LFR and Normal should share lockout.

#1 - Aug. 2, 2012, 7:36 p.m.

What is the reason of LFR and normal difficulty not sharing lockout? When 10 and 25 were combined, one of the arguments was that running same content multiple times per week causes faster burnout. Those who were around during ToC (I was not) talked horror stories about clearing same boring room four times every week (have alts? Mua-haha, go there again). And had a breath of fresh air when they went back to Ulduar for Val’anyr. Now, we have same story, but not 10 and 25, but Normal and LFR.

“you don’t have to run it” – I do, and especially in MoP. While heroic FL items were better than average DS LFR, t13 set bonuses for some specs were too good to ignore. Trinkets from spine were better than most FL stuff. So we had to do LFR for some time, because that damn glove token never dropped. But in Mists there is a huge gap in item level between 5man heroics and normal raids. It is ok, and I am pretty sure we will kill most of MV bosses during second week even in blues, but when it come about last boss or heroic progress later, enrage timers will surely become an issue. So we will have to do LFR that will be released exactly week after normal. Meh... Saying that LFR is not mandatory for beating content (edit: faster than those you are competing with) is almost the same as saying “you do not need to get fire resistance gear for Molten Core”.

“you get same bonuses from normal and LFR” – yes, but with LFR I increase my chances to get the set bonus. If I want to see myself in the upper part of my realm’s wowprogress page, I have to maximize my performance. We cannot ask every serious guild on server not to use LFR.

“but making LFR share lockout will increase queue time” – well, there are lot of dead realms, that’s why Blizz improves xrealm stuff. Why not make LFR to queue people from several battlegroups?

“but without some competent people in LFR, casuals with low skill level will wipe and be frustrated” – just put more nerfs, that is not a problem. Make morchok stomp only a knockback, make yor’sahj purple debuff to stack up to 10, slow hagara ice walls, etc. Those who go to LFR to see content and/or get free purple loot will be happy anyway, they came not for a challenge.

I am no way a veteran player. I joined during late Wrath, and was in a casual guild until mid-t11. However, I read lot of stuff about old days. Consumables grind was not fun and it was removed in TBC. Resistance fights were not fun, and they were removed in WotLK. World buffs were not fun, and they were nerfed or abolished. Attunements were not fun, and they were removed. Four times per week ToC was considered to be worst raid ever (worse than Ulduar and ICC at least), so it became twice per week in t10 and once per week in Cata. I am not generalizing, some people preferred grind, resistances, attunements etc. However, the direction game is moving during last 5 years can be summarized as ”serious raiding success should be more based on player skill, not time spent on tedious stuff for preparation”. So, now we have LFR as a semi-mandatory raid preparation timesink. Why we have to do tedious things (LFR) to be competitive in fun things (Norm/Heroic raid)? Why LFR is a path of progress?

#59 - Aug. 24, 2012, 11:07 a.m.

It is indeed a possibility that we might make LFR share lockout with normal raids, but it is not something we are planning currently.

We have seen a lot of assumptions about how raid content will be run in Mists of Pandaria, and we find that many of these assumptions are based off of only one tier in Cataclysm, Dragon Soul, which happens to be something of an exception as it is the last tier of the expansion that also happens to be the only raid currently found in LFR. This just does not provide a very accurate means of measuring the way raid progression will work over the course of an entire expansion. Had the LFR been released from the launch of Cataclysm, and thus included more raids, things would quite possibly have been different than they are now.

We acknowledge that sometimes some raiders might feel obliged to run LFR for every advantage possible, but it isn't our intention that raiders should feel this way. We have not designed progression with the goal of making people feel obliged to continue running LFR for weeks and weeks on top of their normal progression.

A particularly stifling issue that would result from shared lockouts is the barrier to "upward mobility". Many players who primarily use LFR may occasionally join their friends or guildmates on a normal mode raid later in the week, or may want to try their hand in a normal mode PUG that offers better loot after they have learned the encounters in LFR. If LFR and normals shared a lockout, it would be impossible to do this, which we see as a problem, because we like the fact that LFR can serve as a gateway into organized raiding.