Please don't delay Savage Raid Releases

[Packetdancer]

Then skip a week and do it then if story and prep is so important? Some people will want to do it week 1, so they have more to do and prog that first week.

And if half of the static wanted to take some time and savor the story (rather than zipping through it, or waiting until after the static is done progression and potentially being spoiled in the meantime), but the other half was willing to wait to do all non-raid content? That seems like the sort of thing that breaks statics. I don't raid hardcore—I'm a fairly casual savage raider, and this was my first tier—but I have enough friends who do that I've seen how high the pressure is to put everything else aside and do nothing but raid prep and then raiding.

But honestly, even beyond 'I want to do the raids', the issue is more the entire raiding ecosystem.

If you want to seriously prog starting day 1, that means you need the newest crafted combat gear and raid consumables right out of the gate. Which means the crafter(s) for your static need to be out there gathering materials the moment the patch drops, and then trying to craft gear sets for an entire static, as well as sufficient consumables to get started. If the crafter is also a member of the static, not just a crafter friend who supplies them, they then also have to rush through the raid storyline to unlock savage, so the group can immediately begin serious progression.

Sure, you don't need a month delay like right after an expansion; it's not like someone needs to get through the expansion and level all their crafters by ten levels and replace their crafter gear with a set sufficient to craft raid gear and get the scrip to buy the mastercraft books to learn the recipes and learn how their jobs have changed for this expansion and whatever else I'm forgetting...

But delaying the raid tier by a week would not just alleviate the pressure on hardcore raiders to zip through the story, but the pressure on the crafters who supply those hardcore raiders. And it's not like it would break raiding; everyone would be delayed by a week, so no one would get to start a world-first run before others.