After careful consideration I have changed my mind about the Normal and HC modes sharing lockout.
I no longer wish it to be so. If they share a lockout then people will want to run HC only and never go near a normal mode. This makes getting raids for alts with lower gearscore nigh impossible and thus making it restrictively hard to gear them up to be able to run HC:s themselves.
We already see this in Ulduar people don’t want to touch normals and basically all runs require 4.5k gs minimum thus making even Naxx geared alts usually without a group to go with.
Please allow us to run both normal and HC in the same lockout separately.
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Blizzard Headquarters now: “Alright guys, it was Serfin again in the forums, revert ToC lockouts back to normal immediately. Yea i know our intern has been working overtime on that project but we cant let a random guy at the forums down”
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So you looked at LFG one night, saw 3 groups doing only HCs and requiring 4.5k gs. Alright cool, nice to know.
If you don’t qualify for HC, don’t try to sign up for HC. Just cause you spent 5min looking for a group and couldn’t find what you needed doesn’t mean all groups are like that. Log on earlier, log on a few days earlier, stay in LFG and keep whispering all the people advertising their pug runs. Very few pug runs do HCs because most people who pug don’t have enough braincells to push buttons.
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If only we got the expansion as it was
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Thank you for sharing your thoughts on raid lockouts in TOC. It’s understandable that you’ve changed your mind about having Normal and HC modes sharing a lockout, as it can make it difficult for players with lower gearscores to find groups for Normal raids.
However, it’s also worth noting that having separate lockouts for Normal and HC modes could lead to players running Normal raids to gear up before running HC, which could result in some players feeling left behind.
Ultimately, it’s up to the game developers to decide how raid lockouts will work in TOC Classic, and they will need to consider the needs and preferences of the player base as a whole. It’s important to provide a balance between accessibility and challenge to ensure that all players have an enjoyable experience.
Thanks for your contribution to the discussion.
That’s a case with Ulduar. Wonder if that will be the case with much easier ToC. Especially after item level bump from Ulduar will make ToGC much more accessible. It might end up similar to current situation with HC+ where shared lockouts severely lowered the amount of Regular Heroic parties being formed.
tl;dr changing lockouts is another idiotic attempt at fixing what isnt broken, so bunch of muppets working at blizz can feel they are important …
all you had to do was release wotlk …
Sharing lockouts is needless change just for the sake of making changes …
They said they are doing this to fight fomo mentality, and then they boost HMs to give even better loot, so it hurts even more if players skip them and then add bait to HC+ that gives you raid worth of emblems every week, so you must do that daily or fall behind … and same thing will happen with next tier of HC+ too …
This will also force people to spam HC options, because you are shooting your own foot if you dont … we are seeing the same with Ulduar now, where people will rather waste 2 hours on wipes and then disband, than simply doing normal and moving on …
We have also seen the same with stuff like OS+drakes, good luck getting anyone to do +0 and we have seen the same in TBC, which they praised so much, with ZA, where ZA untimed runs were practically unheard of, and if you said you are doing untimed run, you basically admitted to being loser and noone would join your run …
ToC is also much simpler raid than Ulduar, after half a year (if they really want to make P2 super long for people to “enjoy” ulduar) of doing 10hour ulduar runs every week, people will suddenly walk up to “5minutes” ToC runs, do both IDs back to back and get bored … which will again lead to all the doom posts about how the game is dying, and to even bigger bleed of players, since ToC is really nothing to write home about …
Also one thing, that doesnt really concern me now, since I am not running guild.
But having 4 IDs, allowed us to progress through ToC much more easily and allowed us to run all kind of combinations for our groups …
25hc was usually kept for our main group and we could use lower difficulties to gear up alts and slower players who wouldnt normally get into raids … social pillars amirite ?
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But having 4 IDs, allowed us to progress through ICC much more easily and allowed us to run all kind of combinations for our groups …
25hc was usually kept for our main group and we could use lower difficulties to gear up alts and slower players who wouldnt normally get into raids … social pillars amirite ?
You only had 4 IDs in TOC…
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Yeah thanks for noticing, my bad … I wanted to add one more paragraph about ICC so my brain wandered off …
Wait, aren’t those shared lockouts going to be on ICC system, thus being able to switch difficulty mid-run as we please (with exception for Anubarak requiring previous bosses to be done on hc to be able to do Anub hc)? That alone makes it possible for casual players to form a group. Just do what you can on hc and then switch the difficulty to normal and finish the rest.
No. You have to chose one. HC or Normal. You wont be able to switch mid raid as you used to.
Generally agree with this, TOTC is a short raid and was a big catchup phase pre ICC. People did burn themselves out gearing alts but that’s their own choice, my guild did 10m HC and 25man normal each week + whatever 25m HC we could manage.
With Ulduar loot being way stronger this time people will vastly overgear TOTC going in, causing raid clears to be in the sub 30 min range. For the sake of pugging and the casual game, the way it was in original WOTLK is actually better, but this changed in ICC and was unique to T9.
TOTC 25man normal is Naxx difficulty, it’s easier than Ulduar despite being the next tier. TOTGC is a massive difficulty jump from normal.
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Brian birmingham isnt here to kill all the fun in this game anymore.
We will get the original 4 lockouts if the new person in charge is of any competence
Well, that’s a huge shame because that would be the solution. Without ability to switch difficulty back and forth mid raid, the situation (especially in PuGs and casual guilds) will be exactly as OP describes. Not even saying they don’t have to implement anything new, we are going to have the “switch difficulty mid raid” system in P4 anyways.
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Yeah taking into account Ulduar Gear Ilvl Bump those that will grab that gear will be able to move straight to ToGC. How well it works we see right now with Heroics and Titan Rune dungeons where the latter canibalized in the former. Those geared/skilled enough will not touch regular difficulty. Which will screw up those that would want to catch up.
Wdym you kinda gotta still farm ulduar cos of some bis items such as flare. Also toc is imo one of best raids in the game and everyone i know is looking forward to it since ulduar is trash as expected.
Has anyone seen any “blue” information about this topic. Phase 3 is surely closing in by now and it would be nice to know what kind of phase my 13 alts are going to have 
I mean they say alot and end up not doing it in regards of wotlk classic.
One example is that they said they would put all badges on only heroism and valor throughout the whole expansion. Guess what? did not happen.
So the shared lockout might have also just been more talk than anything. Just wait for the ptr.
They were also talking a lot about HC+ and guess what? It happened. You never know… They don’t do “easy and probably good” stuff but end up implementing damaging stuff which also took some work.