Well, I'm not completely shocked by this. Lore/story-wise you really do need to down Kael and Vashj before fighting Illidan.

The Hyjal thing? Dunno... It seems kind of bolted on, like they thought "Hey, they need to be atuned to, and geared from, TK25 and SSc, so lets *make* them do Hyjal first." Of course, adding Hyjal to the chain, and then releasing it at the same time as BT guarantees a delay in the world-first "Illidan downed" post.

It doesn't look *impossible* to get attuned for, just *very difficult*. Of course, this is coming from someone who doesn't have even a single heroic key, so what do I know? ^^;;

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This is all fine, but where does Hogger fit in? I've killed him; bring on Illidan.

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Meh, more stuff most of us will never see.

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I wonder what percentage of players are hardcore raiders...

It would be nice if they rotated their resources around more content for each of the typee of players.

I can't wait until they get to my type: Soloing Morons.

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@4

There's a bunch of new quest areas for soloers.

Blizzard has made raiding MUCH more accessible, so it's pretty annoying to see people still getting upset over it. Not directed at you, 4, but it seems that people would like to be able to kill one of the most powerful beings in the WoW universe with some 5 man scrub PuG.

Kara really isn't all that hard, harder than MC, possibly, but not too bad.

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Ok

I may be in the minority here, but this is getting to be riduculous. I am not a casual player. I play over 30 hours a week. Some of the time, I am raiding in Kharazhan, other times, I am farming or questing. This routine maitenance of my toon takes up most of my gaming time. Sure I may spend a little time leveling up my alt, but most of my time is put to good honest use.

These attunments are way out of control. They are out of reach to at least 90% of most active players. Yup Blizzard shrunk down the raid size to 25, but made getting attuned 40 times harder.

Put it simply. The average 25 man raiding guild may have 2 or 3 teams running Khara. They may be stepping into Gruells or taking on Mag. They are also probably working their days in and days out trying to even finish a heroic dungeon. By the time they even step into the first legs of attunment for black temple, Starcraft 4 will have been released.

I love this game to death, but all this attunment and hopeless dreams of walking into the black temple make me long for the days where I could work hard at a goal and actually achieve it.

Blizzard, with unattainable goals you are killing your own game. Please stop it, because I love it too much to never see most of it.

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@7

It's all one big gear check, like, if you can't down the Pheonix in the Eye, you won't last through the first BT boss I bet.

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I thought it was a bit weaksauce the way they'd made it so you could give attunements to Vashj to 70s once you'd downed Vashj, but now it's seeming like a decent idea.

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Why do they have attunements?

My cynical answer is that when Blizzard adds something to the game that they know people want, they try to make sure you can't get there without a substantial timesink.

They are hoping that the desire to see new content will keep you hammering at old content as long as you have a goal within reach.

Bottom line is that they want you to keep paying that monthly fee.

I don't mean to sound like I hate them. I don't. It's just good business sense for them.

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It does make me wonder what kind of player some of these instances are tuned for. Or if the level designers realize that maybe 1-2 guilds per server are ever going to see their creations.

I agree though - I'd probably have to be unemployed to have time enough to do the Tempest Keep raid or Mt. Hyjal. Until they make a 3rd group for Karazhan in my guild I'll probably not be seeing that much either :(. (I'm attuned, but I've only been once).

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#10 hit the nail in the head. Its all a timesink to keep people playing. The gearcheck is just part of the timesink.

The problem comes with the new expansion (announced at Blizzcon perhaps?) and the insanely long attunments for the Outland stuff. With the next expansion no one will want to get attuned for them. The outland instances and raids will be just like the 55+ raids and instances now. New players will never see any of the instances or raids because they won't go back and get attuned for them. Why should they, the gear I get now from questing exceeds anything that dropped in Naxx.

I can understand the reason for the long chains. They didn't want D&T and Nihilum to blow threw it a day and they weren't ready with some of the raids. Hopefully, they will go back and adjust the attunments in the future.

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Maybe i just don't get it, but why do you have to get attuned in the first place?! I mean the instance is going to be hard enough, why make us jump through hoops just to get there in the first place?

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You guys make it sound like it's some outrageous attunement chain. All I see is a straightforward progression.

Kara + Mag + Gruul -> SSC + Eye -> Hyjal -> BT

Now wait, are you actually complaining that you have to do all that before Black Temple? Are you complaining that killing Illidan should require no better gear than killing one of his weaker lieutenants? Are you saying that we should be able to kill Illidan with greens?

That's not how it works folks. It's illogical at the very least.

These so called "long quest chains" are done ALONG THE WAY. It's not like you have to spend ten hours doing some side quest to get attuned. You beat SSC and the Eye, you get access to Hyjal. You beat Hyjal, you get access to BT. It's fucking simple. Get over it.

You call it time sinks, I call it CONTENT. FFS, Blizzard's not making you waste time by sitting somewhere doing nothing while you're doing these attunements. The only time sinks are the billions of trash mobs between boss fights that are plaguing raids at the moment. And don't give me that shtick about how you have to farm for flasks all day long. All the bosses are certainly downable without them. They only cover up the mistakes in your execution of a strategy (that's been already given to you, I might add).

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I have no problem with progression, however by the time I finish "Kara + Mag + Gruul -> SSC + Eye -> Hyjal -> BT" I will have long since left WoW for other games.

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