Why there are no Cross-Realm raids... yet.

[Lindline]

Let me preface this with what Blizzard's viewpoints are on this.

Bornakk -

Doing this is a bit more complicated than the 5 player dungeons. For 5 player dungeons it's not a big deal to allow the random heroics to skip lock outs and is not very hard to setup a group. We obviously can't skip lockouts for raids and it just much more common for raids to not complete all of the content, so you could come back a few days later and find someone else cleared your instance. It's definitely something that sounds good in theory but there are a lot of issues that we would have to figure out first.

I, for one, happen to agree with how Blizzard went about it. Or rather, didn't not go about it...? Nevermind the failure of the english language. Point is, I dont mind how Blizzard went about it. I completely agree that a raid lockout is a whole different level of important. You talking about a lockout that you where its not really feasible to have a "random raid" just ignore it. Otherwise, it'd just be too speedy of a gear up.

However, judging from how well PuGs are performing in my own random dungeon groups... I really hope Blizzard doesn't come up with a way to do this.

[omgMooter]

Also you would be pinned with RANDOM people you can't check out any of their experience or competence.

[Tim]

Originally Posted by omgMooter

Also you would be pinned with RANDOM people you can't check out any of their experience or competence.

It was a mistake for Blizzard to allow anybody to do this in any fashion. It all started with inspecting and reading talent specs.

This gives groups effective control over other players, removing the social aspects of this game which utilize trust and teamwork to learn about a person versus using a number.

[Bubba]

omgMooter, random peeps indeed. I hate peeps online who say only experienced and geared allowed. Arggg, if that is required then ask peeps on private channels not open ones. I always if in the mood harrass those who specify gear and experience with stooopid questions. Its a pet peeve of mine that will most likely not change.

[Nghtmr9999]

Originally Posted by Bubba

omgMooter, random peeps indeed. I hate peeps online who say only experienced and geared allowed. Arggg, if that is required then ask peeps on private channels not open ones. I always if in the mood harrass those who specify gear and experience with stooopid questions. Its a pet peeve of mine that will most likely not change.

PST achievements and gearscore? Yeah, not a big fan of those people either.

[Lindline]

While Im not a big fan of those people, Id rather have them than some of the people I get stuck with on the random heroics. I average 35-40% of all out going damage in them. I even had a run in VH where I ended up with 46% of all damage. These are the groups I expect to get stuck with if cross-server raids ever came about.

[Ualaa]

I'm still thinking of acquiring a set of very high item level healer cloth items, for my protection paladin tank. It would give me a very high gear score, which is what the pug idiots care about, yet prove that gear score is a pretty useless thing. Sure you need some level of gearing for certain content, but it sucks when players want others to be at the ToC25 gear level, to be allowed in their Naxx10 raid.

[Tim]

Gear score is such a bad thing to have in a game, yet it is easily anticipated to happen with the changes Blizzard has been adding over the past year. It makes me wonder, what big mistake is Blizzard going to make next to further push this game towards elitism?

[Ualaa]

Everquest I, was the big game prior to Warcraft.

In EQ1, you'd have perhaps 5 or 6 guilds across all of the servers that were competitive with each other as far as clearing end-game content quickly. Guilds were essentially raids of 72 players. Twelve groups of six toons per group.

The rest of the server might be the equivalent of two expansions behind on the raid curve. Basically the equivalent of the top guild in ToC but the second guild on the server in Naxx, with one major raid zone per expansion (which was every 6-9 months). The majority of the player base would be SSC/TK at this point.

The game was much more gear dependent and much less level dependent. You could be 10 levels higher then what the encounter was designed for, yet unable to beat it because of a lack of gear. Expansions were not automatic gear resets, like with Warcraft; you would frequently have no more then half your gear upgraded in a given expansion, with the odd piece (best in slot) from more then one expansion previous.

I remember the keying for Vex Thal. You needed to clear Emperor in the Ssra Temple for one drop. You needed to clear the boss in Sanctus Seru for another drop. Oh and did I mention the 18 rods you needed to acquire... it took 12 very geared players (two groups) to hold the camp, and the drop was a random off of the rare. You'd get a rare once every 2-3 hours of clearing the camp, and the rare would have your drop once every 3-4 spawns. And it was a single drop, for one toon, not enough for even two to get the piece. And that is one of the 18 camps. Getting all 18 drops, for each of your 72 members was an involved process.

EQ was basically hard mode, with no normal for a given fight. There were no addons to customize you interface. There was nothing like decursive. You had to notice a disease debuff on one of the seventy raiders, it would be hiding amidst 15 buffs and possibly several debuffs. It would not make their frame glow a color, or be colored differently then the other debuffs on the target. And people who raided had no issue with finding debuffs and curing them quickly. There were no raid symbols to mark mobs with, yet you had to kill mobs in a certain order and at a certain time. There was no Deadly Boss Mods or Big Wigs.

In short, it was hard-core mode. The challenge was great, but the game was aimed at the top fraction of a percentage of the player base.




A large part of the appeal of Warcraft, and its massive success, is that the game is catered to the 99.9% of the player base, rather then the 0.01%.

Each elitist attitude added to the game, is taking it a step in the wrong direction. Sure the end-game encounters are pathetically easy, at least compared to EQ, but its nice to have 99% of the player base see a given end-game zone in the expansion that it is released, even if not everyone can beat it on hard mode.

At the moment, Warcraft is the top game out there, at least in my not so humble opinion. Boxing is a major benefit for me, as I don't have to put up with <insert epithet>'s who want a given gear score or achievement, before I can be included in their heroic run.

It must sure suck for a new player, who is on their first toon and has recently reached 80th, with relatively poor gear, no finances to buy AH epics, and is several dungeons/raids worth of gear behind what is required for current end-game content. The gear score/achievement system is doing no favors, to newer players.

[Nghtmr9999]

agree 100% with you Ualaa. New players to 80 who can't buy AH epics are caught in a never-ending cycle.

You need gear to get into a guild, with no way to get geared in the first place due to the "OMGZWTF! bad gear = bad player you're not raiding with us!

Something very similar happened to me waaay back before I started dualboxing. I had a rogue in a raiding guild that never took me to raids even though I was ready to go half an hour before raid time. They only focused on gearing the same 25 members over and over again. I had decent gear mind you (back in the day of BC) I was hitting around 3.5k dps raid buffed, yet the guild never took me (except on those rare occasions). This has turned me away from end-game, and because of it I will most likely never do any end-game content.