Raid Achievements Are How Encounters Were Intended

The more Heroic Achievement Encounters I do, the more I am convinced that they are how designers originally meant them to be done.

Lets look at Patchwerk. The achievement "Make Quick Werk Of Him" wants you to kill him in less then three min. Without the achievement, you have an incredibly generous six minutes - something that makes him accessible to entry level raiders who may be carrying 1000 DPS players. The achievement, however, is only doable by strong groups with somewhat-optimal setups and a high level of play by all involved - something that is close to how the original encounter was.

The difficulty of the achievement fight feels about right for an entry level raid for a "hardcore" guild. LOKI hasn't gotten Make Quick Werk Of Him, but we also run a little healer (7) /tank (3) heavy for most stuff. If we were to buckle down for it and tailor the raid to the fight (like we use to have to for all progression content), we'd have it down (and soon will, I imagine).

This also ties into the "bring the player, not the class" idea. With just about any setup, I'm confident we could clear a no-achievement Naxx. As I said, we usually run the same number of tanks and healers for everything, making swaps only on a per wing basis, if at all. However, to do optional achievements, we may need to insure we have certain numbers of certain classes. Class stacking exists, its now just not a necessity / barrier to killing bosses.

Lets look at some other Raid Achievements...
And They Would All Go Down Together: Removes the option to zerg single horsemen down, which was not possible in the original because of shield walls at 50% and 20%.
Just Can't Get Enough: Adds a higher DPS/Healing/Tanking requirement to P1
Saftey Dance: Everyone needs to succeed at the dance.
100 Club: Its like opting for the aura to hit harder.

Really, non-achievement fights are the optional easy mode. You can skip out on a significant potion of the difficulty, still get loot, and still move on to see the next set of trash/boss models. Also, you can kill everything in an instance while gearing up towards an achievement, instead of clearing bosses one two and three, while gearing up for boss four, and not touching five and six.

What's my take on this? I'm pretty happy, though I'd change two things.

Incentive to repeat achievements - If all bosses typically dropped three pieces of loot, and a fourth with the achievement (of perhaps a slightly higher iLevel), I don't think anyone would complain. It's how OS works, and I get the feeling this is how Uludar will function - Blizzard has indicated that all Uludar bosses are going to have "hard modes". As it stands, there is nothing but personal drive to get guilds to keep getting most achievements they have credit for.

Better Guild Rating based on Raid Achievements - WoWProgress rates guilds based on Naxx, Malygos, OS, and OS+Drake Achievements. While this is a step up from WoWJutsu, I think that it some attention / credit does need to be given to other difficult achievements.

I'd also love an ingame PvE "guild achievement" score - just like you have separate personal and team rating for arenas, have separate personal and guild achievement ratings. Give points to a guild where its 20+ of its members have heroic achievements (or 8+ have non-heroic, in another score), and all of a sudden you can tell how good a guild is by looking at their rating.

So there - I now am completely at peace with this new system, and I would suggest that you be too. Don't complain that content is easy, when your opting to take the easy road - and start cranking up your achievement points - it will be an increasingly important score for how others view you.

Where Does Your Guild Stand?

In Vanilla WoW, if you wanted to know where a guild stood, you went to their realm forums, and hoped there was some dedicated person keeping a huge thread up to date with boss kills.

Throughout BC, if you wanted to know where a guild was at in progression, you went to WoWJutsu. Hands down, this was the place.

And now where do you go for Wrath, if your competitive spirit demands a logical ordering of guilds - ?

...I'm finding WoWProgress to be the site of choice.

Achievements are the clincher. Base clears of Naxx, OS, and Malygos have probably all been done on your server by many, many guilds. What sets guilds apart now are Achievements - Noteably Twilight Assist, Duo, and Twilight Zone, though there are some others (The Immortal) that certainly convay a level of mastery over the content.

Date of, and Order in which a guild got a kill/achievement on not only World and US/EU level, but as specific as Realm - are all pretty sweet. Like, LOKI was the 14th to Clear Naxx, but the 4th to get Arachnophobia, and the 6th to Just Can't Get Enough.

You can also tack on Recruitment and guild information, in the likely event that someone is checking you out when considering placing an App. You can see how often people leave/are removed from the guild, RSS boss kills, and see who's getting loot.

All in all, its the best I've found so far. But tell me, am I missing something anywhere else?

I Can't Get No: Satisfaction (& Titles)

There was recently a near-fatal collision at the corner of hardcore st. and casual lane. EMTs were on the scene quickly, and were able to cut off the supply of fuel to the flames.

No, really. A fairly typical argument about "earning" epics, being turned into "hardcores" being butthurt about "easy to get" T6 equiv, and now casuals being able to collect BT/Hyjal gear in pugs cheapening / not cheapening content.

I figure I'll weigh in on all this. 

I get satisfaction from this game by knowing that the team I run is good. The only way to judge this, is to compare how many other people have completed what we have (though try to see the difference between what I just said, and the idea that I need to 'feel superior' than others). When we broke into the top 2000 US guilds / the top 5% of raiding guilds, I had some genuine pride. It was based on knowing that we had overcome difficult challenges - not the gear that resulted, or having seen a particular boss. 

I don't mind that T4 raiders are pugging BT and succeeding since 3.0. It doesn't diminish my accomplishment (Clearing everything through 23% Kalecgos pre 3.0). If I used gear as a marker for what I've done, it may have. But I don't. 

Now, I think that one of the things that made 3.0 easier for me personally to swallow - was remove the ability to get titles / bear mounts. Having Hand of Ad'al is a distinguishing mark that I did a certain piece of content at a certain difficulty level, at the intended level. 

What sweetens this setup, is that I haven't seen a single QQ from someone who has done ZA / T5 / ect since 3.0, and is angry they can't get the titles. They get loot, and to see content - I get a displayable feature that doesn't have any effect on the game, except to show off. Unfortunately, there were only titles for some content: T4 (Champion of the Naruu) and T5 (Hand of Adal) - and a special mount for 4-Chest ZA. 

The BC formula, to lift attunements and gradually nerf content into pugabilitty, seems like its here to stay. All I can hope, is that there are more cosmetic bonuses for those that put in the time and effort to ride the wave of top end, challenging content. As far as I'm concerned, everyone wins. 

...thats what I say

Why Guilds Don't Progress, and "Seeing Content"

Namthe recently quoted a (casual?) friend of his, whom responded to his (widly-held) complaint of raids being too easy...

Are you kidding me? You can’t wait 4 weeks for a new challenge while less hardcore players get a chance to see the content you’ve been taking for granted?

This made me stop and think, about what keeps guilds from seeing content? Is it difficulty?

I'm fairly convinced that it is not how hard Bosses hit, or how many HP they have, and that the 3.0 nerf won't result in any significant, widespread availability of content - it actually hurts the still-raiding player base.

The reason guilds don't progress comes down, plain and simple, to issues surrounding its members. Lets look at some situations...

1) A guild doesn't possess 10 or 25, active, raiding members (plus extras for replacements)

2) A guild has enough raiders, but they don't log on in unison.

3) The guild is a revolving door, and new members force the re-learning of old content, while keeping any consecutive time on new content from happening.

4) A guild does not have enough members willing to put in the time/effort/consumables/repairs to learn new bosses / boss mechanics.

Nerfing a bosses health and damage does not change any of those factors. There are no fights that cannot be overcome by a fairly-regular, dedicated, prepared group of people willing to put in the time.

Now, those seem like reasonable requirements. And you may be thinking - my guild is like that, why aren't we farming Kil'Jaden? 

Time. LOKI got off to a late start, and has consistenly progressed, but that didn't put us into deep Sunwell before 3.0. There are countless other guilds that didn't form (or get past the above barriers to progression) until recently. And what do these guilds need? - Another month of being about to work on content. 

Example: Kadomi and (Daughters of the Horde) just got Hex down (Congrats, btw!), and were working on Zul'jin. I'm positive that they would have killed him pre-wrath, and had a satisfactory conclusion to BC. Likewise, LOKI was on the cusp of downing Kalecgos and being a legit Sunwell guild. In both cases, another month would have provided what would have felt like a legitimate, capstone achievement. 

What we got, however, was an anti-climatic *poof*. Robbed of any real chalange, we now wonder the glove, uncovering map, working on achievements, and occassionally going into instances where the single perk is spending time with the people we've struggeled together with in the past.

Honestly - if casual player's real desire was to just see the content - they could always come back at 80. However, I'm willing to bet that the great majority of such lv 70 players have not gone back and "seen" all of BWL, AQ40, ect. And its not how hard a boss hits, or their max HP thats keeping people from doing those encounters - its the same reasons they aren't raiding current content - there aren't enough people interested in putting in time and effort.

Regardless, whats done is done: we have been left with meeningless content a month earlier then we should have. Sigh.