The Heavensward raid: Alexander

[Elazu]

Who wants to bet people will be begging for echo for normal mode?!

Considering a lot of people are still stuck on turn 5...yep.

[KaerisKlyne]

My level of excitement for this is TOO HIGH *spins mercilessly into the future*

Nothing like a holy sentient castle being to put a pep in your step, apparently. I might consider dedicated raiding this time around rather than subbing into Coil fights when friends need a body who can pull weight lol.

[Kiara]

Isn't creating multiple tiers of difficulty on Raids something from World of WarCraft? Yoshi P copying his favorite MMO again?

For WoW experts, please let us know what it was like. I remember reading someone saying in WoW, the lower difficulty you got "welfare / poor man's gear" and you HAD to do the Hard Mode to get the real gear? If it's the case, as someone said earlier, I think most players would just feel compelled to do the "Hard Mode" Only.

[silentwindfr]

I wish harder stuff would give per cosmetic gear, titles, mounts etc stuff that doesn't effect game play but can be shown off for how awesome someone is.

i think they must give different skin version of the normal armor. maybe the one from the hard mode can be dyed. because i'm sure i'm not the only one thinking at how will look the BC1-2-3 armor in different color. it will be a very good reward, maybe a mount too. but more ilevel? no clearly no, Yoshida is concerned with the progression of the ilevel, i will not be suprised if they slow down the progression of the ilevel into heavenward.

but i'm sure part of the playerbase don't care, they simply want bigger number. sadly it's the worst for the game to add more number simply because you beat the harder content. time to time, simply add more cosmetic reward is far more than enough. and if the number are all they care for, it's maybe time to rethink them way for the game.

[Krr]

For WoW experts, please let us know what it was like. I remember reading someone saying in WoW, the lower difficulty you got "welfare / poor man's gear" and you HAD to do the Hard Mode to get the real gear? If it's the case, as someone said earlier, I think most players would just feel compelled to do the "Hard Mode" Only.

In WoW, a prerequisite to opening Heroic is almost always beating Normal at least once, and Heroic often assumed you had several weeks of attempts of loot saved up from Normal in its stat tuning. The last couple fights of a Normal raid were also often very hard to pug, because of their coordination checks. They also didn't share a lockout, IIRC, so you could keep doing your Normal weekly for Even More Loot after Heroic was open. I think. It's been a while.

Heroic got you the best gear but you couldn't skip straight to it, basically. Though there were a few 'joke fights' that people always set to Heroic if they had it.

Using SCOB as an example, basically, imagine postnerf SCOB set to 'normal mode' and prenerf SCOB set to 'hard mode'. Normal mode would drop, say, i105 gear so it'd still be better than mashing dungeons out all day, you'd need to beat T9 to access 'hard' mode, and 'hard' mode would drop i110 that looks better or is dyable or something.

[Remus]

Well with the new raid you won't need to have cleared coil so that's good for people stuck on T5 :P

[Azper]

It seems like this will be their answer to the "Story Mode" Coil that was brought up awhile back. I'm sure Normal Mode will be plenty challenging, but I definitely see the rewards for it being reduced or removed entirely while Hard Mode is where the real prizes will be at.

[Zumi]

It seems like this will be their answer to the "Story Mode" Coil that was brought up awhile back. I'm sure Normal Mode will be plenty challenging, but I definitely see the rewards for it being reduced or removed entirely while Hard Mode is where the real prizes will be at.

I am guessing they will just do what you said take out any loot for normal mode like they do with the hard mode primals now. They are there for people to see the story. If you want loot you should do hardest version of the fights.

[Olympus]

Normal and Hard modes....sounds like the old LOTRO, when raiding still happened there...Tier I and Tier II (and Tier II Challenge).....worked great, until the different tiers started drawing from the same loot table, which contributed to spelling the end of it all for that game's raiding...

As long as there are completely separate loot tables, this is a positive step and will get more people into raiding, which is good for the elite raiders, as well.

[jomoru]

but i'm sure part of the playerbase don't care, they simply want bigger number. sadly it's the worst for the game to add more number simply because you beat the harder content. time to time, simply add more cosmetic reward is far more than enough. and if the number are all they care for, it's maybe time to rethink them way for the game.

My point was if people actually just care about challenge they'd want maximum challenge not "Because it gets me x" but clearly I see time and time again no one cares about challenge when they can get loot x. so I'm going to quote these people each time someone complains about content being too easy, that they want a challenge that people really want anything but a loot pinata.