Arthas is a 10 man now?

Q u o t e:
What are all the instances 5 man too?

No. All raid instances will have 10-man and 25-man versions. 25-man raids will more or less be considered heroic raids. The items obtained through the bigger raids will be more abundant and better quality.

Q u o t e:
Kalgan and those developers suck. Makes sense that Arthas who is WAAAAY stronger than Illidan who is 25 manned can be killed by a 10 man. No wait Sargeras will be one manned, and every instance will be one manned too. Also the old gods can be killed in 1 hit.
And the emerald nightmare is one hit and saurfang will now fall asleep in one hit!

Fighting Arthas with nine other people will be no trivial task. There are many players who haven't been able to clear Zul'Aman after working through Karazhan. Just the same, there will be several tiers of raiding before players are able to face Arthas. This fight will be the pinnacle in difficulty.

Q u o t e:
Our characters are supposed to be great heroes, not common footsoldiers.

If your ability to play the game can be likened more to a foot soldier than a great hero, I don't think you'll have to worry about how many people it will take to fight Arthas.

Q u o t e:
Blizzard say's making end-game bosses 10man, is so casual's can see the lore, biggest stinking pile of bull dung ever, no casual will see end-game, Blizz just trying to keep all the wannabes happy, keep them dollars rolling in, anyway they can.

It seems so many people really need to spin an epic yarn of hyperbole to make a point. I'm sure readers can handle it, but I doubt your keyboard springs can take much more. It'd be great to see more people raising concerns in a frank, constructive, and realistic manner.

Q u o t e:
I think you're misunderstanding me (or I'm misunderstanding you).

At a glance I thought your post I quoted was coming from the original poster of the thread. I apologize. I'm on board now. ;)

Q u o t e:
Nah, it won't be the pinnacle of difficulty.

Unless you throw in one of those lovely c**kblocks, as players refer to them as, to make it impossible to kill him.

If not, there's no way a 10 man boss could ever be more difficult than the same boss tuned for 4x the amount of players.

Let me clarify. Fighting Arthas with 10 people will be the pinnacle in difficulty for its category. Based on the first couple of sentences of my post you quoted, I thought it was inferred that the 10-man encounters will not be as difficult as the 25-man encounters. That does not mean they will be easy though, which is the point I was making.

Q u o t e:


Here's a concern - I'm not a great player. I'll never be a great raider. I'm pretty darn sure there's no way in hell that I'll ever see the main characters that Warcraft I, II, and III introduced in anything but a Youtube recap someone posts. What do you propose for a loyal customer who's interest grew through the three RTS classics, but who's play style and skill don't quite fit with the MMO you created to continue the story. BC set those concerns in my mind and WotLK is pretty much cementing them there. "Sorry bud, you're screwed". I think you could learn a lot from LotRO. It doesn't take an legendary equipped massive guild to progress through their Epic quest line - and group of players can do it. If you want to dial up the difficulty settings - regular, heroic, epic, legendary - to accommodate the varying skill levels or time commitments of your player base that's fine. With corresponding loot grades of course. I don't give a crap about loot - I just want to see the story. And my $15 a month is just as green as the next person's.

I think its about time to cash it in. There's no reason to keep chasing my tail in the vain hope anything will change. I'll just wait until Starcraft II and Diablo III are released and be grateful they're still single player.

I've been playing through Beta quite a bit. As you may be aware the level cap in Beta was not raised to 80 until last night, so clearly I'm not top level yet. Already I've been astounded by the epic feeling of the majority of the quests in the first few zones.

I can guarantee that you will not need to fight your way straight to Arthas to feel like your character plays an integral part in the story line surrounding the Dragonflight, the Scourge, and the Lich King himself. I can assure that you will not be partaking in quest after quest to kill X number of boars.

Many of the missions found in Northrend have a very unique and innovative feel, and I'm confident you will find this very entertaining. :)

Q u o t e:
Please tell me there's no poop quests this time around.

I wouldn't go that far. If you want a chance at Arthas, you gotta get your hands dirty. :p

Q u o t e:
Does ANYONE think this is a GOOD idea?!

Well, your opinion against it won't count each time you spam the thread. When you return to the forums, please do not duplicate your statements under the false pretense it will increase the validity of your assertions.

Q u o t e:
Is development that thin in resources that creation of dungeons are so limited that you are forced to change mathematics instead of textures?

What does this have to do with anything? We never said there will be less raid instances. There will now simply be a heroic/non-heroic element to raids as well as 5-man content. To look at this objectively I think will tell you more work is required, not less.

Q u o t e:
You're probably not even in favor of this idea, but it's your job to argue for it.

There's not a post I make that doesn't receive a similar response. I guess it's natural considering such an assumption would only benefit your argument. No, I'm in favor of this change. I don't do much raiding, and it's a personal goal of mine to fight Arthas, though probably not with 24 other people.

Q u o t e:
I do actually think this is a good idea overall, but it's also a very double-edged sword from a raider perspective. Instead of a unique 10 man instance then going into a unique 25 man, I get to do a unique 10 man then the same instance but geared for 25 people. In essence, I get to run the place twice as much each week as a regular player that's unable to do the 25 man version. I worry that this will lead to faster player burnout than anything else. It's like doing Karazhan, then doing 25 man Karazhan. Then when Zul'Aman comes out, I get to do a 25 man Zul'Aman. Yeah, it's tuned harder and i'm sure encounters will change somewhat, but it's the same place, ya know?

I'm glad you raised this concern. I strongly suggest you listen to the most recent BlizzCast episode. Jeff Kaplan specifically addresses this issue. Here is the excerpt to which I am referring from the transcript:

Q u o t e:
Bornakk: Some players felt that The Burning Crusade seemed to create something of a discontinuity in game progression. Is there a goal for the next expansion to be a little less jarring to raiding guilds and players?

Jeff Kaplan: Yeah definitely, my analysis of that question would be that first of all there was a change from 40 to 25 and we’re not doing a drastic change like that going from The Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King, there will still be 25 person content. It’s not like we’re adding a new number in there like 15 or 35 or something like that to mess with players. So I think that’s sort of the first part of the question, there’s nothing like that happening so that shouldn’t be jarring to guilds.

The second part of the question in my interpretation of it could refer to what guilds had to do to get into 25 person content which was go through the Karazhan dungeon to get attuned to eventually do the 25 person content. I think we definitely learned from that one and we’re going to make it so that if you’re a 25 person raiding guild right now in Burning Crusade and you go into Wrath of the Lich King, short of leveling up and doing whatever 5 person content you do with your group to level up and get geared up, we’re going to let you go right away into the 25 person content - we’re not forcing you through the 10 person content. Now with that said I think it’s a player misconception that there is this thing that exists only a 25 person raider and that person has no interest in 10 person raiding. I have a feeling many of the 25 person raiders will be engaging in the 10 person content and they’ll actually really enjoy it but they’ll be relieved to know we’re not going to force them through it by no means.

http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode4.xml