Greedy Goblin

Monday, July 5, 2010

Experience kills bosses

This form of naysaying is more advanced than the "u need 5.8K gs to do naxx lol". It claims that gear is merely a signal for "experience". "Experience" is not the same as "skill". "Skill" is something you have or have not. Experience is something that no one has at the start and gather with time. The basic idea is the same: "no one is responsible for his results, they are subjects to things out of our control". This is "play time" in an MMO. The social myth says time makes you successful player, not effort or brain.

These people use to claim "you just kill bosses in blues because you have killed them lot of times with your mains". For them, we send these lovely postcard:

We started with 9 people (damn soccer championship), and just when the 10th man arrived other had to leave. Half an hour later he could return and finally we could raid normally. Yet we killed 2 bosses in Ruby Sanctum, the latest raid instance, on the first week. It took 11 tries, but Baltharus the Warborn, the slayer of "LFM RS 5.8K+ or no inv" pugs was (were?) on the ground. It needed lot of thinking. Their DPS is equal to Festergut with 2 inhale. There are 2 of them and they are going to live for 2 mins, so don't even dream of cooldowns. Finally I sent every living body with healer offspec to heal and killed him with 2 tanks, 5 healers, 3 DPS. The other dragon was 2-shotted.

Again: in the first week, without more than 1 kill experience for everyone, in the most unnerfed state of the most recent raid instance, Undergeared, the 3300GS blue-only guild killed 2 bosses from 4. And we had only half raid time, since we were 9-manning the first half. We lacked warrior or warlock for +HP (and stance-dance for the third boss).

Next week: Halion will hit the ground. Soon the naysayers will have no ground left. The "experience" is a myth. It's true that your skill increases over time. However the time needed is not 7 raids a week for months. It's only a few wipes long, barely more than an hour. Everyone has the time to kill bosses and everyone has the gear. People just lack skill, or the ability to leave their M&S "friends".

------

The PuG update: after I went to sleep, the others continued ICC. So there are other raid leaders, unlike in normal guilds the raids are not in the hands of a few choosen. You can also be raid leader! Join!

44 comments:

Victor Praxedes said...

the naysayers are running out of fuel. well well, you guys did a great job downing current, unnerfed content in blues, i'm impressed. keep 'rolling'

bakes said...

while the experience of a player does in fact fulfill a major role there is absolutely no way you can argue that skill is no way that you argue the skill of a player is an enigmatic innate quality.

for example;
i play a hunter. was kiting an innate skill of mine? no. shoot'n'scoot? no.

these aspects of my play style were introduced with experience directly feeding into my new "skill" so trying to argue that these two aspects of the game are at all different is like trying to argue with the 5.8 GS kids.

but regardless...i love your work. keep it up

Anonymous said...

Halion is kinda tough.

I would like to see your project succeed but... and I baulk at this because I believe your project has merit - it will be a long fight if it succeeds.

Whilst Halion does not have an enrage timer, he hits damn hard and damn fast. As an idea, when in the Shadow Realm on 25man, a 46k unbuffed tank with 71% melee damage reduction from armor can be killed in abour 5 seconds on phase 3. This is due to the mechanics of the fight.

Phase 1 and 2 are simple enough, but phase 3 has very little room for error. And Halion has a very fast swing timer, as well as hitting hard.

Your 2 tanks/3 dps/5 healers would probably work but given that the DPS needs to be evenly spread across both realms in P3 a 2/4/4 situation would probably work better.

Be slow and controlled with your DPS in P3 and you should be OK - even though it might take a while.

Good luck with it.

Anonymous said...

great job, keep it up

Anonymous said...

If you can down Halion without any kind of nerf or change, I will be amazed. Our guild had some serious problems with him, and we just got kingslayer.
I am ashamed.

Drakenrahl said...

Overall halion is fairly easy and could be done with 0 dps in theory, however one thing that could be a problem is simply the longer it takes to kill him the more time you have for someone to get nailed by teh lazors or endup DCed somehow. These things shouldn't happen but we all know they do and the longer you spend fighting him the larger the window of oppertunity (spelling?) gets.

John Newhouse said...

This is just amazing.

ardoRic said...

After doing 2 bosses in RS with my blue geared shaman in a blue geared raid I went to RS with my 5.7k GS resto druid. Formed a pug from trade. You'd think a 4.9k-5.9k GS group would have a much easier time than a blue geared group. "LOL"

We killed Saviana Ragefire, and only after getting someone who could dispel enrage. On Saviana's enrage there's a 6k/2s fire aoe tick. That's 30k raidwide dps which it seemed I had to heal alone (even when there were 3 other healers), where I had one of those "maybe I need more gear" thoughts.

But on my druid I can't heal 30k raidwide dps... the other healers were obviously slacking.

Then we went to Baltharus and even with 4 healers tanks were dying. Called it after 2 hours and only one boss down.

Melees standing in cleave. Had a couple.

People pulling trash packs (who were really far!) alongside bosses, yep we had it.

Skull dying last? I began to feel that skull was synonym for "don't touch this mob".

A group of 4.9k-5.8k GS couldn't down what a group of 3.3k GS did.

Ula said...

I'm glad we don't have to kill Baltharus again next week. To me, it felt like the first time that a boss basically screamed "I am not tuned for blue-geared tanks". Luckily he doesn't come with a tight enrage.

@Narx I'd like to mention two things. First, Halion (apparently) hits significantly less hard on 10-man. I assume this is because under normal circumstances you run 10-man with three healers while learning the instance, and having Halion hit somewhat hard would basically force two healers in both zones.

In addition, he does not hit very fast by himself, but he does parry-haste, which can be problematic in the twilight realm, as melee maneuvering during Twilight Cutter may accidentally enter Halion's frontal cone and cause additional parries. If multiple melee do this, he'll practically be continuously hasted in a 25-man.

With healers having to move during Twilight Cutter as well, I reckon we can just have the twilight tank stop attacking to avoid causing any parries whatsoever.

Plus, with a 2/4/4 setup we'd probably keep Halion on 50/50 corporeality all day long, keeping damage stable.

That said, Zarithrian was causing some grief with his de-aggro during the fear shennigans, so let's get past him first. Gevlon's post didn't mention it, but tanks did live through fears even when the General didn't suddenly rush for a random person who got a "lucky" resist and adds died in a timely fashion, so he should be doable.

Anyone else find themselves continuously referring to Halion as a she? I can't seem to wrap my head around this male pink dragon thing, apparently.

CETT said...

@bakes: I agree that skill didn’t teach you to kite. However, the difference between a skilled player and one without skill is that a skilled player will be able to kite again and again without making mistakes. Luck will sometimes make a player without skill a successful kiter, but only sometimes.

Take one of the warlocks I raid with. So far he has participated in 11 kills of Blood Prince Council(H). On our first attempt last night he still took a kinetic bomb straight to the face. Didn’t even try to move. If 10 previous kills aren’t enough (plus normal mode), then I fail to see how much experience is needed to compensate for lack of skill.

Anonymous said...

update: after I went to sleep, the others continued ICC. So there are other raid leaders [...]
This may be true, but still there's only one ICC10 raid each week and people wait for you to lead it.
Nevertheless, we do need more people to get a second raid going, as people currently are being benched even though that doesn't fit into the guild's intentions (because the alternative is joining a real pug and possible lose your ICC raid id to a bunch of idiots).
Same goes for RS10, everyone gets saved on wednesday and the days after it's no longer possible to get a guild raid going.

So dear readers, please transfer a level 80 and join us. You won't be disappointed :)

Fetzie said...

While experience might not kill bosses, it does mean you kill the boss quicker.

For example:
Marrowgar = Jalazzi (zul aman), Leotheras and supremus. Jalazzi for the saber lash mechanic, Leotheras for the charging around whirlwinding, supremus for the fire pathing.

Halion = Kalecgos. If you did Kalecgos back in the day, you pretty much know the halion fight before stepping into the instance.

If you can recognise an ability quickly then you can devise a tactic to counter it. Whether it is something as mundane as "interrupt the 60k frost bolt" or as sophisticated as iceblock deployment at sindragosa.

I know that I find new bosses easier when they have a mechanic that I recognise. Because then I can, on the fly, tell my group how to avoid the damage, to group up on a meteor strike to move to a different location or simply when it is best to blood lust.

Congratulations to the RS kills

nonameform said...

Been to RS with my guild last night. We moved counter clockwise, killed some thrash, a mini-boss and started wiping on another thrash pack (the one with commander or whatever mob's name is). I believe we wiped 3 or 4 times on a single thrash pack (thanks to Dispersion, it cost me 0 gold). We had to actually CC the commander with Hibernate as the buff he was providing was wiping melee team in around 2 seconds due to constant shockwaves.

Hallion was a bit easier though. We did wipe a few times due to people dying to the cutter, but as soon as people stopped doing that, he went down the first time we reached phase 3 with enough people alive. I did made some silly mistakes like trying to cross the cutter without Dispersion or standing in front of Hallion after the breath and waiting for portal to spawn (oh, hello cleave!), but apart from that encounter is pretty easy as long as people can stop DPS in phase 3 to let the other side catch up with them.

It does seem to me that as long as you keep corporeality at 60%, people in shadow realm will have easier time staying alive due to higher damage being done in physical realm, where not much is happening anyway. We were going 50-60-50-40-50-60-50-40% on corporeality all the time, as it seems that as soon as one side stops damage, the other side not only catches up, but also gets a lead. Maybe with all melee team it's actually easier to balance corporeality, but we were going with just 22 people, so we basically had to fill the spots with whoever was available. Too bad we didn't have a chance to try it on heroic due to low sign ups.

Neophyte said...

So dear readers, please transfer a level 80 and join us. You won't be disappointed :)

i join soon with a lev 80 warrior (called probably Neophytea)

Tonus said...

It's not that experience isn't part of what leads to success, but there are two things to keep in mind:

1- it's a very small part.

2- everyone can gain experience.

If it was just about experience, then a lot of guilds would be farther than they are now, because they have wiped dozens and dozens of times on tougher content. So why aren't they past it by now? Why aren't more guilds 11/12 heroic ICC?

After all, they have plenty of experience.

Jacob said...

You miss out one part with the experience though.

It is that the longer you play the game you will gather up experience around how it works and will be faster on determine how to compose a raid and use it to the fullest much faster than someone who have never seen it before. I still remember my first raid. Was for Onyxia and I had mostly troubles of just keeping myself alive and doing the right stuff instead of maximizing dps etc.

So experience still counts, even if you have never ever seen the boss before.

Then you will always have the retards, morons and slackers who never tries to understand the game and therefor never will get the experience.

Anonymous said...

You... what?

Are you implying that killing the miniboss in RS is, in any way, difficult? That would be like me congratulating myself for killing one of the Twilights in OS. In fact, it's the EXACT SAME THING. They're not bosses. They're the equivalent of Svala of Frostwing fame. They're emblem pinatas. There is a REASON there is not an achievement for killing them.

Anonymous said...

By the way, this is exactly why unionized labor is so awful. Almost all unions categorize employees based on the easiest thing to accumulate -- "experience". Rather than rewarding good, hardworking employees, those with the most "experience" are generally given the preferential treatment (higher pay, better benefits, first pick at vacations, etc).

Anonymous said...

@ Narx

Halion is a dance just like the rest. He has no enrage and as long as your raid can get through the dance they will succeed. Frankly I'm impressed with this ragtag blue group, but the fact remains that these encounters are 100% pugable and nearly laughable once you know the steps.

Warborn hits like a truck and it only takes one idiot to bring the raid to it's knee's. Well done.

ardoRic said...

Actually Svalna is a level 82 mob. The bosses in RS are skull bosses.

While they are mini-bosses, being in a last tier raid buffs them imensly. They have more health than most bosses in Naxx, hit harder and have boss-like abilities they do throughout their fight.

Mini-bosses in OS all did breath, void zones and had some weird thing going on in the twilight realm. These on RS are much more diverse.

While they may be emblem piƱatas for ilvl 264 raids, they certainly aren't for a ilvl 200 blue raid.

Your average pug will also struggle a bit with them, as I have seen in the first person. There is NO way to demean the accomplishment which is downing these bosses in blue gear.

chewy said...

I'm neither a nay sayer nor a yay sayer, just a blog reader.

It does amuse me how many people are here to tell you how good they are, how easy it is, and therefore belittle your achievement.

I've got some limited experience of the instance (one visit) and I think your achievement is worthy of praise.

Well done.

Louise said...

I'm not sure people lack brains when it comes to content, not all anyway. Some people ask for a ridiculous GS for heroics and easy raids, not because they're stupid, it's because they're lazy. They want it easy mode play.

They don't realise tanks only had 22k hp when they started heroics, now I see people complain if the tank has less than 40k hp.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I'm usually pretty polite about my nay-saying, but this is just silly. Simply put what you fought aren't even bosses, they're glorified trash. Easy trash at that. That's silly enough but what gets me the most about this is the gloating! You're all patting each other on the back like it's cutting edge content and claiming the nay-sayers don't have a leg to stand on! I simple can't understand how a supposedly skilled and rational group of people could be doing that.

This whole thing demonstrates exactly what I've been saying from the start, Undergeared simply does not understand the audience it's trying to reach. What you did in RS is like fighting the Twilight Drakes before Sartharion and claiming it's a great victory, it's simply not impressive in the least no matter what gear you're wearing at the time. You're doing things even "M&S" would consider simple, or did months ago in the case of ICC, and trying to use it to prove a point. It doesn't matter that the point you're trying to prove is right (which it pretty much inarguably is) since the methods you're using are wrong.

Basically at this point you've spent longer in ICC than the people you're trying to convince, and you didn't even manage to get past the RS trash to the boss by the time most people are already downing Halion. You're struggling against nerfed or easy normal mode content and trying to use it to justify a philosophy of skill and anti-social raiding. Well you're never going to now. If you ever could, you cannot now. It's simply been too long and anyone who might be convinced can simply look at how long it's taken you and compare that to their own progress. It doesn't matter that you're doing it in blue gear, or that you're only doing it one day a week, not using vent, etc. They'll simply see how long it took, and how many wipes, and dismiss you.

Treeston said...

@Nees: The problem with this is that we currently have 10-12 80s AT MOST online during raid times. Very often this means a very suboptimal setup even in the one group we run.

Most people that are joining the problem are rolling lvl1s or DKs and are still in the leveling process (we have 5 80s that dinged a few days ago, most are currently between 65 and 75).

If you want to make this project a real PuG experience, transfer an 80 or speedlevel a new char.

We also brought a fresh 80 to the raid on BPC and BQL.
Don't worry that you'll have to farm up gear - as long as you pull your weight, you're good to go.

Anonymous said...

If only these projects existed on US servers... mores the pity.

Armond said...

"...Baltharus the Warborn, the slayer of "LFM RS 5.8K+ or no inv" pugs was (were?) on the ground."

Baltharus was. The slayer was. Pugs were. However, the subject of the sentence is not the pugs; the subject is the slayer. When in doubt, cut out as much of the sentence as you can (in this case, "Baltharus was on the ground").

ardoRic said...

"If only these projects existed on US servers... mores the pity"

US-Forgotten Coast

They exist. They're just not very active... yet.

Join them and they might be able to do something.

Also I gotta say I absolutely love the "that's not really a boss" naysaying. Bosses have skull as their level, these dudes in RS do. They're bosses, no matter how you wanna look at them.

Kurt said...

@anonymous:

"Basically at this point you've spent longer in ICC than the people you're trying to convince, and you didn't even manage to get past the RS trash to the boss by the time most people are already downing Halion."

Do you have any evidence for this statement? Based on the comments for this forum, you appear to be one deluded individual arguing at length against everyone else. What a perfect opportunity for you to quote some statistics from a website that backs up your claims! Do you have any such statistics, or are you just arguing by repetition?

Lethorgic said...

@Anonymous No I think YOU are the one not understanding who our audience group is. Our target group is not the people in ilvl 264s who struggle with HC Sindragosa, our target group is the people in ilvl 245/T9 who claim they have not enough gear to go past 4/12 in ICC norm.

Sure top end guilds already cleared Halion long before Undergeared even set foot in RS. A large amount of players may have killed Valithria before we even attempted. This doesn't matter though. The point we are trying to make is not "look how cool we are killing stuff in blues", but rather "if you have more than 2 braincells, you don't need 5k GS to clear any raid content".

Sure in this post we are celebrating the kill of glorified thrash, but hard thrash nonetheless and they have wiped _many_ pugs ("5.7k+ GS or no inv") time and time again. The drakes in OS are not compareable, since they were aimed and tuned toward 900dps 0/0/71 spellpower-needing DKs. These minibosses on the other hand are current content.

Also, I doubt that your argument "most people are already downing halion" is really valid. Based on the fact that you are reading this blog, I would say you are at or near the top end guilds, surrounded by mostly skilled players, and thus you overestimate the amount of people that clear the content we are talking about. Remember that at least 2/3rds of all guilds are "freindly social" guilds who couldn't get a succesful Ulduar run off the ground if they tried.

I for one believe that most of the guilds by far, even those not completely filled with M&S, have not cleared Halion or even the thrash up to Halion, on the week of (EU) release.

Lethorgic said...

@Anonymous Also, you claim our method is wrong, but do you have any other suggestions?

M&S can not do what top raidguilds can. They see this and know this. Almost always the one scapegoat they turn to, the one thing Ensidia has that they do not, is gear. What we are trying to prove is you don't NEED gear, just skill, to succeed.

AFAIK this method (simply doing the content in low gear) is the best if not the only way to go. Of course this means we struggle with content, but the fact that we are able to clear anything at all says enough.

Sean said...

This whole thing demonstrates exactly what I've been saying from the start, Undergeared simply does not understand the audience it's trying to reach. What you did in RS is like fighting the Twilight Drakes before Sartharion and claiming it's a great victory, it's simply not impressive in the least no matter what gear you're wearing at the time. You're doing things even "M&S" would consider simple, or did months ago in the case of ICC, and trying to use it to prove a point. It doesn't matter that the point you're trying to prove is right (which it pretty much inarguably is) since the methods you're using are wrong.

I'm with the Anonymous on this one.

Firstly, I would like to contrast this project with your blue-Ulduar. Blue-Ulduar made the WoW community notice and was even featured in www.wow.com. Blue-Ulduar is a major event in WoW and I bet your achievement is still even linked to now.

It certainly had an effect on me. I've always thought gear was important, but realised that skill is the major factor; and that dead DPS or Heals = 0 DPS or Heals.

Fast forward to today, blue-ICC has not had the same impact on me as your blue-Ulduar. Ok, maybe that's because I was raiding hardcore and managed to hit 10/12 HM ICC10 and 8/12 HM ICC25; but looking at the amount of "naysayers", I believe the impact has not hit hard on them.

Sure, if you succeed, it may feature on a major WoW blog; but like the Rogue who solo'ed Patch25 it will remain a footnote of ICC raiding. Why? What was the difference?

When you cleared Ulduar in blues, guilds were struggling (and failing) through Ulduar. I bet 99% of these guilds were blaming the failure on gear. A blue-geared group who succeeded certainly made them notice.

The majority of the WoW raiding community have cleared ICC10 or are working on Sindra/LK. Maybe things are different on other servers, but in Frostmourne - US (Horde), I see a lot of "LFM ICC10, doing H lootship".

I don't buy your argument that killing Marrowgar puts you in the top 25% (or somewhere there). It's unfair to include non-raiders and non-80s in the statistics.

Unknown said...

"The composition was 3 tanks, 2 healers, 5 DPS. One tank for each add. Before you'd say it was "HC stacking", I'm sure that every guild has DPS paladins, warriors, DKs or cats who can talent to tanking and get a shield. The adherents doesn't need defcapped tank. This way the fight was totally controlled and easy. We usually had 20-25 secs on boss between add waves."
-Monday, May 24.

I haven't seen a good explanation how this isn't "HC stacking", which you avoided in previous posts? Or did you silently shift your position on it?



"It's true that your skill increases over time. However the time needed is not 7 raids a week for months. It's only a few wipes long, barely more than an hour.' -
You should tell that to guilds who worked on H LK25. It can take WELL over an hour to learn a new fight. I suppose there's an arguement for saying it's "too tightly tuned, and it's RNG", but i don't buy it. Hard fights take time to learn, longer than you're letting on. Paragon spent well over an hour or two on HM LK, considering they used 50+attempts.

It's a good achievement, but it sounds like you did cheese it raid comp wise, because they didn't put an enrage on it ( i think they did call them glorified trash, not bosses.Which would explain the oversight. Can't find a link though).

PS:
From what i've heard, Halion has an 8minute enrage, although it's possibly only on heroic mode (or false).


Also, why would i want to raid lead? it's tedious, and no benefit! Anyone who's done it for a long time, knows it's a thankless job.


Offtopic: do you have logs/ list of people attending The PuG ICC runs? I'd like to check a theory. I'm not sure if you read old blog posts, so i'm asking here.

Anonymous said...

"The point we are trying to make is not "look how cool we are killing stuff in blues", but rather "if you have more than 2 braincells, you don't need 5k GS to clear any raid content"."

Who has 2 braincells already know that. Who others won't care. Thus, you're really just enjoying yourselves. Because, in the end, no one will care about it. This whole experience will be a curious note on someone's blog and will completely forgotten before the next expansion.

RaduKing said...

I am leveling a warlock right now to join your ranks :)

mark said...

Good job on the mini bosses, a question though, did u use any strategy in particular to deal with the trash, my raid last night found It to be quite the bother, I think you'll do fine on halion (the easiest encounter in the place in my opinion, do you plan on doing 25 man RS anytime? Also, as one of the people who didn't think you'd be able to down fester, great job! I was very impressed!

-nataraj

Lethorgic said...

@Anonymous
Okay let's assume you are correct and we are only doing raid content in blue gear for our own personal challenge and enjoyment. Why then do people keep nay-saying? If no one but us would care, there would not be an argument in the first place. The fact alone that people were saying " can't be done!!1" is proof enough that there is an audience out there.

To be really honest, the fun raiding is actually the main motivation for me to do this. In my mains guild, we are at LK, I have obtained just about all the gear I can reasonably obtain, I have learned the fights and know what to do. Wiping time and time again due to other people's mistakes is not fun in such a scenario. My guild is just not so great at raiding, yet I can't leave them. The Undergeared project is a way to give myself a challenge, a form of escapism if you want to call it that.

For me the idea of "educating the M&S" was and still is an afterthought besides simply having fun raiding, yet the nay-saying continues. If the entire project gets forgotten after Cata release, is anything really lost? Did we "waste our time" clearing content in blues, if in the end it was fun doing it?

Anonymous said...

What a twisted argument, you're throwing up strawmen left and right while also pulling up old arguments about gear = time outside of their original context without accounting for how it's influenced by experience and skill in-game for most users.

Here you're claiming that the top-end ulduar hard modes guild that's been raiding ICC consistently lacks experience because it's a new raid. Really? All those dozens of hours of raiding elsewhere just disappeared because the dragon got a palette swap? That's an extremely narrow interpretation to take just because it's convenient for your argument.

I mean, you're still working off of the time = gear argument. That's in the context of people who don't raid, so they're working off of the time spent running heroics, committing time for raids, learning fights, downloading ui mods, and generally getting used to all the movement fights that don't occur while grinding levels. Of all of those, only running heroics is correlated with gear at all.

Once you've covered those initial investments and break into raiding, that context applies even less. Wipes don't generate loot, kills do, and a group that's able to down bosses early on and consistently will gear up in no time at all compared to most. Pug raid leaders are basically trying to make that skill -> gear connection since the people who wipe frequently will still be stuck in time -> gear from heroics and have a larger time window to filter them out. People capable of downing bosses yet have no loot from them are anomalies as far as the overall game is concerned.

The ridiculous gearscores also come out of PUGs, not guilds. You wiped 11 times on this boss and didn't kill Halion. Most PUGs fall apart by the second wipe because they don't want to be saved to a raid that can't kill the boss they want and could simply find a different raid. Guild raids only survive wipes because they interpret it as learning.

And even though you recognize that people will play better given practice and time, you decide to strawman by taking the extreme of 7 raids a week for no learning as typical. Skill is simply the useful part of experience that you can transfer to new contexts. You're trying to push the idea that they're uncorrelated and setting up the false assumption that everyone else thinks they're at a 0:1 ratio in the first paragraph then claiming they think it's 1:1 ratio in the final paragraph. That's just utterly silly, the sign of a decent raid leader is one that will maximize the learning out of each wipe and know to call it if the benefit isn't there, it's not one extreme or the other.

Where you're saying "look, we have no gear and downed this boss after a few tries, therefore I proved gear and experience is irrelevant" other people would say "he had people that raided harder content than any of my players and it took him 11 tries, which my pug wouldn't survive, he proved I need to stack gear to compensate".

Kurt said...

@anonymous
"Because, in the end, no one will care about it. This whole experience will be a curious note on someone's blog and will completely forgotten before the next expansion."

"You must become household names, more well known than Jesus, or you are failures", proclaims the ANONYMOUS poster.

Fail troll is fail.

In all seriousness, I've seen UG talked about on my /trade channel, I see them quoted on other blogs. Yes they are having fun, no they haven't cured cancer, but it's a better idea for a guild than any anonymous poster to this blog's comments section has posted recently.

Anonymous said...

@Lethorgic

That's fine, there's nobody who can say you're wrong for wanting to be a part of this if what you enjoy is the challenge of the fights. But that's not the point of the project. Undergeared started out with a very specific goal in mind. That goal isn't to have fun raiding in blues with a good group, that goal is to educate the skilled social players (specifically NOT the M&S, as has been said several times) that what's holding them back is not a lack of gear, but a lack of skilled and rational players. The end goal is for quality players to leave behind or kick out the M&S in their guilds and progress better. If that's not what you care about then fine, well and good, but that's what the project is about and it will never work the way things are going. The nay-sayers who claim you'll never beat each fight (which you then proceed to beat) are not people with a clear idea, for the most part they simply feel threatened. They don't want projects like this to succeed because it makes them realize that their own guild is full of failures.

@ Everyone else

Those of us who nay-say about the project as a whole DO have clear ideas about why it won't succeed, but nobody has yet tried to refute them. Often nobody even comments on it while people saying "lulz you guize'll never beat (Deathbringer/Rotface/Putricide/Blood Queen/Sindragosa) itz too hard" get tons of comments. The first time anybody really responded to me at all was this thread and I'm fairly convinced that it's because this was the first time what I wrote could be construed as an attack, so people got defensive and adversarial about it (not without reason though I suppose). However my points STILL go largely unanswered while people latch on to such insignificant points as the fact that I post anonymously, that I don't have my own similar project, demanding statistics on minutia, or just outright calling me a troll. I'm not the one making huge claims here, you guys are. If you want me to stop nay-saying then show some serious results! Link to places where people talk about you and accept your ideas, show guilds that progress faster after booting M&S based on your example, anything. Remember that the burden of proof lies on the people making the claim, not the people who say they're wrong. Prove your points, don't just claim I have to disprove them or else you're right.

Gevlon said...

@Last Anonymous: Google analytics says about the pages users access on my blog:
1 / (the main page, greedygoblin.blogspot.com)
2 /search/label/Undergeared
3 /2010/06/if-u-go-icc-in-that-lol-gear-bossz-will.html
4 /2009/07/about-page.html
5 /2010/05/great-news-everyone.html
6 /2010/06/pug.html
7 /2010/06/orb-whisperer.html
8 /2010/06/just-impossible-gas-cloud.html
9 /search/label/ThePuG
10 /2010/06/lack-of-feedback-and-progression.html

As you can see the viewers are interested mostly in the undergeared posts. Also, after something "impossible" killed, random views skyrocket. I practically doubled my subscriber count in a week when Ulduar was cleared in blues.

Of course you can claim that ALL my readers are a tiny drop in the 10M WoW player ocean, but as a blogger my means are limited. However I can prove that those who find my blog mostly interested in Undergeared and not in making gold.

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon

I'm fine with that, I know you have a lot of viewers and clearly a large number of them would be interested in the project, since it's a major theme on your blog. It's also true that even taken all together they're a tiny portion of the WoW playerbase, or even of the playerbase you're trying to reach. That's not an issue though if your project has the sort of success and impact you want. News of important things spreads fast, after all.

But think of this, everything you're trying to prove has already been proven, months ago, when you cleared Ulduar in blues and there wasn't any real change in raiding after that. It was a blip, in the background for most players who even knew about it, and it was much more impressive and relevant at the time than your current efforts. What you're doing now is more or less just a weak encore with a few more conditions tacked on, but do you think those conditions are going to seriously affect people's perceptions on your second attempt? Are you really going to get the massive increase in awareness of your project that you'd need? It's possible of course, anything is, but I really doubt it. I think that when you down the Lich King (and note I say 'when' since I have every confidence you can do it) you'll find the same thing happening as last time, a handful of people take your ideals to heart and change their behavior but the vast majority just carry on as they were.

None of this means that I don't respect your project or your ideals, I do, even if I don't agree with everything you say. I simply don't think you can have the sort of broad impact you seem to be hoping for.

Avalonna said...

I am thoroughly impressed with what you are doing here. I really wish I could convince my guild to try this...it's not like we have anything else to do right now.

I think you will have NO issues outside of Heroic LK doing this, either. I can't offer up my main, but if you ever need a pally/shaman healer, hit me up. This seems like endless fun. Continue kicking ass!

-Avalonna
www.talesofapriest.com

Anonymous said...

ahahahahahaha

I went in a group of 6K+ GS kingslayers to RS25 and we wiped six times because people chained conflagration so watching some folks in blues do this is awesome

Anonymous said...

Sorry to say this. But i dont think you are amazing....i Think blizzard have failed compelety in raid balance.

Sure you are all good players but there is something wrong when you can do raids in full blue