official World of Warcraft

[the evn show]

wish i could say that, guild is stil reliably 1/7 normal ( even After FL Nerfs ), been that way since begining of last month. guild still has problems with chogal and nef.

I'm not really sure what to say. On my server the typical trade pug is doing at least 7/7 normal and many are doing 1 or 2 heroic bosses along the way.

I seriously doubt your guild mates are incapable of doing the encounters, maybe you just don't have a viable strategy?

Related: I'm looking for a mage/moomkin for PTR raiding. Join us, farm 7/7h while you wait for 4.3 -- then do it again on your alt, and your other alt, and your other alt. What else are you doing for the next 2 months?

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

I'm not really sure what to say. On my server the typical trade pug is doing at least 7/7 normal and many are doing 1 or 2 heroic bosses along the way.

I seriously doubt your guild mates are incapable of doing the encounters, maybe you just don't have a viable strategy?

Related: I'm looking for a mage/moomkin for PTR raiding. Join us, farm 7/7h while you wait for 4.3 -- then do it again on your alt, and your other alt, and your other alt. What else are you doing for the next 2 months?

Im not in control of the strats, GL is, but as far as me downed him last night with mostly random guildies and a couple pugs, only diffrence other then that was the GL/Co-lead wasnt there, so i was doing strats

[Lord Nite]

It seems they are slowly putting the new dungeons live. I believe they put out a preset dungeon, and then tune it from the feedback gathered. The PTR has been up for a few weeks and only End Time and Hour of Twilight is running. End Time still needs some fine tuning, but it's looking to be a fun dungeon to run. I haven't been able to complete a full run of Hour of Twilight yet, but it looks promising.

I can't wait until the Raid Finder and Dragon Soul are opened up for testing.

[S00N3R FR3AK]

Finally killed Rag last night. Won the T12 shoulders off domo but gave them up. An officer had offered me 40K at the time but I said I didn't need the gold thinking the vial of the sands was still 50-60K and I didn't want to dip into my 15K of gem and enchanting reserves(its all I spend my gold on). Found out how cheap i could get one and so took up the 40K after wards. Really like the new mount.

[Bryan R.]

It's been a while for me in this thread. I started playing again maybe two months ago when 4.2 was well under way and some friends started a guild of their own which I joined. Since then we're at 1/7H in Firelands. Ragnaros is a really cool fight. I still yearn for Ulduar-type heroics though. My guild has geared me up quite nicely too. Alt runs have become a good pass-time gearing up my Death Knight. I have videos if anyone is interested:

http://www.youtube.com/user/xenodubs

My server (horde side) is utter crap though. We only have one guild solidly running Heroic FL then our guild which got a very late start in FL.

Aside from current content, I have had some amazing luck farming for some legendaries. I always ran Molten Core weekly. Since I've come back I have gotten two Eye of Sulfuras one of which I used to craft the Sulfuron, Hand of Ragnaros on my Paladin. With my Death Knight I have seen two times the right binding off Garr drop and just yesterday got the other left binding off Baron Geddon. So I will have the the Thunderfury on my Death Knight. All within about a month. Unfortunate though that I will still have to farm the bindings for my Paladin.

[the evn show]

I still yearn for Ulduar-type heroics though. My guild has geared me up quite nicely too. Alt runs have become a good pass-time gearing up my Death Knight.

What exactly about Ulduar heroics was "fun" that you don't get form the current hard mode raids?

Surely you're not talking about Hodir or Vezax but probably No lights, 3 tree, or firefighter. Those encounters most closely match the current model of hardmodes: "Do X before you start, the fight is now harder" rather than "do the fight wrong, or do the fight with some stupid gimmick and now it's harder".

I think the reason people remember certain ulduar hard modes favourably is because they were legitimately good encounters where playing better lead to success. No lights yogg wouldn't have been less fun if you selected "25m heroic" from the drop down rather than just leaving off all the Keepers: the fun was in the nature of the encounter. The same is true of Firefighter (which literally was 'push the button before you start to make the fight harder').

Maybe it's that I'm playing a different game than most people that post here, but I don't think the hard mode Ulduar encounters were any better than lich king, al'akir, sinestra, robot council, putricide, etc. There was some good stuff in ulduar but that's true of nearly every tier.

[Bryan R.]

What exactly about Ulduar heroics was "fun" that you don't get form the current hard mode raids?

Surely you're not talking about Hodir or Vezax but probably No lights, 3 tree, or firefighter. Those encounters most closely match the current model of hardmodes: "Do X before you start, the fight is now harder" rather than "do the fight wrong, or do the fight with some stupid gimmick and now it's harder".

I think the reason people remember certain ulduar hard modes favourably is because they were legitimately good encounters where playing better lead to success. No lights yogg wouldn't have been less fun if you selected "25m heroic" from the drop down rather than just leaving off all the Keepers: the fun was in the nature of the encounter. The same is true of Firefighter (which literally was 'push the button before you start to make the fight harder').

Maybe it's that I'm playing a different game than most people that post here, but I don't think the hard mode Ulduar encounters were any better than lich king, al'akir, sinestra, robot council, putricide, etc. There was some good stuff in ulduar but that's true of nearly every tier.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the encounters still. But you already pointed out the difference that caused me to like Ulduar hard modes more in your second paragraph. I don't like the idea that the raid leader right-clicks his unitframe and selects Heroic to make a fight harder. I much prefer Heroic modes to be a more natural and achievable reward. The key words being achievable and reward because in an encounter like XT, you had to achieve the hard mode. Whereas now, you simply beat the last boss and go back click the button to make it harder then pull. With Freya, you had to make the conscious decision to not kill the mini-bosses and deal with the extra abilities as with Yogg Saron.

It's not that I don't like the non-Ulduar heroics (Lich King was amazing), it's just a lack of user-to-game interaction that I miss.

[the evn show]

I much prefer Heroic modes to be a more natural and achievable reward. The key words being achievable and reward because in an encounter like XT, you had to achieve the hard mode. Whereas now, you simply beat the last boss and go back click the button to make it harder then pull. With Freya, you had to make the conscious decision to not kill the mini-bosses and deal with the extra abilities as with Yogg Saron.

I guess I just don't see the difference between talking to an NPC and choosing option 1 and clicking a menu and choosing option 4. I don't think anybody ever found the DPS check for heartbreaker a big deal (nor thorim or hodir) but that could just be a function of the sorts of groups I play in. I generally like blizzard's reason for ditching that style: it's clunky, non-obvious, and error prone. It also makes the new "hard from the start" hard modes much more difficult to execute (or obnoxious to learn).

Imagine heroic al'akir where p1 was activated by something you did in combat: it'd be even more obnoxious than it is now. Rag would be unbearable, and I'm not just complaining because doing it twice in one week was a bad idea.

[Bryan R.]

So last night we got down Heroic Lord Rhyolith which slightly separates us now from the 95% of people who have killed Ragnaros Normal and subsequently Shannox Heroic. On to bigger and better bosses now.

I guess I just don't see the difference between talking to an NPC and choosing option 1 and clicking a menu and choosing option 4. I don't think anybody ever found the DPS check for heartbreaker a big deal (nor thorim or hodir) but that could just be a function of the sorts of groups I play in. I generally like blizzard's reason for ditching that style: it's clunky, non-obvious, and error prone. It also makes the new "hard from the start" hard modes much more difficult to execute (or obnoxious to learn).

Imagine heroic al'akir where p1 was activated by something you did in combat: it'd be even more obnoxious than it is now. Rag would be unbearable, and I'm not just complaining because doing it twice in one week was a bad idea.

It may be unrealistic and problematic to have hard modes in place of heroic modes, I understand. I guess I just had a good experience in Ulduar and it's stuck with me.

[Shaun N.]

So are we expecting later today? :p

Only a few hours to go. I'm excited to know if I'm going to delete all of my chars and stop playing or just suspend it.

Edited October 20, 2011 by Shaun

[Bryan R.]

We got down Majordomo and Alysrazor now in Heroic. Feeling pretty good about it :). Only have Baleroc and Beth-tilac left. We probably won't be killing Ragnaros Heroic while it's current.

Majordomo is by far the easiest heroic we've done. Lord Rhyolith has proven the most difficult probably due to the RNG nature of the fight.

[AbandonedTrolley]

Finally managed to get Raggy down in normal a month after our first attempt. Quite a big acheivement for our guild as it is the first end game boss we have downed before the new content patch hits.

Taken from GM's view.

[the evn show]

Finally managed to get Raggy down in normal a month after our first attempt. Quite a big acheivement for our guild as it is the first end game boss we have downed before the new content patch hits.

It's always nice to "beat" warcraft, however it is you define 'beating' a game like this.

Your druid has some cringe-inducing mistakes (back peddle into engulfing fire, standing in lava waves, etc) but then the next moment he's got an awesome cat form-sprint when somebody knocks a meteor onto him. I suspect 'good' and 'bad' players have similar average levels of skill, but the good player has a much smaller standard deviation. Good players are 75±5%, bad players are 70±20% as opposed to the popular notion that 'good' players are say 80±1% and bad players are 50±1%. That changes the way you complain from 'how do you raise the average skill level' to 'how do you make players more consistent'?

I should probably upload a rag video too - people on youtube have been asking but I'm incredibly lazy.

Only have Baleroc and Beth-tilac left.

IMO beth is down there with shannox now that she's been nerfed twice. If you can handle baelroc you'll get her in short order.

[Bryan R.]

It's always nice to "beat" warcraft, however it is you define 'beating' a game like this.

Your druid has some cringe-inducing mistakes (back peddle into engulfing fire, standing in lava waves, etc) but then the next moment he's got an awesome cat form-sprint when somebody knocks a meteor onto him. I suspect 'good' and 'bad' players have similar average levels of skill, but the good player has a much smaller standard deviation. Good players are 75±5%, bad players are 70±20% as opposed to the popular notion that 'good' players are say 80±1% and bad players are 50±1%. That changes the way you complain from 'how do you raise the average skill level' to 'how do you make players more consistent'?

I should probably upload a rag video too - people on youtube have been asking but I'm incredibly lazy.

IMO beth is down there with shannox now that she's been nerfed twice. If you can handle baelroc you'll get her in short order.

I'd like to know your channel.

Here is our Ragnaros kill. Embedded for convenience.

Channel

[Shaun N.]

Looks like I'm quitting.

[Lexcyn]

Pandas! While the new continent looks cool I don't know what they were thinking with pandas. World of Kung Fu Panda.

[Joseph B]

Looks like I'm quitting.

The second that oriental music started to play I lol'd so hard, to the old Blizzard this would of been an April Fools joke, to Actiblizz this is dollar signs. LOL...

[S00N3R FR3AK]

Idk I think they could do some great story content around this, though it will have to be great to pull me away from SWTOR(should that be good) But I'll give it a month anyways as I like blizzard CE's and I'll get the one for this xpac.

[Bryan R.]

A new class and race is cool and all but I want to know what lore content they will be developing with the next expansion pack. Many possibilities... but what would go best with this new race and class?

Edit:

The new expansion will not have a main vilain, it will focus on the Horde vs Alliance war!

Really really lame if you ask me... I know it's really soon to jump to any conclusion but... no main antagonist?

[Elliott]

Pandaren shamans?!

[pixated]

WTF? Pandas? Seriously Blizzard?

[duehoang]

there goin to be a pokemon battle system in the game now too, u use your Companions Pet

[Elliott]

WTF? Pandas? Seriously Blizzard?

A lot of long-time Warcraft players have been hoping Pandarens would be a playable race.

[Joseph B]

A lot of long-time Warcraft players have been hoping Pandarens would be a playable race.

[AFineFrenzy]

Pandas look cool. New expansion looks cool. God forbid they add something lighthearted and fun for a change. You've had THREE "serious evil bad guy 'gunna blow everyone up oh noes!" expansions, now it's time to kick back and have a laugh.

Or, you know, you could cancel your subscription, not post about it to garner attention and just go play that new Star Wars MMO. Guaranteed serious faces 24/7 in that game. Bye.