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

[impossible]

--Preface
In this thread I’d like to discuss how Nostalrius will deal with what is probably the most important field; end-game content. This is essentially the future of Nostalrius, and it’s a huge field that the playerbase cares about. This field alone is the reason why a majority of players rolled on Nostalrius, so that they one day could “see” Naxxramas. The question is; how long (and difficult) will Nostalrius make this road?

--Introduction
Personally I do not think anyone wants gear thrown at them for free. It defeats the uniqueness factor that we all seek and love. Here’s a term for you; end-game content. This term simply translates into what is the latest content released from the server. This is what the realm has to offer to the players that have devoted the most time into their characters with the mindset to raid; leading them to end up, at the end of the content. (crystal clear definition)

--The tuning issue
With Blackwing Lair releasing after DM, which should be also in the PTR anytime soon, I think it’s time to focus on how hard they actually want this raid to be like. Seeing as up to 20 (TWENTY!) guilds both clearing and farming Onyxia / Molten Core, this certainly isn’t transparent to how we remember retail. And no, you do not have to tell me that “back in the day, people didn’t understand how the game was supposed to be played, obviously only a margin of players managed to clear it, so Nostalrius is just fine”. But guess what, when people evolve, the game should adapt in a relative sense (thus, making it harder and less accessible for players, just like how it used to be). This would immediately make the game more retail-like, or at least, try to imitate how difficult it was for players and guilds to progress in raids.

--An example of tuning
Examples on how to make BWL harder, would be to reinstate Vaelastrasz as the guildbreaker, as it was better known as back in the day. You could tune it so it has far more HP and deals some more damage to the tanks and tune the abilities in general. Since the encounter is purely a dpscheck with its Essence of the Red “enragetimer” (make this buff a little more frequent than it was on retail, is also an option), you can make it so that it requires complete min/max of the raid to defeat the encounter.

http://i.imgur.com/H6XRrRI.png < wtb

People did not know how to stack buffs properly back then. But now, most people have a grasp of how to obtain perfect BiS-gear and show up to raids with all kinds of damageincreasing buffs consistently. Generally speaking, increasing the damage output of encounters and mobs and also increasing the HP would be a great start. This is something I think would lead to a proper progressionrace, and provide uniqueness to the server, which is the key-word throughout this discussion. There will be no memories of Nostalrius if it never provided a challenge, except for managing to reach 60 at 1x experience rates. People want something to strive for, not just farm with no challenge provided.


--Consequences of leaving the issue be
What are the consequences if proper raidtuning is not performed on Nostalrius? Well, I can safely tell you that whichever guild you’ll be in, you will mindlessly farm BWL since it was released. And please explain to me what the point exactly is by doing this? What are you farming towards? Remember what I mentioned at the beginning of the thread, that this is end-game? The latest addition of the server, this is what Nostalrius has to offer. If what there is to offer is a cakewalk, the server can potentially meet a population decline, and guilds will die out because they are bored and understand that they are farming for no particular reason.

And once AQ40 is out, then what? If you’ve read this far you will understand that it will share the same fate as BWL did; cleared within a week by multiple guilds and suddenly there is nothing left to do -- AGAIN. The next week you will have 10 guilds clearing it, and probably 15+ by the end of it. Even when guilds weren’t properly established and structured they still managed to clear MC and Onyxia were out on Nostalrius and it has been a stompfest. Come on Nostalrius, prioritize this and make it a challenge for us!

I would like to hear the Developers stance on future raidtuning. Will you make it harder, or will it be default without any sort of tuning? Should #1 priority on the PTR test be to observe how bosses are tuned?

I'd like to end this post by mentioning that from my personal point of view, BWL will set the bar for how the raiding scene will look like for Nostalrius, whether it will be easymode and every guild gets farmstatus shortly after release, or you have to actually farm and work hard to be rewarded.

[Garfunkel]

Interesting post but I'd like to point out a couple of misconceptions:

Seeing as up to 20 (TWENTY!) guilds both clearing and farming Onyxia / Molten Core, this certainly isn’t transparent to how we remember retail.

This is wrong. When AQ40 came, my old server, Moonglade-EU alone had that many guilds farming Ony&MC. And that was a late-launch RP server, so any first-launch PVP/PVE servers most likely had many, many more guilds farming them.

People did not know how to stack buffs properly back then.

Wrong. I distinctively remember reading a guide on that topic, as well as for threat generation and aggro guides and endless theorycrafting over talents and gear and so on. The thing is, MC was never so hard that you the whole raid absolutely needed to stack all possible buffs and use consumables. Heck, I remember clearing BWL without using anything more than potions and only tanks used flasks. Only AQ40/Naxx are actually difficult enough to strictly require all sorts of consumables and buffs.

So I really cannot comprehend your problem, because it is based on very false recollection of what vanilla raiding was like.

[impossible]

Seeing as up to 20 (TWENTY!) guilds both clearing and farming Onyxia / Molten Core, this certainly isn’t transparent to how we remember retail.

This is wrong. When AQ40 came, my old server, Moonglade-EU alone had that many guilds farming Ony&MC. And that was a late-launch RP server, so any first-launch PVP/PVE servers most likely had many, many more guilds farming them.

While some servers might've had that during that time, think more like over which timespan this is achieved. It is a very short one and I think that could be detrimental for upcoming content.

So I really cannot comprehend your problem, because it is based on very false recollection of what vanilla raiding was like.

Obviously the problem is that I can already foresee that all guilds will have BWL on farm within a very short amount of time if no tuning is performed; while the real experience is to struggle a little through it. I would find that idea of tuning the content as very positive so that you actually have to try a little to get through the content. Isn't that what we want?

@buffs, I did not directly imply that the majority did not know how to farm or acquire buff themselves, but for most of the time you didn't see people running around with serenade and dmfbuff whenever that was possible every raid, that is not how I recall vanilla raiding. We struggled to clear content but we managed to get shit down because of the amount of raids we did, and the majority of the raid was mechanically bad and didn't even know rotations properly. And even we managed to check out naxxramas before TBC hit.

[nervous]

With regards to the tuning:

It offers no enhanced difficulty to the fight, only additional gear and consumables.

Increased hp/damage mean nothing, and if increased too much can burn raiders out due to increased consumable farming.

If you want raids to not be cleared in a week, release them quickly as they were outlined originally so guilds don't have an excessive amount of time to prepare/farm gear.

MC/BWL aren't tough. They require you to have KTM and a pulse.

[impossible]

If you want raids to not be cleared in a week, release them quickly as they were outlined originally so guilds don't have an excessive amount of time to prepare/farm gear.

MC/BWL aren't tough. They require you to have KTM and a pulse.

You're right. However, I don't love the fact that you are given 3 to 4 months between the tiers, I personally dislike that idea. I would rather like to see developers release content reactively, instead basing contentrelease on an indicative timeline that is skewed +1-2months, because they do have the content available. Afterall, this is a relaunched server.

At the topic of tuning; you can increase damage and hp as mentioned sure, modifying the bossabilities themselves wouldn't be a popular move of course; everyone including myself knows that this wouldn't be wise. But my entire point is that they can try to make things harder, and find ways to make it harder by scaling. I feel that would give positive results and nothing else.

Edit: Vael especially could become a barrier like it once was, and I'm pretty sure that would make things interesting if scaled correctly.

[Miv]

>However, I don't love the fact that you are given 3 to 4 months between the tiers,

Isn't the time line 1 month for half tier (like world bosses, dungeons, gear updates) and 2 months for actual raid tiers?

>But my entire point is that they can try to make things harder, and find ways to make it harder by scaling.

We're here because we like vanilla and how it plays, not because we're masochists. To modify the bosses to be harder would ruin the experience. Molten Core and Onyxia were NOT hard in Vanilla. You are greatly blowing this out of proportion. Information travels easier now, people are more experienced that's all. If you feel it's too easy now, you likely weren't in a good guild/server and I'm not saying that as an insult, but as a matter of fact.

You're creating issues that you think affect everyone, but in reality it's just your personal opinion.

[impossible]

>However, I don't love the fact that you are given 3 to 4 months between the tiers,

Isn't the time line 1 month for half tier (like world bosses, dungeons, gear updates) and 2 months for actual raid tiers?

>But my entire point is that they can try to make things harder, and find ways to make it harder by scaling.

We're here because we like vanilla and how it plays, not because we're masochists. To modify the bosses to be harder would ruin the experience. Molten Core and Onyxia were NOT hard in Vanilla. You are greatly blowing this out of proportion. Information travels easier now, people are more experienced that's all. If you feel it's too easy now, you likely weren't in a good guild/server and I'm not saying that as an insult, but as a matter of fact.

You're creating issues that you think affect everyone, but in reality it's just your personal opinion.

This is indeed my personal opinion, Miv, and I felt I should share my thoughts regarding the matters of tuning to create some discussion around the subject, since I see some potential in the field (overtuning, at that).

The timeline is indicative and it will be skewed. Meaning, it is not accurate and I am sure that BWL will not be released within the next month. The first tier shouldn't be a problem, sure. I agree with you and I have no problem with it. After that, I just present my view of the issue as fun and also grants the raids more purpose than just sweeping through it.

Indeed, people are more experienced these days as I even highlighted myself; I just feel the idea behind making content a little harder wouldn't hurt one bit, and it would've given the server more life and purpose for each and everyone.

Lastly, you are also right that my guild was not the best; no insults taken! The amount of raids weighed up for it, raiding literally daily with slow progress.

[Miv]

> After that, I just present my view of the issue as fun and also grants the raids more purpose than just sweeping through it.

That might be true, but this is a blizz-like server, if you start changing things it becomes unblizzlike, then from there what else do we change for the sake of fun? Cross-faction grouping? 1-10 xp rates so people don't fall behind too far? Bosses are too hard now, maybe there should be an easier version for those who don't want the hardest of hard experience?

If you think about it from a dev perspective, the easiest and best solution is to make it as blizz-like as possible, as that is what should be expected from a server claiming to be blizz-like.

Also, this is probably something the devs already discussed pre-launch. "How blizzlike do we want it to be?" and this is what they decided. They already went as far as reverting the nerfs and the items to pre-1.8. Anything else is just artificial and we may as well be playing on a private server some random joe is hosting for the fun of it.

[impossible]

Personally I am strongly against anything that removes or changes the defaults of vanilla by making it more accessible and easier in general; such as rates and all those kinds of things that we do not appreciate here.

However, increasing raid difficulty is something I am for; even though I get your principles whereas "anything that modifies vanilla as it were = unblizzlike and not acceptable", I personally see this case as an exception and should be generally accepted by those that want it to remain as it were (opinionated).

From what I have heard, you have several other popular privateservers that have tuned these values and there hasn't been any complaints over it. General acceptance, I'm sure?

[harojaro91]

I do agree with the OP. I was apart of several guilds on live that would reroll on new servers when they came out during classic and destroy conten. Rag down in week 6 of release (due to faction), bwl two weeks later. The only stopping point was huhuran which required either the sponge for clearing poison (which wasn't enough when the majority of your raid is in blues and greens) or a decent amount of PR. But with guilds farming shit the way they are, this isn't an issue and will not be a problem. It should be tuned up.