Get set up for your attack run....
Here we go again, kids. Back into MC. We've made "some special modifications" to our raiding calendar, beyond this month, and beginning with September are going to be headed to the 40man instances on our prime-time nights of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. This is to maximize raid attendance for nearly everyone that wants to go. Worst case scenario, the inclusion of a Standby list on the signups page on the forums means that there can be an impromptu ZG run that forms from those that weren't able to make it into MC on a given night.
This brings me to an interesting thought, though, and it's one that I've mulled over quite often. RPG Outfitter says that we have 88 lvl 60s. Almost a solid dozen of those are alts of 60 mains. (Agnok, Kristyn, and Shendo being the chiefs of sinners :p) We'll go over the top and say that we have 70 mains. Not everyone can all be on at the same time, but we're looking at 40 signed up and 4-12 standbys. This obviously means that we're good to go for the main group, should someone need to bow out at the last second. In something so large of scope as MC (and upward) it is certainly the case that no one person, no matter how well geared they might be, is going to make or break a raid like this. My concern, however, comes from the question of what happens when our internal publicity becomes so contagious that we have 5, 10, 15 regular raiders that happen to be displaced by the enthusiastic ranks of the newly-minted 60s? Having watched the signup patterns following almost the entire Zul'Gurub progression, I caught on to an ebb and flow of interest based on what sort of success we were having with each boss, down the line. Venoxis' going down was pretty much a given, once I hit 60 and started raiding. Jek'lik was usually taking the entire evening after Snake was offed, and even in my experience, suffered many resets and numerous waves of bats before she fell to us. I was there for the first kills on Bloodlord, Spider, Panther, and Tiger, however, and once we'd take down a new boss, the signups would go quickly for the following week. Thay would have his badass panoramic trophy shot of us standing over the boss, and the interest would be renewed.
We've had evenings where we've taken nearly half of a new group into ZG, and I'm thinking that even then, we were fine. We did Snake and Bat, but managed to stumble on Spider, if my memory serves me correctly. There reaches a point when gearing and experience with the instance surpasses seeing the dungeon with "new eyes' and being armed with a willingness to learn. That's just the way the game works, and there' s nothing wrong with finding yourself on either side of that equation. We've all been there and will find ourselves there again and again with each boss on our progression through MC and beyond.
To be sure, they have every right to sign up for a particular raid, should the signup sheet go up when they're on the forums, but I'm just curious as to the cumulative effect of players en masse that haven't braved the gauntlet of the nightly set piece runs, ZG progression, etc. Would it stand to encourage newer players to follow the path that we have in our gearing discipline? Does it really even matter, given that any boss you take down with 25-40% new players means that the group is going to be better geared one way or the other, coming out of that evening's encounter? I don't believe that this really has everything to do with gear, to be honest, but with warriors being the most gear-dependent class in the game, you might imagine that it's going to flavor my outlook a bit. It's more a function of the team-building and cameraderie that develops when you put your heads together collectively and overcome something sinister and malevolent that wants to eat you, than the drops themselves, but I daresay that the loot doesn't help.
I'm just wondering would it help if we toyed with the idea of setting up some sort of minor league circuit that we encourage the new 60s to be running while they're a new 60? What about an "attunement to 60" phase that lasts for your first month after dinging where you work on the endgame quest chains, do 20 man raids, etc, exclusively before jumping into MC/Ony with both feet? We already have a class-based reservation system in our forum signups. Would a cap on one first-timer per class per run serve dual duty of getting the newer raiders acclimated to our endgame insanity, while keeping a veteran corps largely intact, providing for much smoother sailing for the group as a whole?
I ask about this from looking back at what those of us who have been raiding the UBRS/ZG/AQ circuit for months have done, ourselves. This isn't to buy the existing raiding group time to have our way with MC, or be spared the indignity of explaining a particular boss fight again. It's quite to the contrary. The only reason I would hope that our newest 60s would follow the progression regimen that we have endured is for the simple fact that we've submitted ourselves to it, and admittedly, we've done all right.
I'm likely being paranoid/ overly concerned for the experience of those new to the endgame. At the same time, I'm also very protective of the dynamic that we have going on in our fairly static raid party. Rather than being xenophobic about monkeying with our existing chemistry that we have, I'm far more focused on what we can do to make what we have done so far as duplicatable as possible, allowing us to multiply our successes among our newest members at the top of the food chain.
/Cast EndConcernedBigBrotherRoutine (Rank 7)
This brings me to an interesting thought, though, and it's one that I've mulled over quite often. RPG Outfitter says that we have 88 lvl 60s. Almost a solid dozen of those are alts of 60 mains. (Agnok, Kristyn, and Shendo being the chiefs of sinners :p) We'll go over the top and say that we have 70 mains. Not everyone can all be on at the same time, but we're looking at 40 signed up and 4-12 standbys. This obviously means that we're good to go for the main group, should someone need to bow out at the last second. In something so large of scope as MC (and upward) it is certainly the case that no one person, no matter how well geared they might be, is going to make or break a raid like this. My concern, however, comes from the question of what happens when our internal publicity becomes so contagious that we have 5, 10, 15 regular raiders that happen to be displaced by the enthusiastic ranks of the newly-minted 60s? Having watched the signup patterns following almost the entire Zul'Gurub progression, I caught on to an ebb and flow of interest based on what sort of success we were having with each boss, down the line. Venoxis' going down was pretty much a given, once I hit 60 and started raiding. Jek'lik was usually taking the entire evening after Snake was offed, and even in my experience, suffered many resets and numerous waves of bats before she fell to us. I was there for the first kills on Bloodlord, Spider, Panther, and Tiger, however, and once we'd take down a new boss, the signups would go quickly for the following week. Thay would have his badass panoramic trophy shot of us standing over the boss, and the interest would be renewed.
We've had evenings where we've taken nearly half of a new group into ZG, and I'm thinking that even then, we were fine. We did Snake and Bat, but managed to stumble on Spider, if my memory serves me correctly. There reaches a point when gearing and experience with the instance surpasses seeing the dungeon with "new eyes' and being armed with a willingness to learn. That's just the way the game works, and there' s nothing wrong with finding yourself on either side of that equation. We've all been there and will find ourselves there again and again with each boss on our progression through MC and beyond.
To be sure, they have every right to sign up for a particular raid, should the signup sheet go up when they're on the forums, but I'm just curious as to the cumulative effect of players en masse that haven't braved the gauntlet of the nightly set piece runs, ZG progression, etc. Would it stand to encourage newer players to follow the path that we have in our gearing discipline? Does it really even matter, given that any boss you take down with 25-40% new players means that the group is going to be better geared one way or the other, coming out of that evening's encounter? I don't believe that this really has everything to do with gear, to be honest, but with warriors being the most gear-dependent class in the game, you might imagine that it's going to flavor my outlook a bit. It's more a function of the team-building and cameraderie that develops when you put your heads together collectively and overcome something sinister and malevolent that wants to eat you, than the drops themselves, but I daresay that the loot doesn't help.
I'm just wondering would it help if we toyed with the idea of setting up some sort of minor league circuit that we encourage the new 60s to be running while they're a new 60? What about an "attunement to 60" phase that lasts for your first month after dinging where you work on the endgame quest chains, do 20 man raids, etc, exclusively before jumping into MC/Ony with both feet? We already have a class-based reservation system in our forum signups. Would a cap on one first-timer per class per run serve dual duty of getting the newer raiders acclimated to our endgame insanity, while keeping a veteran corps largely intact, providing for much smoother sailing for the group as a whole?
I ask about this from looking back at what those of us who have been raiding the UBRS/ZG/AQ circuit for months have done, ourselves. This isn't to buy the existing raiding group time to have our way with MC, or be spared the indignity of explaining a particular boss fight again. It's quite to the contrary. The only reason I would hope that our newest 60s would follow the progression regimen that we have endured is for the simple fact that we've submitted ourselves to it, and admittedly, we've done all right.
I'm likely being paranoid/ overly concerned for the experience of those new to the endgame. At the same time, I'm also very protective of the dynamic that we have going on in our fairly static raid party. Rather than being xenophobic about monkeying with our existing chemistry that we have, I'm far more focused on what we can do to make what we have done so far as duplicatable as possible, allowing us to multiply our successes among our newest members at the top of the food chain.
/Cast EndConcernedBigBrotherRoutine (Rank 7)
posted by Voice by Ben at 7:02 PM
1 Comments:
I don't think Echuta ever suggested he wasn't going into instances with the newly-minted 60s. I've seen quite the opposite from most of the long time 60s in our guild. It's something that I think most of us have tried to do, kind of to pay it forward from the 60s who helped us thru when we came up.
Post a Comment
<< Home