I was browsing the forums this morning and noticed a post called “Casual Kingslayer“.

Back in TOC, my 10 man guild ran “organised PUGs” of 25man TOC, including heroic modes – which, at the time, put us briefly at 3rd on the server progression ladder, or something similar. So I’m always interested to see “casual” or weekend raiders getting through content.

Yep, my guild just downed LK. We raid about 6 hours a week. I don’t really play much outside of that.

Just wanted to give a thanks to Blizz for allowing people like me, that have the desire and skill to raid, but not necessarily a whole life to dedicate to this game to be able to progress and see all the content.

I’ve never been about striving to be the very very best at this game, but through the badge system and many of the new tools the game has to offer I’ve been able to stay relevant (and viable) enough to let the way I play, not my gear, qualify me as a raider.

Please continue with the direction you are taking the game (minus the forced RealID of course).

Looking forward to hard modes.

/cheer

It made me smile. I figured the guy would be pounced on by a few jerks, with false “grats”es and whatnot. Zarhym was in there censoring, so that may have been the case.

But it just made me think about the ICC buffs, and how much I like this system.

Back in Sunwell, we were racing against the 3.0 clock. We didn’t get Illidan first, but we did get Kalecgos and Brutallus, by quite a good margin. Unfortunately Felmyst, while an awesome encounter, called for bulk shamans and priests, something we just didn’t really have. We recruited new ones, but they were undergeared or not terribly good. People got tired of wiping to slow reactions, and the snowball of attrition and burnout got bigger and bigger, until eventually the guild dissolved.

We reformed later, and with the 3.0 nerf to boss health (and our new abilities), we easily cleared Sunwell.

But it was no achievement. Not really. Not when you knew how hard guilds struggled against Mu’ru, or how finely tuned KJ was. We had the smug satisfaction if beating Brutallus the hard way (that fight really felt earned), but everything else was a bit of a freebie.

I really wish, back then, that it had been a gradual process, like we’re seeing in ICC, rather than WHAM – 30% nerf/buff.

My guild has dissolved twice – once at Felmyst, and once at Yogg Saron. While we always had a strong and skilled core, it seems hard to escape the problem of having a chunk of raiders that aren’t willing to wipe for more than a few nights. I remember working on bosses for months – but these days, it seems as though a night or two is the limit before people start posting absences and dragging their feet. That’s highly contagious, and always on my mind as we approach obstacles.

Coming up to the harder heroics in ICC, I begged my officers to consider taking things easy and not pushing. We’d love to be first on the ladder, of course, but not ever again if it meant running the guild into the ground along the way.

So we “took a break” from progression (much to the delight of our resident harassers), and slipped back to second place. For a few weeks, while attendance was low and lag was high, we cut our raid nights back, and simply farmed the easier heroics, and swapped to normal mode to do Putricide, Sindragosa, and the Lich King (being able to toggle difficulty is also a great feature, rather than separate lockouts). We recharged our batteries, waiting for Ruby Sanctum, and hopefully an upward trend on attendance.

Basically – we were willing to take people pointing and laughing at our stalled progression, if it meant protecting the guild from burning out as a group. We don’t mind waiting for the 30% buff to get things down, if that’s what it takes, without pushing people over the edge.

As the expansion approaches, attrition is inevitable. People are tired, or on vacation, moving house, having internet problems.. but instead of giving ourselves ulcers, we’re adopting the “slow and steady” approach.

And honestly, without the gradual buffs, I doubt we would have got this far. The knowledge that in a few weeks things will be a bit easier – I think that goes a long way to help veterans stave off burnout, and new recruits bridge the gap between the gear they have now, and the DPS we need.

So.. thumbs up to this idea Blizzard – I think this new system is great. I think there are probably some improvements that can be made, such as allowing people to choose the level of the buff (if they don’t want the full 30%, for example), but overall, I think it is really good. Letting everyone see the content has not been as much of a “casual zergfest” as I suspect many people though it would. You still can’t breeze in and mow everything down in a PUG. And, of course, it lets people jump in on their alts, too, without hurting the group. In Cataclysm, I may need to revert to being a weekend raider, so the prospect of still being able to see all of the content, even if it takes much longer – that’s just fantastic.

Most importantly (to me) though, it means that serious guilds, who might otherwise have fallen frustratingly short of the mark (as in the past!) can use the buff to finish what they started, despite attrition and despite having to recruit green or undergeared players. Perhaps there’s no difference between nerfing a boss by 30%, or buffing the players by 30%, but doing it over time lets us feel that we’re earning it, rather than just flipping a switch and making it a cake walk.

All I want is to finish what we started – but if we can do it without feeling like we were handed a freebie overnight, that would be great, too.

Good luck everyone, I hope you get through the content that you want to, before Cataclysm.

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