Attunements for Ulduar?

#0 - Feb. 18, 2009, 5:07 p.m.

I'd really like to see Attunements brought back for the next raid instance. Before everyone flies off their rockers I have a proposal. Instead of everyone having to be attuned, which sucked for when you wanted to bring someone new in for the first time, only make half the raid be attuned.

Say for the 10 man version you needed at least 5 people to be attuned before they could enter, for 25 man it would be 15. I think it would keep people that really don't need to be doing the raids out until they were actually prepared.

When I zone into Naxx on a Tuesday or Wednesday night I can check the chat and see 500+ people in it, and that's what causes the lag. Much like in any major city when you have to many people in it, an instance will lag when to many people are in it as well. Maybe if you separated the 10 from the 25 mans it would decrease the lag, but you have them all clumped into one which makes my really really nice computer feel bad when I have to lower the graphics.

Should everyone have access to raid content, yes, but only once they actually earn the right to do so. Letting everyone do it means you have to dumb everything down and therefore making the hard core raiders out there feel just plain stupid and question why they're still playing the game to begin with.

Bringing back attunements would be great, making it where you only had to have half your raid attuned would be even better! I love how you can't do Maly without having at least one person downed Sapphy and attained the key, we should have more things like that.

Bornakk

#7 - Feb. 18, 2009, 5:14 p.m.

I don't believe there is any attunement currently planned for Ulduar. Instead you can head straight into the dungeon and enjoy it instead of running around somewhere and getting ready only to find that two of your main healers didn't do the attunement yet.

Bornakk

#23 - Feb. 18, 2009, 5:21 p.m.

Q u o t e:

wait...screw that, raids should be hard, raiding is for raiders, not casual, heroics and upper lvl instances are for casuals.

Classifying all players in categories like this just gets ugly fast. Making content more available is only better for more people.

And what is a Ninjabob?

Bornakk

#63 - Feb. 18, 2009, 5:43 p.m.

Q u o t e:

I know this is never going to change because of the direction you took the game but I very much miss the atuning types of content such as the Ony key quest, the preparation quests to douse the flames in MC, the linear progression with a storyline that existed between MC and BWL. The global scaled opening of the AQ gates, ect...

Those story driven quest lines on the epic raid level scale are what kept the "role playing" asspect of this game alive at the maximum level. At level 60 you could do things that felt like progression akin to gaining a level when you unlocked some new content. Now with the way the game is the minute you hit level 80 there is very little that gives you that feeling of accomplishment or "getting to that next level or area" and instead the end game became fairly dry loot collection on random non-linear boss killing.

By removing the actual "progression" of end game WOW you removed alot of the enjoyment of advancement, and for alot of us it was not a step forward and we don't get the same sense of accomplishment out of the game anymore nor do we get the epic storyline feel akin to "Lord of the Rings" types of journeys that Blizzard did a relatively good job of creating in the beginning.

I disagree with you to a degree on this. While I personally enjoyed the Onyxia attunement back in the day, it was a fairly constant source of complaints like "I did it once I should never have to do this junk again" or "omg this questline is so long and terrible" etc.

That said, we feel we can add epic quest lines to the game without blocking content for those not interested in doing them. I am not promising something like this for Ulduar, but we do want the experience of the dungeon to be grand and epic so hopefully you feel that as you enter and progress through it.

Bornakk

#72 - Feb. 18, 2009, 5:48 p.m.

Q u o t e:

then why not an account wide attunement.

Because there is no real point in having the attunement at all at that point. Might as well just have quests you can choose to do if you want and/or focus on making the experience itself as epic as possible.

Bornakk

#167 - Feb. 18, 2009, 7:05 p.m.

Q u o t e:

If you mean by running in quest greens and few blues then beating the bosses in there, that would be a game-breaking issue but I doubt it.

People who just hit 80 will eventually have to gear up in Naxx first before heading to Ulduar.

This is probably going to be possible to some degree, primarily if you have a decked out 25 person raid that brings in a fresh 80 or two and just carry them through. If you think about it, if there is an achievement to complete a 25 person raid with 20 people (not guaranteeing that this achievement will be back, simply saying that it is a possibility, /end rumor mongers), you could have 5 fresh people in there contributing nothing but gathering gear if that was the goal.

Either way the goal is to make it more challenging, I am guessing it will be tough for a people to just walk all over it, at least initially. If you need extra challenge and want some extra gear, hard modes are there for you.

Bornakk

#187 - Feb. 18, 2009, 8:14 p.m.

Q u o t e:

How do you figure there is no point?

Lets say that the quest for the key to Ony was made such that it could be mailed between characters on the same server or maybe even the same account.

How is it that the lore involved in that quest encounter and the progression that the player feels through completing that quest is diminishd from making that key now account bound?

If I finish the key on Jimbob the hunter then Jimbob the hunter broke Maxwell out of jail, he fought Ony in Stormwind, he went to the far reaches of the world to build the key. And now Jimbob has the key and he gives it to his niece Sharlee the Mage because Jimbob is now old, and Sharee having heard of the story of her Uncle Jimbob breaking the Maxwell out of Jail and hearing of his death at the hands of Onyxia then goes and uses the key to go do battle with the dragon.

It makes TOTAL lore sense that once you finish a quest such as this that the key now exists. And furthermore all of the lore and the sense of progression and advancement and the storyline involved are just as intact as ever in this case if you made the key able to be mailed between characters.

There is nothing lost by doing it, but there is still a huge gain having the quest in place for people to do the first time for the sake of the progression, the storyline, a quest that truly matters and unlocks new content.

I don't have a clue how you could say that by making the item obtained able to be mailed within your accounts characters would defeat the puropse of the quest in the first place. Having the item able to be used like that does not affect the true purpose or benefit of having that quest and progression in the game in the slightest and the loss of that content all together is still the thing that hurts the games end game feeling of purpose and true achievment. Because I will tell ya something, what the game calls "achievments" now are goofy little cookies and do not in the slightest make up for the real thing that used to exist.

I highlighted what I feel defeats your own argument. A lot of players don't care about the quest/the storyline, so it just gets in the way for them. It ends up feeling better to have this story available for people who want to get involved in it and not block other peoples' progression just for the sake of what matters to you. The epic storyline/quest line feeling is something that can be encompassed in other ways than a content blocking attunement and it feels a lot better to focus on that aspect of it.