mmorchive

June 19th, 2007 worldofwarcraft.com/elitistjerks.net

Tigole:

After a lot of thought and deliberation, we’ve decided to remove the attunement requirements to enter Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep: The Eye. While many of our attunements in the Burning Crusade have been good progression checks, a few of the attunements have turned out to cause unnecessary stress on guilds either doing the content or attempting to do the content. With Black Temple and Battle for Mount Hyjal thriving, we want to encourage (rather than prevent) new guilds and raid groups to attempt Serpentshrine and TK. We are going to leave the current attunement quests in the game so that players can still engage in the challenge and the lore of those quests should they choose to. At a later point, we are considering adding a final reward step to those quests as well (that way those who have already completed them would not miss out on a *new* reward).We’re listening to feedback from you guys constantly and your opinions are important to us. We want this game to be the best possible MMO experience for our players.

Enjoy Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep =)

(Please note: This change will go live later today — it’s not yet active)

Scrublock:

World of Casualcraft.

Saroz:

So in 2 months BT attunement is being removed aswell? (ed: More like 8 months)Jokes aside, seems like an okay change, you still have to clear SSC and TK to enter Hyjal/BT. It does change the progression track a bit, making Magtheridon optional, which I am not so sure I like.

Scrublock:

It’s more or less a swift kick in the genitals to the thousands of individuals that completed the attunements prior to this nerf.

The change is in reference to the flagging requirements to enter the first two 25 man raid zones (as distinct from the raid encounters of Gruul and Magtheridon) of The Burning Crusade. Prior to this change, SSC required you to kill Nightbane (one of the two pinnacle bosses in the 10 man raid Karazhan) and Gruul (the aforementioned 25 man raid encounter), while Tempest Keep required several heroic difficulty runs of 5 man instances (during a time period when heroics were harder, due to a combination of gear and tuning) as well as a Magtheridon kill, prior to Magtheridon’s significant series of downward tuning.

In other words, these attunements were an intentional way to make it hard for less dedicated players to access these zones.

The commentary, from EJ, on Tigole’s announcement conveys the two main reactions to any announcement of content changes.

Reaction 1: “Slap in the face to the XXXX who did YYYY prior to ZZZZ change.”
Reaction 2: Yeah, might not be the best way of doing it, but probably a good change.

Also, note that Saroz was prescient.