Nov 09
19
Icecrown Citadel and the army that couldn’t
New information about Icecrown Citadel is out, and I must admit that I am a bit baffled about how they wish to release it, and how they wish to limit some progression fights with tries. I can see the argument from both sides, but on the lore part they explain it as “The Ashen Verdict will have expended their resources for the week and must withdraw”.
Quite frankly, if the Ashen Verdict is having problems continuing the siege on Icecrown Citadel, then maybe they shouldn’t have their forces slaughter each other in Trial of the Crusader. For the past few months, I must have killed over thirty alliance NPCs each week (2x 6 from 10 mans and 2x 10 from 25 mans). Now, unless The Ashen Verdict turns up with a couple of thousand NPCs, I really think they could have benefitted from these 300+ NPCs we have killed, not to mention all the players dissolving in Acidmaws spit. On top of that, it seems strange to stop in the middle of a good siege, just because they have exhausted their resources…
To give you the rundown, Icecrown Citadel will be released in four sections. The first will contain four bosses which we may kill as we wish. After “several” weeks, they will release the next wing containing three bosses, and the end boss of that wing – Professor Putricide – will only be accessable for five tries. After “several” more weeks, a new part will be released along with two new bosses, and we get another five tries that we can use to kill the Professor and the end boss of the new wing, Blood-Queen Lana’Thel. Finally, after more waiting, the final part will be released, and we have a total of 15 tries to down the Professor, the Blood-Queen and The Lich King.
What this means is that we will probably be pretty decent at, or at least close to, killing the Professor when the next comes out, giving us 10 tries on the Blood-Queen, assuming we don’t wipe. By the time we face Sindragosa, we should be able to get to her without too many wipes, giving us 15 tries on her, and the remaining tries can be used on The Lich King. But if we wipe 5 times on the Professor, we are down to 10 tries on either the Blood-Queen, Sindragosa or Arthas.
From this, I assume that even if we spend all our tries on one boss, we may still access the other bosses, that isn’t included in this special system, as long as Professor Putricide doesn’t block the progression. If we are talking about wings such as Naxx, we should be able to bypass him and go for the bosses leading up to Blood-Queen Lana’thel, once they are released.
So what does this all mean? Well, on one hand, it means that we will be facing new challenges before they have precise, well made guides. That should make raiding a bit more fun. On the other hand, we show less reckognition to the guilds that are able to bring the High Bosses down, because they can’t progress, and by the time the new bosses are released, other guilds might have the first bosses on farm, making everybody equal. I don’t really mind if guilds like Ensidia wishes to raid 14 hours a day – let them have their fun. But once that final wing gets released, you will have hundreds of hardcore guilds gunning for the first Arthas kill, even though a handfull of them got to that point well before the other guilds. It seems a bit unfair to them.
And I am not sure I am too fond of getting another staged raid instance. It made sense with AQ40 (that had to be unlocked) and it was fine with Sunwell (where the bosses was insanely difficult and Black Temple was still interesting), and i suppose it does make sense to release the final raid instance a bit at a time, to extend the lifetime of the raid. But we have been rotting around with Ulduar for many months now, and TOTC was released over four weeks for just five bosses. And we have been clearing that (almost) four times each week now. Nothing is left in Ulduar, other than a few drakes. My guild still need to kill Anub’Arak on heroic, and there are plenty of drops we want from TOTGC25 aswell, but we are giving away a lot of items from normal 25-man already. Heck, we are giving out trophies to offspec now! So I am a bit annoyed by the fact that we will only have access to four bosses from the beginning, and then three more “several weeks” later.
Then again, I raid because its fun, and because I enjoy the social aspect. I will still be raiding, regardless of any restrictions they put on Icecrown Citadel.
