It’s time to discuss how Nostalrius will tune future raids.

[Strife]

This server is already far from "blizzlike". Honestly this word should just be eradicated from private servers, it's just a marketing term to make people believe the server will be the same as what official classic was, when there are so many things that make this not even close to true, on any private server.

Honestly end-game is boring af on nost. You either have to be extremely casual only playing a few hours a week, or be heavily into pvp which is mostly premade vs randoms or griefing people trying to level up.

The end-game PVE is significantly under tuned (evidenced by how many guilds cleared it and how fast the first guild cleared it). And no we aren't talking about a server which has AQ40 released, this is the current final content being steamrolled by everyone with a pulse.

The PVP is mostly unbalanced (as to be expected from vanilla, it's only a bit of fun). Bring a premade, destroy everyone, don't bring a premade, go against one and get destroyed. World PVP? Go find a poor soul on half health and fighting a mob and cold blood ambush/eviscerate them. Congratulations you win. How long is that going to last before it gets old? For me personally, not very long at all.

Imagine if you could actually raid more than once a week? Or you actually needed to bring consumables, giving incentive to farm mats & gold, promoting the use of crafting/gathering. Imagine if the bosses didn't die in 60-120 seconds, or that you could actually wipe even if your raid knows exactly what to do.

Idc really if nothing gets changed, I have better games to play with my time. I think it's a shame that there's wasted potential here, after such an awesome leveling experience. It's weird because leveling is exactly how I remembered it. But as soon as you enter a level 60 raid it just feels like you accidentally toggled LFR difficulty.

[agk512]

My argument against re-tuning raids:

This content is over 10 years old. Most of the people farming raids on Nostalrius now probably had them on farm mode in Retail WoW back in the day. A good portion of these players have probably been farming this content on other private servers before they landed on Nostalrius. At this point you guys can probably clear this content with your eyes closed. Raising boss dmg/health won't change that. The challenging aspects of Raiding are learning the mechanics of fights and making sure 40 people understand and execute the mechanics. The only way I see new difficulty added to these lower tiered raids are to re-script the encounters completely so the fights are different for everybody, which is too unrealistic for this server to implement without significant bugs/controversy.

I've never played any of the Vanilla content. I have no idea what to expect when I reach lvl 60 and start running these raids, so I'm hoping it will be a good challenge for me.

[dinkleton]

I completely agree with this, some kind of a solution needs to be agreed upon.

I think a simple increase of boss damage/health would have some positive consequences. It would slow down progression slightly - requiring players to gear more before progressing to the next tier. I'm not really sure what more they could do without altering boss mechanics, which is no doubt out of the question.

A lot of fights in AQ40 and Naxx were also gear-checks. You couldn't take people in mostly blues/early tier gear, the DPS just wasn't there. An increase to boss damage/health would mean people would need better gear, increasing the amount of time it takes for a guild to clear a tier.

[Trinqucy]

C'mon, let's be honest, WoW was never hard...and it was never primarily skill based, it was a grind. Same now, same as it was in retail Vanilla. Sure, getting 40 people in a raid to do the right thing took a bit of time, but honestly after some grinding through it you could get a bunch of average gamers with average reaction times to kill the boss.

Maybe PvP exercised skill a bit more, but even that still had a heavy gear influence.

If you want to test your skill as a gamer, go play halo or whatever floats your boat...balanced and even to test your skills, not the amount of time you put in to grinding gear and consumables and whatnot.

Now with all that said, I don't really care. I'm here because this game is still fun as F, even if it isn't about putting my skills to the test. It's social, and it's fun to get baked and enjoy a game that give me a wonderful sense of nostalgia...hence why they named the server what they did. I even find quests that despite leveling multiple characters in retail Vanilla, I never got to do. That's cool!

So what's my point? I dunno...not sure I really had one. But if a bunch of tryhards really want to grind through MC, BWL, whatever as fast as they can to gear up as fast as they can on content that has already been cleared six bazillion times, burn out, get bored and leave, have at it. It doesn't mean I, or *you*, have to.

If you want to tune-up the end game raids, go ahead, but I'd tend to agree with some previous posters that said it would simply increase the gear-check level, meaning more grinding for gear and consumables, with no real increase in true "challenge".

Just my 2 cents!

[Hogbobson]

As a short addition: DalaranWoW tuned up both Naxxramas and Ulduar, a move met with nothing but positive response, for all the good reasons stated above. I, too, think it should be so!

[Blaze]

Scriptcraft 1 was a fantastic example of overtuned vanilla raids. Bwl was actually pretty difficult, almost to the point of it being retarded. At one point Nef was hitting plate for 4.5k and was impossible to kill on the horde side because of windfury.

MC/Ony were always pretty easy, but I am definitely a +1 for scaling difficulty a bit, even if it just means everyone has to have consumeables and pay attention.

[Charizard]

Simply increasing boss health and damage does increase the difficulty more than you might think. It may not have that much of an impact in MC, but it definitely will once you reach bosses like C'thun which quickly overwhelm you if a few of your players die and/or you lack DPS.

Over-tuning bosses won't destroy the "blizzlike" experience, but rather enhance it since you may actually have to put some work into progressing new content, just like during your precious retail days.

Another option, and probably the best one, would be to release raids in rapid succession (even faster than your initial timeline) with bosses being slightly over-tuned. However, this would quite drastically reduce the server's longevity and (future) profitability.

[nervous]

Simply increasing boss health and damage does increase the difficulty more than you might think. It may not have that much of an impact in MC, but it definitely will once you reach bosses like C'thun which quickly overwhelm you if a few of your players die and/or you lack DPS.

Over-tuning bosses won't destroy the "blizzlike" experience, but rather enhance it since you may actually have to put some work into progressing new content, just like during your precious retail days.

Another option, and probably the best one, would be to release raids in rapid succession (even faster than your initial timeline) with bosses being slightly over-tuned. However, this would quite drastically reduce the server's longevity and (future) profitability.

Yeah, no. Scriptcraft 1/2 had what you suggested and it made it so bosses like Twin Emps were able to global tanks for 9/10k damage, which without blessing of kings, made it a "how many times can we attempt this fight before we get lucky with thrashes". Being "lucky" has nothing to do with skill. It's just pulling on the lever enough times. BWL with that sort of retard strength was still cleared within a month of the server opening.

[Charizard]

Simply increasing boss health and damage does increase the difficulty more than you might think. It may not have that much of an impact in MC, but it definitely will once you reach bosses like C'thun which quickly overwhelm you if a few of your players die and/or you lack DPS.

Over-tuning bosses won't destroy the "blizzlike" experience, but rather enhance it since you may actually have to put some work into progressing new content, just like during your precious retail days.

Another option, and probably the best one, would be to release raids in rapid succession (even faster than your initial timeline) with bosses being slightly over-tuned. However, this would quite drastically reduce the server's longevity and (future) profitability.

Yeah, no. Scriptcraft 1/2 had what you suggested and it made it so bosses like Twin Emps were able to global tanks for 9/10k damage, which without blessing of kings, made it a "how many times can we attempt this fight before we get lucky with thrashes". Being "lucky" has nothing to do with skill. It's just pulling on the lever enough times. BWL with that sort of retard strength was still cleared within a month of the server opening.

There's a significant difference between sensibly over-tuning and completely breaking raid bosses. It's not all black and white, my friend.