Hello World! (and Raid Difficulty)

Ah, blogging.  That wonderful combination of private contemplation and public espousement.

The most recent article on the Blessing of Kings blog entitled On Difficulty and Guilds happens to be the driving influence for me to create this blog and vent my opinions somewhere other than the cesspool of the WoW forums.  That post (and the post on Larisa's The Pink Pigtail Inn, Why I Don't Want to Hear Another 'WoW is Too Easy' Statement, that spawned it) have caught my eye for possessing an uncommon alacrity of vision into the issues facing WoW in the current day.

In particular, the idea that guilds can be broken down into different 'tiers', if you will, or castes, and the health of the game judged based on the size and activity of those castes.  I've pasted in a portion of Coriel's post on BoK below to illustrate what is meant by this (my apologies in advance to Coriel if I've overstepped):

In Wrath, I think PvE guilds can be categorized as follows (for raiding purposes). All numbers are approximate:

Royalty - The two hundred guilds which can clear everything, including Trial of the Grand Crusader.

The Aristocracy - The three thousand guilds which can defeat at least one boss in TotGC--or some Ulduar Keeper hard modes--and thus are working their way through hard modes.

The Gentry - The ten thousand guilds which can defeat regular Trial of the Crusader, but haven't been able to advance into the hard modes.

The Bourgeoisie - The next ten thousand guilds which are working their way through Trial of the Crusader. Also includes those guilds working on Naxxramas and Ulduar. Basically any guild that is still working on normal difficulty content.

The Proletariat - Our beloved casuals. All the other guilds which are levelling or making alts or doing 5-mans, and haven't really gotten into raiding yet.

Now, his particular point in the post can be summed up with the following quote:

The real problem is that the Gentry is currently too large. Too many guilds are in that gap between hard modes and regular modes. It needs to be shrunk from both ends. The difficulty of the first two bosses in TotGC should be reduced a little bit, and the difficulty of the last two bosses in TotC should be increased a little bit. That should create a more gradual path.

This in particular is the point that drove me to start blogging my opinions on the WoW world and it's social climate.  I believe that in part this is a bit misguided.  In reality what is causing the issue is not the size of the step between normal and heroic (that step is meant to be a deterrent against 'casual' raiders), but the slope before it.  The difference in difficulty over the course of an instance has become to shallow in slope.

For example, in Ulduar, Flame Leviathan is one of the easiest boss fights I've ever seen.  Ignis, XT, Razorscale, Kologarn, Auriaya, and arguably Iron Council (And Vezax, come to think of it), though, are all roughly the same level of difficulty.  There's no scaling, no slope.  Ulduar is subdivided into roughly 4 'zones' of difficulty:

Free Loot - Flame Leviathan (and arguably Ignis)
Mild - Ignis, Razorscale, XT, Kologarn, Auriaya, Iron Council, Vezax
Moderate - Hodir, Freya, Thorim, Mimiron
Hard - Yogg

Mimiron slightly bridges the gap between Moderate and Hard, and Vezax and IC slightly bridge the gap between Mild and Moderate, but for the most part, there's no scaling of difficulty.  The instance is roughly the same level of difficulty until you reach the Keepers, where it increases a bit but is relatively the same between each, then increases again noticeably for Yogg.

In contrast, Naxx, while overall a remarkably easy instance, has the scaling desired (as well as increasing gear quality to match).  The first boss of each wing is easy to the point of a brand new group with only moderate knowledge of the mechanics can likely defeat the encounter with not more than 1-2 wipes, if any (Patchwerk being the exception here).  The middle bosses often are more tests of coordination than anything else and are somewhat more difficult, but still easily defeatable.  The final boss, though, often has mechanics that the group must be watching carefully for to avoid wipes, increasing the overall difficulty.  In other words, the final bosses of each wing felt 'final'.  Once a raid got beyond all 4 of the wings, though, they entered the Frostwing Lair, where the difficult took another jump in Sapphiron, and yet another in KT.

This is the instance design I think is lacking in the latest tiers.  Ulduar I've already explained, but it's even more apparent in ToC.  On normal mode, Northrend Beasts is a remarkeably easy fight, Jaraxxus is a mildly easy fight, Faction Champs (until the recent nerf) was quite difficult, and now is still moderate in difficulty, Twins are a flat playplace, and Anub is mild to moderate.

In ToGC, Northrend Beasts are extremely difficult, arguably the second or third most difficult of the five encounters in the instance, serving as a gear check.  Jaraxxus serves as a dps responsiveness check, but once the dps can respond quickly enough to zerg the portals and volcanoes down in time, is barely more difficult than normal mode.  Faction Champs butts heads with Northrend Beasts for the second place difficulty spot, along with having an amazing amount of RNG difficulty.  Twins, just as in normal mode, are merely a playplace, with hardly any difficulty involved.  Anub is a straight and sudden cliff in difficulty, requiring a great deal more focus and performance from the guild.  In essence, ToC is a rollercoaster of difficulty where Ulduar is a very shallow staircase.

They should instead be ramps.  T6 was a remarkable example of this, especially Black Temple.  In both T6 instances, the first boss, while relatively difficult, was still fairly mild.  From there, though, the instance increased in difficulty in an almost linear pattern, with each boss being noticeably but not unreasonably more difficult than the prior boss.  It wasn't unexpected for a raid to get lodged at a boss part-way through the instance for weeks or even months on end as their gear and skill grew to finally be able to overcome a boss, much like an incoming tide slowly overtaking a beach.

WotLK raids have lacked this very important quality.  In ToGC (and especially ToC), if you can get past Beasts, you can get to Anub without much issue.  In Ulduar, if you can get past Ignis or XT, you can get all the way to the Keepers (and likely even Yogg).  Blizzard has reverted to a mindset wherein the intermediate bosses in an instance should be interchangeable in difficulty, with only the final boss being an increase, and I believe that this specifically has resulted in a large amount of the 'WoW is too easy' cries of late.

However, I agree wholeheartedly with Larisa's point in the above linked post: if you've not cleared hardmodes, you've no business even thinking that WoW is too easy, much less spamming the forums with it.  I've done Anub'Arak in ToGC, and I can say quite honestly that while it's certainly doable, it's not a walk in the park by a long shot.

I'd also like to point out two posts that caught my (and many others') attention on the Dungeons and Raids forums.  I'll be discussing the points brought up in them in my next post:

Lets Talk About Modern Boss Design
The Price of Accessibility in Raiding