing but item hand-ins like you had to do to get exalted with the Aldor and Scryers just reduces reputation to another thing that can be bought with gold.

Now, daily quests - I think those make perfect sense. I can easily picture King Jokkum thinking: "Man, that little tauren has come to polish Hodir's helm again? She really seems to be devoted to helping us out, I'm growing more fond of her every day!"

My problem with most of the Northrend daily quests has been that they are all over the place. I'm not sure why Blizzard decided to go that way; after all the Isle of Quel'Danas showed how hugely popular a centralised quest hub with lots of convenient dailies nearby can be. And yet if you want to raise your reputation with the Wyrmrest Accord for example, all you can do is get two dailies in Coldarra and then fly across half the continent for one more at Wyrmrest temple. The Argent Tournament has been a bit better in that regard, but it still requires you to fly all over Icecrown and the sword-fetching quest in one of the more southern zones of Northrend is a major pain in the arse.

So for all the daily quests that Blizzard implemented in WOTLK, the Sons of Hodir offer the only daily quest hub as I think it should be: By the point where you're revered with them you can get a total of six dailies from them which are all very conveniently close together and never require you to travel very far. They are also varied enough and don't require you to kill too many mobs to feel hugely "grindy", not to me anyway.

Plus, I think the Sons as a faction are just plain fun. Call me juvenile, but I giggled when I first noticed just how much cheap innuendo they've got going on in their daily quest titles. It's almost as if the whole thing is a parody of a reputation grind - I mean, there isn't even any pretense that you're doing anything relevant or important. It's pure sucking-up, be it by polishing their furniture or showing off your manliness (/giggle) by single-handedly slaying a wild wyrm. I'm not saying all factions should be silly like that, but as it is I consider it a pleasant change of pace from saving the world in three different ways before breakfast.

Finally, I wrote in the past about how I miss attunements in WOTLK, and the Sons of Hodir provide the closest thing to an attunement that I could find in Northrend: A pretty long and epic quest chain that changes the world around you and allows for some personal progress for your character. It's just a shame that this personal progress doesn't consist of anything truly impressive, like access to a new raid instance - instead you just get permission to buy a bunch of shoulder enchants which you wouldn't have otherwise (unless you're an inscriber). Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but yeah... shoulder enchants? I find it funny that getting my shoulders enchanted requires more effort than getting into Ulduar.

Speaking of Ulduar, I think it's a huge shame that the Sons of Hodir weren't used for some kind of Ulduar attunenement or even just a quest, as the setup was pretty much perfect. At the end of their regular quests as it is - SPOILER - you get Thorim to challenge Loken, but he loses the fight and gets captured and dragged into Ulduar. The Sons then ask you to kill Loken and cut out his filthy tongue, but once you've done that it just stops. I always found that odd, don't they care about where Thorim has gone? Or their "father" Hodir for that matter? It would have made perfect sense to continue this story with a quest that asks you to go to Ulduar and find both Thorim and Hodir. What a wasted opportunity. If anything I want more content along the lines of the Sons of Hodir, not less!

I miss attunements

Just for fun I decided to get the key to the Arcatraz for my paladin today. She was only in her low sixties when WOTLK came out, so I never got to do anything related to BC's engame with her. Now she's eighty and working her way towards Champion of the Frozen Wastes, but I still enjoy going back and working on some BC stuff with her as well. She's also halfway through her Karazhan attunement, for example.

I'm actually kind of sad that there are practically no attunements in WOTLK and to be honest I'm a bit surprised that nobody else seems to feel that way. Any time I've seen someone comment on the lack of attunements in Wrath, their comment could usually be summed up as "good riddance".

To me, attunements are a wonderful and unique way to still advance your character once you've hit the level cap - beyond just upgrading your gear over and over again, that is. What better way to get a sense of progression than to actually work your way from one place to the next? Run normal Magister's Terrace and you'll be qualified to enter the place on heroic! Do a couple of five-man dungeons to prove that you're experienced enough to handle the ten-man Karazhan!

I believe that it's actually quite similar to the levelling experience: Kill enough mobs/do enough quests in Duskwood and you'll be able to cross the border to Stranglethorn Vale (without being instantly mauled to death by some tigers). Now, I know that some people don't like levelling and would prefer to start every new character at eighty right away, but I always figured that those were a small minority. Yet nobody seems to miss the "instance-levelling" provided by attunements. I don't get it.

I suppose one could argue that some attunements in BC were too lengthy and convoluted. If you wanted to get an new raiding character attuned to Mount Hyjal, you would have had to drag him through four different twenty-five-man raids first, among other things. However, Blizzard realised this and gradually loosened the requirements to access the various BC raids anyway. I didn't really mind that as it was done one step at a time, not unlike the way they've increased levelling speed for lower levels. Also, they didn't actually remove the attunement quest chains from the game, so you could still do them for your personal little achievements.

In WOTLK on the other hand, there's been nothing right from the start. Everybody can pretty much go anywhere as soon as they hit eighty. In practice this means that people will simply gravitate towards where they can get the most loot in the shortest amount of time, which is why there seem to be about a dozen Naxx pugs on my server every day, but heroics are mostly abandoned. Of course you can still do things "in order" if you want, but good luck trying to find heroic groups when everybody just skips them to go straight into the easy raids.

There also don't seem to be any quests connected to instances anymore. I fondly remember all the things the Violet Eye asked of me, or how the Keepers of Time wanted me to fetch those vials from Vashj and Kael. Not anymore! I still remember how incredulous I felt when I found out that there wasn't a single quest connected to the new Naxx. Seriously, nobody wants Kel'Thuzad dead and would pay for his head? The same in Ulduar: To be fair, we got a cool video on the official website, but again I was disappointed to not see any kind of follow-up in the game. Rhonin could have asked us to go there and join the good fight or something. How hard would that have been?

I don't really care for being able to go anywhere, at any time, in any gear. I want to feel like my character actually has a clear path ahead of her - because the journey is the reward.