With prior PvE–centric MMOGs, and more specifically EverQuest in particular, there was a clear delineation between the raiding haves and have-nots. Those that had the fortitude to weather the extreme time commitment required to accomplish most end game tasks were easily recognizable on the server with a simple glance. In WoW the availability of near end game gear to all players, through nearly all means, can create confusion when trying to separate those that have reached the pinnacle and those that merely only want to look like they have. The achievement system that was introduced has done a nice job of making this clearer to both guild recruiters and the public at large, but with so many guilds having done such a large portion of the current content it is still hard to determine if players are overgeared and underskilled as discussed a few weeks ago.
The Plane of Sky was one of the first real progression style instances and was a series of large floating islands that required your raid to complete events to unlock the next island in the chain. The typical “hardcore” style PoS raid would usually go in on a Friday afternoon or evening and play continuously in some form or another until late Saturday or early Sunday. Many raids would set up sleep rotations to keep members safe while the constantly respawning trash was kept clear. Necromancers were a must have here to summon the large portion of the raid from one island to the next, as the keys to gain access were simply not easy to acquire. Keep in mind that this isn’t WoW style Warlock summoning, the only way for a necromancer to summon you was if you were dead. Couple that with EQs pretty harsh death penalty and you can quickly understand that the dedication required was really on a whole other level than most of us will tolerate these days.
My point here is this, back in those days if you saw someone running around with uberweapon_101 from Plane of Sky, you knew that they had earned it and that they probably had a serious addiction problem. With the current raid and gear climate it is harder to determine who will stick around for the three or four weeks of learning a boss like M’uru in Sunwell Plateau or who will suddenly have to stop raiding due to “personal issues”. No current game content, even with hard modes, has achieved the level of difficulty of the second to last boss in SWP and many hardcore raiders are wondering if Icecrown will achieve that level of separation difficulty. There are currently 450 guilds in the world that have cleared all current content with the exception of ToC 25 Hard Modes (which are sadly easier in most respects than Ulduar hard modes so expect that number to skyrocket soon), the number of guilds that successfully killed M’uru before the massive difficulty nerf was less than 20% of that. If Icecrown Citadel does bring the difficulty level of its spiritual predecessor how will it be received among the current player population?
Blizzard has always done a good job of managing the difficulty level of its raids proportionally, grooming players to ramp up for the next challenge by pushing them to play better and funneling them through progressively harder content (well except for 4/5’s of Hyjal and all but the last three bosses in BT last time, but hey you can’t win em all eh guys?). If past performance is truly indicative of future results then I expect Icecrown to be the “crowning” achievement in this expansion, but I also foresee that it will fall with a greater quickness and with less content nerfing than did Sunwell. With the seemingly limitless amounts of high item level gear available there will be less of a gearing roadblock than at any other time in the game’s history which will allow for harder content to be introduced and conquered, satisfying players and developers alike.
All in all it seems that these days just about everyone is a raider, and while the numbers of those that are the rare combination of dedicated and skilled or just too stubborn to know when to quit is still small, it is time to embrace the fact that it’s no longer an elite few that wear that mantle. Look on the bright side, now you and grandpa will have something to talk about around the table on thanksgiving. Until next week, stay safe and have fun in Azeroth!
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