Can someone post, spoilered if necessary, a text summary of what happens in the Lich King fight?
While I haven't yet personally experienced the fight, I am "the guy" in my guild that goes over videos and talks to people who have done the fight so that the guild can have an understanding of the fight going into it. Here's what I have.
You arrive on top of Icecrown Citadel. Tirion Fordring is with you. Ahead of you sits the Frozen Throne, and looking down at you impassively the Lich King. Above him, chained to ice and obviously in pain, is the scorched and broken body of Bolvar Fordragon, charred beyond recognition. As you approach, the Lich King descends the stairs to his throne and mocks you, asking if he should lay down Frostmourne and surrender now that you have arrived. Fordring promises him a swift death. The Lich King assures Fordring that he will beg for mercy, and not receive any. Fordring gives the order to attack and charges. The Lich King immediately entombs him in a block of ice and engages the raid, promising Fordring that the LK will keep him alive to watch as he turns the raid into his minions, and remakes the world in his image.
Phase 1 begins.
The Lich King has a few abilities to start. He will cast Infest, an AoE which leaves a DoT on everyone until they are healed to 90% or higher, and which gets stronger the longer it remains unhealed. He also hits the tank with Soul Reaper, which is a massive hit that delivers another massive hit 5 seconds later. The OT needs to taunt him and the MT needs to be healed to full before that happens. LK will use these abilities throughout the entire fight. During phase 1 he will also summon ghouls and var'gul. The var'gul have a smash type ability similar to Anub'arak's Pound and Ingvar's Smash, except much more painful. During this phase, a raid member will occasionally be infected with Necrotic Plague. This deals 100k damage every 5 seconds for 15 seconds, and jumps to a new target if it kills its target. Needless to say, it needs to be dispelled - when it is, it will jump to a random target, either a player or a ghoul/vargul. Every time it is dispelled it grows weaker, and every time it finishes its duration/kills someone it grows stronger. Getting the plague onto the vargul is a pretty good way to earn yourself some more LK DPS time, which you'll need. Every jump of the plague increases the damage the LK does, however.
At 70%, LK runs to the center of the platform and begins to cast Remorseless Winter. The raid needs to immediately run out to the edge of the platform. As the cast goes off, the ice spikes erected at the corners of the platform are blasted off into space to let you know just how badass this spell is and just how much it hurts (And it does! About 15k every second if you're within 45y of LK). LK will start spamming a cone spell on random members of the raid. Periodically a Raging Spirit will appear, looking like one of the party members. They hit hard and do a cone attack of their own. Frost orbs will appear and move towards the raid - if they reach someone they explode, doing a knockback strong enough to knock you off the platform, so they have to be killed too. After LK sees this isn't working, he stabs Frostmourne into the ground, causing cracks to appear through the platform and all around the outer edge, glowing blue. The raid moves in, as the entire outer rim crumbles away. Phase 2 begins.
LK only gains one really notable spell in this phase, Defile. He targets someone and performs a 2s cast - at the end of the cast, a void zone is dropped on that player's current location. While not a big deal by itself, the damage done by the void zone, as well as its size, increase every time someone takes damage from it. If multiple people are in it, it will become very large, very quickly (That's what she said). LK will also call Val'kyr to his aid (1 on 10man, 3 on 25), who will descend, then dart towards a random raid member, picking them up and flying towards the nearest edge to drop them off to their deaths. If you have Defiles all over the middle of the room and you're all standing near the edge, you probably won't kill them fast enough to make a difference. Thankfully they can be snared and stunned.
At 40% the LK runs to the center and begins another Remorseless Winter phase. Thankfully the spell is so cold that it causes ice to stretch out from the platform, returning it to its original size. This phase is basically the same as the last Remorseless Winter phase. At the end the LK will shatter the platform again.
Shortly after beginning phase 3 LK will let you know that Frostmourne hungers and start to drain someone's soul. This deals a truckload of fucktons of damage, but if they survive they'll be transported inside Frostmourne. There they will find King Terenas Menethil, who is taking advantage of Arthas' shifted focus to destroy the Spirit Wardens keeping souls imprisoned within Frostmourne. If you're a DPS or tank you should aid him in blowing up the Warden he's fighting, if you're a healer you should heal him and let him kill it. The Warden should have its casts interrupted where possible, as if Menethil is killed you are proper fucked. After killing the Warden Menethil will free you and let you rejoin the fight.
The adds the Lich King summons in this phase are Vile Spirits. There are many of these (around 9 or 10 on 10man), and they float above the Lich King for a little while before they careen as fast as they can at a raid member and explode. Warlocks and shadow priests are pretty good at managing these due to their AoE, but you're probably going to get several of them exploding every time. From this point on it's a push to the finish. The LK still Defiles, Infests, and does that big tank hit, and still periodically sends one of your raid members into Frostmourne (and it really could be anyone at all, other than his main aggro target). Kill him before Vile Spirits, his damage, the enrage timer, and the Frostmourne room kill you.
At 10%, he kills everyone. He lets you know that he has no more questions or doubts, and that you are Azeroth's greatest champions, killing his greatest servants and his best tests. He thanks Fordring for training and delivering you right into his hands - Fordring will be rewarded, he assures you. He raises Frostmourne to the air and begins to channel a spell to raise your raid from the dead. Highlord Tirion Fordring utters a desperate prayer to the Light, in ALL CAPS, to give him one final blessing, and to shatter the iceblock that he has been trapped in this entire time. The block glows with Light, and explodes. Tirion charges forward, leaping up and striking Frostmourne out of the LK's hands with Ashbringer, shattering it. No more lives, he promises Arthas. Thousands of souls begin to twist and rise up into the sky, ensnaring the Lich King and trapping him inside a small cyclone of souls. King Terenas Menethil materializes, free at last. "It is over, my son," he tells him. "Rise up, champions of the Light!"
Terenas Menethil wants to ressurect you.
[Accept] [Decline]
Arthas is trapped, powerless, in the cyclone as you rez, letting the entire raid burn off the last 10%. Healers, tanks, DPS, throw everything you have at him, defeat him as you see fit.
I would actually be more inclined to side with the addon; I've run into many people who swear they are using the max rank, that they trained the max rank, etc; and then later they find out they had forgotten to train something or it's only in one spec that it's the wrong rank.
The one time I got rankwatched was when I was tanking and it turned out my consecrate was one level lower on my bar in prot spec than it was on ret spec.
I imagine it especially happens for people who have a lot of spells shared between specs, like rogues and hunters.
My GL found out last week thanks to someone's RankWatch that he'd been tanking for months with Rank 1 Devastate. Pretty successfully too. Though getting it to max rank helped a lot.
I've had people ragequit heroics because rankwatch was lighting up like a christmas tree on them. I may change it from tells to reporting in party chat - waaaaay to much fun for trolling.
haha, yeah
I did an entire run with some feral druid using downranked spells and getting tells from me every minute or so
It ended, OK, I queued for another one and he was there in the next run
I told him to port to moonglade and train (literally a 30 second endeavor), and he absolutely refused. I couldn't boot him because of the grace period, so I set rankwatch to send him tells with no cooldown every time he hit an ability and put him on ignore, then waited until he was second on aggro, divine shielded, let him die, and then we left him on the floor until he finally left
We had a guildie who still had rankwatch turned on during a raid (he normally uses it for heroics). It went off in raid chat for some reason. He was then forced to turn it off because one of our resto druids decided the best way to test the addon was to spam rank 1 rejuvs on everybody.
I've had people ragequit heroics because rankwatch was lighting up like a christmas tree on them. I may change it from tells to reporting in party chat - waaaaay to much fun for trolling.
haha, yeah
I did an entire run with some feral druid using downranked spells and getting tells from me every minute or so
It ended, OK, I queued for another one and he was there in the next run
I told him to port to moonglade and train (literally a 30 second endeavor), and he absolutely refused. I couldn't boot him because of the grace period, so I set rankwatch to send him tells with no cooldown every time he hit an ability and put him on ignore, then waited until he was second on aggro, divine shielded, let him die, and then we left him on the floor until he finally left
Awesome. Because being a silly goose bag is a great way to deal with other silly goose bags.
I can't speak for any other servers, but our BQL kill last night was our server 2nd, a week behind the #1 guild. May be a factor in the attempts removal from normal.
Reminds me of how Romans stuffed Ducks into Chickens and then the Chicken with Duck inside into Geese and cooked them together.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Yeah, like Turducken, but Romans didn't have turkeys.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I've had people ragequit heroics because rankwatch was lighting up like a christmas tree on them. I may change it from tells to reporting in party chat - waaaaay to much fun for trolling.
(ragequit tale)
Awesome. Because being a silly goose bag is a great way to deal with other silly goose bags.
The circle of goosebaggoosehattery continues.
Congratulations.
Well comeon man, I ran him through an entire run and didn't complain or give him any flack about refusing to contribute to the group (I did about four times as much damage as he did as the tank), and I didn't even put him on ignore because I was willing to run him through more stuff if I randomly happened to run across him again
Why is he even playing this game if he refuses to do his part? He should be out team-killing in an FPS where he belongs
The thing that gets me is he's feral which means he only has one rank of everything. That means he just plain didn't train his new skills, which is really fucking lazy. It's nothing like "oh, I trained my skills as my offspec and then forgot to update my main bars" it's "I didn't go to the trainer that all druids have a fucking port directly to because I suck"
Druids, Deathknights and Mages high enough to have capital city teleports really have no excuse. What's that? I need to respec? I'll just take a jump right to my bloody trainer that's entirely seperate from my hearthstone.
Shaman aren't far behind, having two hearths, but getting to Lagaran and then getting to portal again somewhere else isn't nearly as convenient as those three.
Which is a long way of saying "yeah, what a silly goose".
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
On Tuesday they're removing normal mode ICC's limited attempts, but I don't know if that affects anyone really since the only people I've heard of running into the limit had bugged encounters.
Good. The limit was retarded, and people were telling Blizzard that when they first told us the details on it like two months ago. Not sure why it always takes them so long to get their heads out of their asses about some of these things.
I don't think that was part of their original plan though.
If I had to guess, the kill rate is lower than they expected, or something like that.
It's because they finally realized having one pool of limited attempts shared across both normal and heroic modes and across all the major bosses is very retarded.
They didn't finally realize that. That's how ToC was setup.
ToC normal didn't have limited attempts, and even if it did, they wouldn't be shared with ToC heroic attempts, so, no, it wasn't really how ToC was set up.
Eh, when you can't even ACCESS Heroic Mode I can kinda see the point in limited attempts.
It's just like in TOGC.
And, wow, look, the minute you CAN get to Heroic ICC, Normal has no limited attempts anymore.
I don't know if it was intended all along, but I kinda figure that they were experimenting. Try out Limited Attempts on normal and then gather data and see how the players react.
Eh, when you can't even ACCESS Heroic Mode I can kinda see the point in limited attempts.
It was still pretty stupid considering how relatively low the number was set. Algalon the optional side boss that few people saw and even fewer killed being locked behind a limited attempt mechanic? Fine, whatever. 1/3 of the bosses in ICC (and the hardest ones that necessitate the most attempts)? Stupid.
And, wow, look, the minute you CAN get to Heroic ICC, Normal has no limited attempts anymore.
I don't know if it was intended all along, but I kinda figure that they were experimenting. Try out Limited Attempts on normal and then gather data and see how the players react.
So they put in limited attempts for all of, what, five weeks? To serve what purpose exactly? It was a mistake in design and the availability of heroic modes this week meant it was do-or-die time for them to cave to the negative player reaction.
And, wow, look, the minute you CAN get to Heroic ICC, Normal has no limited attempts anymore.
I don't know if it was intended all along, but I kinda figure that they were experimenting. Try out Limited Attempts on normal and then gather data and see how the players react.
So they put in limited attempts for all of, what, five weeks? To serve what purpose exactly? It was a mistake in design and the availability of heroic modes this week meant it was do-or-die time for them to cave to the negative player reaction.
To see what happened.
To make beating the dungeon on normal an accomplishment maybe? To make sure Guilds didn't sprint to Arthas in the first week?
They got negative player feedback, but they get that shit about EVERYTHING.
The data they gathered though wasn't what they wanted, so they changed it.
To make beating the dungeon on normal an accomplishment maybe?
So it wouldn't be without limited attempts? I disagree.
To make sure Guilds didn't sprint to Arthas in the first week?
Uh, that's what the gating over a period of 8 weeks accomplished. And it did so without being stupid.
They got negative player feedback, but they get that shit about EVERYTHING.
Yes, but that's no excuse to tune out the intelligent feedback or to disregard the people pointing out the obvious flaws in a decision. That there is someone who will whine about anything does not justify carte blanche ignoring of a community.
The data they gathered though wasn't what they wanted, so they changed it.
Sindragosa seems like a very doable fight, we just keep running out of time when we get to her.
The Lich King seems totally fucknutty though.
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SenshiBALLING OUT OF CONTROLWavefrontRegistered Userregular
edited February 2010
Sindragosa and Putricide are the best fights in ICC, hands down. They are the Mimiron and Vezax (in terms of fun) of tier 10.
I'm gonna pretend tier 9 never happened.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited February 2010
Tier 9 was a good tier. Not for the raid content, but for all the other impacts it had on raiding in general. ToC10 was probably the most-run raid of the expansion. Easier to organise than a Naxx10, better rewards, more interested people, and most importantly, _short_. A ToC10 run could be blasted out in 30 minutes or less by an experienced raid crew whether on their mains or alts, and even a pug could do it in an hour or so.
Tier 9 was a good tier. Not for the raid content, but for all the other impacts it had on raiding in general. ToC10 was probably the most-run raid of the expansion. Easier to organise than a Naxx10, better rewards, more interested people, and most importantly, _short_. A ToC10 run could be blasted out in 30 minutes or less by an experienced raid crew whether on their mains or alts, and even a pug could do it in an hour or so.
It kind of sucks when that's your entire raid tier, though. Or alternately you could run the same instance four times that week.
Overtuned how, you guys can't heal her to full in the eight minutes or however long the timer is, or the adds are overwhelming the people outside the portal?
So they put in limited attempts for all of, what, five weeks? To serve what purpose exactly? It was a mistake in design and the availability of heroic modes this week meant it was do-or-die time for them to cave to the negative player reaction.
If I'm not mistaken, they put in limited attempts so that guilds who had the members willing to raid for 36 hours straight couldn't just brute force their way through.
While lag, disconnects and other non-skill related issues might've fucked a number of guilds out of attempts or early kills entirely, I think it's a better pacing mechanism (at least initially) than just letting guilds with absurd availability run roughshod over those that don't.
I'm sure Blizzard doesn't give two shits about "omg world firsts" etc, but they know that enough players do care (or are so addicted they need a reason to step away from an encounter, instance or raid night with some finality packed into it) that it seemed like a worthwhile experiment.
Was it successful? *shrug* Some seemed to like it, some didn't, I wasn't raiding ICC during that time, so it didn't matter to me at all. I'm fine with the concept (and endured the slow release of bosses, if not limited attempts, during Sunwell), and suspect we'll see more of it in Cataclysm, at least on the latter bosses or instances, as we have with the last two expansions.
It's a pattern they seem happy with and I don't see enough problems with for them to change it dramatically in the coming tiers of content.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I didn't mind the limited attempts because except for the first week it didn't stop us from doing anything, but honestly it didn't stop the hardcore groups from doing anything ever. Those groups just went in on alts to learn the encounters before bothering to try it on mains.
Considering Ghostcrawler said it was a "hack" it isn't entirely clear why they removed the attempts counter for normal. My guess is that they don't want people avoiding heroic modes because they don't want to waste their normal mode attempts.
If a group is good/dedicated/addicted enough that they have TWO full raid groups across 10/25 people with alts, there's only so much you can do to stop them from running roughshod (my new word of the day) over everyone else anyway without getting all Draconian on their asses, or attaching attempts to entire accounts, which I'm sure would get ugly somewhere anyway.
Blowing through an instance twice on alts and mains on 10 and then having the potential to do it again on 25 is crazy, but I really doubt it's common enough to actively combat mechanically. That's... look, I recognize my addiction, but that's a whole other ballgame of crazy.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I think the issue is that limited attempts isn't terribly effective, because anyone who raids enough and should be affected, just works around it. It's basically like why bother?
It's not like "upper echelon" people are doing anything different than what they did in ToGC25.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
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While I haven't yet personally experienced the fight, I am "the guy" in my guild that goes over videos and talks to people who have done the fight so that the guild can have an understanding of the fight going into it. Here's what I have.
Phase 1 begins.
The Lich King has a few abilities to start. He will cast Infest, an AoE which leaves a DoT on everyone until they are healed to 90% or higher, and which gets stronger the longer it remains unhealed. He also hits the tank with Soul Reaper, which is a massive hit that delivers another massive hit 5 seconds later. The OT needs to taunt him and the MT needs to be healed to full before that happens. LK will use these abilities throughout the entire fight. During phase 1 he will also summon ghouls and var'gul. The var'gul have a smash type ability similar to Anub'arak's Pound and Ingvar's Smash, except much more painful. During this phase, a raid member will occasionally be infected with Necrotic Plague. This deals 100k damage every 5 seconds for 15 seconds, and jumps to a new target if it kills its target. Needless to say, it needs to be dispelled - when it is, it will jump to a random target, either a player or a ghoul/vargul. Every time it is dispelled it grows weaker, and every time it finishes its duration/kills someone it grows stronger. Getting the plague onto the vargul is a pretty good way to earn yourself some more LK DPS time, which you'll need. Every jump of the plague increases the damage the LK does, however.
At 70%, LK runs to the center of the platform and begins to cast Remorseless Winter. The raid needs to immediately run out to the edge of the platform. As the cast goes off, the ice spikes erected at the corners of the platform are blasted off into space to let you know just how badass this spell is and just how much it hurts (And it does! About 15k every second if you're within 45y of LK). LK will start spamming a cone spell on random members of the raid. Periodically a Raging Spirit will appear, looking like one of the party members. They hit hard and do a cone attack of their own. Frost orbs will appear and move towards the raid - if they reach someone they explode, doing a knockback strong enough to knock you off the platform, so they have to be killed too. After LK sees this isn't working, he stabs Frostmourne into the ground, causing cracks to appear through the platform and all around the outer edge, glowing blue. The raid moves in, as the entire outer rim crumbles away. Phase 2 begins.
LK only gains one really notable spell in this phase, Defile. He targets someone and performs a 2s cast - at the end of the cast, a void zone is dropped on that player's current location. While not a big deal by itself, the damage done by the void zone, as well as its size, increase every time someone takes damage from it. If multiple people are in it, it will become very large, very quickly (That's what she said). LK will also call Val'kyr to his aid (1 on 10man, 3 on 25), who will descend, then dart towards a random raid member, picking them up and flying towards the nearest edge to drop them off to their deaths. If you have Defiles all over the middle of the room and you're all standing near the edge, you probably won't kill them fast enough to make a difference. Thankfully they can be snared and stunned.
At 40% the LK runs to the center and begins another Remorseless Winter phase. Thankfully the spell is so cold that it causes ice to stretch out from the platform, returning it to its original size. This phase is basically the same as the last Remorseless Winter phase. At the end the LK will shatter the platform again.
Shortly after beginning phase 3 LK will let you know that Frostmourne hungers and start to drain someone's soul. This deals a truckload of fucktons of damage, but if they survive they'll be transported inside Frostmourne. There they will find King Terenas Menethil, who is taking advantage of Arthas' shifted focus to destroy the Spirit Wardens keeping souls imprisoned within Frostmourne. If you're a DPS or tank you should aid him in blowing up the Warden he's fighting, if you're a healer you should heal him and let him kill it. The Warden should have its casts interrupted where possible, as if Menethil is killed you are proper fucked. After killing the Warden Menethil will free you and let you rejoin the fight.
The adds the Lich King summons in this phase are Vile Spirits. There are many of these (around 9 or 10 on 10man), and they float above the Lich King for a little while before they careen as fast as they can at a raid member and explode. Warlocks and shadow priests are pretty good at managing these due to their AoE, but you're probably going to get several of them exploding every time. From this point on it's a push to the finish. The LK still Defiles, Infests, and does that big tank hit, and still periodically sends one of your raid members into Frostmourne (and it really could be anyone at all, other than his main aggro target). Kill him before Vile Spirits, his damage, the enrage timer, and the Frostmourne room kill you.
At 10%, he kills everyone. He lets you know that he has no more questions or doubts, and that you are Azeroth's greatest champions, killing his greatest servants and his best tests. He thanks Fordring for training and delivering you right into his hands - Fordring will be rewarded, he assures you. He raises Frostmourne to the air and begins to channel a spell to raise your raid from the dead. Highlord Tirion Fordring utters a desperate prayer to the Light, in ALL CAPS, to give him one final blessing, and to shatter the iceblock that he has been trapped in this entire time. The block glows with Light, and explodes. Tirion charges forward, leaping up and striking Frostmourne out of the LK's hands with Ashbringer, shattering it. No more lives, he promises Arthas. Thousands of souls begin to twist and rise up into the sky, ensnaring the Lich King and trapping him inside a small cyclone of souls. King Terenas Menethil materializes, free at last. "It is over, my son," he tells him. "Rise up, champions of the Light!"
Terenas Menethil wants to ressurect you.
[Accept] [Decline]
Arthas is trapped, powerless, in the cyclone as you rez, letting the entire raid burn off the last 10%. Healers, tanks, DPS, throw everything you have at him, defeat him as you see fit.
Then you get a cutscene!
This is a completely terrible idea and you should feel bad, all you would be doing is screwing people over.
... I'll second that motion. Motion passes.
Although 10's and 25's sharing a lockout is a bad idea.
My GL found out last week thanks to someone's RankWatch that he'd been tanking for months with Rank 1 Devastate. Pretty successfully too. Though getting it to max rank helped a lot.
haha, yeah
I did an entire run with some feral druid using downranked spells and getting tells from me every minute or so
It ended, OK, I queued for another one and he was there in the next run
I told him to port to moonglade and train (literally a 30 second endeavor), and he absolutely refused. I couldn't boot him because of the grace period, so I set rankwatch to send him tells with no cooldown every time he hit an ability and put him on ignore, then waited until he was second on aggro, divine shielded, let him die, and then we left him on the floor until he finally left
Awesome. Because being a silly goose bag is a great way to deal with other silly goose bags.
The circle of goosebaggoosehattery continues.
Congratulations.
fix'd for the parlance of our time.
Thank you. I'll go edit the post. I deeply apologize for such blatant abuse of the forum rules.
I'll feel like a goosebag. I had my goose shoved a bit too far up my goosehole.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Well comeon man, I ran him through an entire run and didn't complain or give him any flack about refusing to contribute to the group (I did about four times as much damage as he did as the tank), and I didn't even put him on ignore because I was willing to run him through more stuff if I randomly happened to run across him again
Why is he even playing this game if he refuses to do his part? He should be out team-killing in an FPS where he belongs
Shaman aren't far behind, having two hearths, but getting to Lagaran and then getting to portal again somewhere else isn't nearly as convenient as those three.
Which is a long way of saying "yeah, what a silly goose".
It's just like in TOGC.
And, wow, look, the minute you CAN get to Heroic ICC, Normal has no limited attempts anymore.
I don't know if it was intended all along, but I kinda figure that they were experimenting. Try out Limited Attempts on normal and then gather data and see how the players react.
So they put in limited attempts for all of, what, five weeks? To serve what purpose exactly? It was a mistake in design and the availability of heroic modes this week meant it was do-or-die time for them to cave to the negative player reaction.
To see what happened.
To make beating the dungeon on normal an accomplishment maybe? To make sure Guilds didn't sprint to Arthas in the first week?
They got negative player feedback, but they get that shit about EVERYTHING.
The data they gathered though wasn't what they wanted, so they changed it.
So it wouldn't be without limited attempts? I disagree.
Uh, that's what the gating over a period of 8 weeks accomplished. And it did so without being stupid.
Yes, but that's no excuse to tune out the intelligent feedback or to disregard the people pointing out the obvious flaws in a decision. That there is someone who will whine about anything does not justify carte blanche ignoring of a community.
Speculation.
No, it isn't. They consistently shown a willingness to try new styles and types of content to see what works and what doesn't.
They tried limited attempts, it didn't work out how they wanted, they got rid of them.
The Lich King seems totally fucknutty though.
I'm gonna pretend tier 9 never happened.
If I'm not mistaken, they put in limited attempts so that guilds who had the members willing to raid for 36 hours straight couldn't just brute force their way through.
While lag, disconnects and other non-skill related issues might've fucked a number of guilds out of attempts or early kills entirely, I think it's a better pacing mechanism (at least initially) than just letting guilds with absurd availability run roughshod over those that don't.
I'm sure Blizzard doesn't give two shits about "omg world firsts" etc, but they know that enough players do care (or are so addicted they need a reason to step away from an encounter, instance or raid night with some finality packed into it) that it seemed like a worthwhile experiment.
Was it successful? *shrug* Some seemed to like it, some didn't, I wasn't raiding ICC during that time, so it didn't matter to me at all. I'm fine with the concept (and endured the slow release of bosses, if not limited attempts, during Sunwell), and suspect we'll see more of it in Cataclysm, at least on the latter bosses or instances, as we have with the last two expansions.
It's a pattern they seem happy with and I don't see enough problems with for them to change it dramatically in the coming tiers of content.
Considering Ghostcrawler said it was a "hack" it isn't entirely clear why they removed the attempts counter for normal. My guess is that they don't want people avoiding heroic modes because they don't want to waste their normal mode attempts.
Blowing through an instance twice on alts and mains on 10 and then having the potential to do it again on 25 is crazy, but I really doubt it's common enough to actively combat mechanically. That's... look, I recognize my addiction, but that's a whole other ballgame of crazy.
It's not like "upper echelon" people are doing anything different than what they did in ToGC25.