The "locked per raid boss" suggestion seems like a pretty viable workaround for raids getting scattered across multiple realms. There's already a similar mechanic in place for Violet Hold, where if you wipe on the last boss you're still required to kill the first two again, you just don't get loot from them.

Probably easier said than programmed, but I think it'd be a good compromise. It'd also allow people to help their friends clear a dungeon with their geared main instead of having to say "sorry I already ran that this week, or else I'd help you guys out". If loot isn't their motivation, there's no harm in allowing them to run an instance again and just be unable to get drops.

Cross-Realm Onyxia raids? If it's just one boss, that would work fine. =)

I agree with some of the posts on here. I always wondered why are we locked to a dungeon rather then the individual bosses?

I really dislike the whole concept of running a long dungeon, something comes up to where I have to leave or the raid falls apart, then you are more or less screwed until the next week. Why?

I guess perhaps the implementation of saving data based on individual boss kills per dungeon per player may be daunting a task or maybe you just like the idea of forcing players to wait another week prolonging loot gain. It would be awesome to be able to join multiple raids for the same dungeon and if you fight a boss you already downed in a previous raid you are locked out of any loot from it.

Cross realm raids will not work well because of the limitation of raid lock out IDs. They are too restrictive.

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I'm not talking about failing. How many groups finish Uld in one run? Especially a pug.

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i full cleared ulduar in 5 hours (we took about a 1:30 min break) with a group of pug hell we did it with a few hardmodes too :3 but on average i dont get to complete ulduar during pugs far more than i do with guild runs.

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Suggestion: how about allowing each person in a raid to get locked to a "boss" instead of the raid instance?

The big problem now is if you do a raid and then it falls apart after the first or second boss, then everyone is screwed. And like you said, some individuals from the raid might get together with friends later and finish up without the original people that started the raid (screwing them over). Countless times I see this situation and people saying "oh %#!!, now I got locked, thanks a lot !%!*!!*s".

Well, if you just reimplemented how raid locking works so that only bosses done are tracked then individuals are free to join any raid and get loot so long as they hadn't downed that particular boss that week. If they did down the boss then they don't get to roll on the loot for that boss. (this would be incentive for the original raid members to finish up instead of "jumping" around from raid to raid instance).

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wasn't about to read everyones posts, but ya.....great minds think alike :0

PUGs finish raids all the time. The main deterrent is time. A guild at least has some consistency when it comes to people willing to play a game for 4 hours straight. A PUG is less likely to have that.

I've been in plenty of PUG raid and we usually do pretty good. Places like TOC we clear all the time because the dungeon itself isn't very long, but Naxx and Ulduar... are not as short when taking into consideration a PUG.

I am sure people will claim their guild can clear all of Naxx/Ulduar/whatever in 5 minutes - but that is YOUR guild. PUGs generally are not that organized, however that doesn't mean they are not successful.

I understand that raids not cross server and heroics are, but I'm a little annoyed that I will no longer be able to get into LFG for the random heroic and a couple T7 raids at the same time.

Currently, I just throw myself into the daily heroic queue and like Naxx and VoA for badges. I don't see why we can't do this anymore.

Wait, you won't be able to cross-realm raids?

Well that's just great. On my server NO ONE DOES ULDUAR ANYMORE. Every pug is ToC crap, the raiding guilds have moved on to the ToC raids. I'm stuck with Naxx epics because I had to take a leave of absence due to RL matters, my old guild disbanded and I can't get into the other ones because they've moved on, and I want to do the content in ORDER and more importantly actually experience the supposidy awesome raid Ulduar is.

I was relying on cross-realm raids to see the content and gear up before the Icecrown patch. What am I supposed to do now, shell out real money to transfer to another server with a guild that's still doing Ulduar?

This bites. I'm completely stuck. I don't care about 5-mans and daily dungeons anymore, I want to see freaking Ulduar.

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I am pretty sure allowing heroics to be run without a lockout through random heroic is a little easier to swallow then allowing people to run raids non-stop with a random raid feature, if that doesn't happen then you are dealing with up to 25 people and raid lockout issues galore. For now we want to see how the dungeon system pans out and go from there before inviting more issues like this.

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I don't understand this.

We're all big boys and big girls aren't we?

We're all intelligent people, right?

If you think you will go back another day, and/or don't want the risk, what's so hard about making your own decision whether to pug cross-realm or not?

"Ok, we're going back tomorrow, so let's keep this to realm only."

Why do we have to just completely deny EVERYONE this feature, when a huge number of people will do just fine with it?

Is it that hard to make your own decision?

Can anyone explain this to me?

I think it might work if you could consolidate raid IDs based on the bosses still up in that instance (for example: person A killed first 2 bosses with group 1 before the raid fell apart, and person B killed the first 2 bosses with group 2 before that raid fell apart, they would currently have different raid IDs (right?)- what I'm thinking is to make their raid IDs compatible so that they could both group up in a group 3 and finish the raid). If it were setup as x-server, I think there would be more than enough people with similar progress through that finding a full raid wouldn't be so far fetched.

Just shorten raid lockout periods to 1 day now they we have the option to extend raids there is no downside from a player perspective.

Though I would suggest that if someone enters a uncompleted instance after the lockout period expires "As the group leader" they should get a confirmation box on there screen asking them if they want to continue from there previous one or create a new one in either case all other players would be warned that there old Raid Id would get wiped out and they would be joining the new one when trying to enter the instance

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Yeah, I mentioned previously that it's possible things could be solved with an onslaught of rules and such, but that will likely invite a variety of new issues too and right now we are focused on making the dungeon system work right.

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Did i read somewhere that the LFG channel would be joinable without opening the LFG or LFR panel? Cause that seems to be a little bit of help.

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The "locked per raid boss" suggestion seems like a pretty viable workaround for raids getting scattered across multiple realms. There's already a similar mechanic in place for Violet Hold, where if you wipe on the last boss you're still required to kill the first two again, you just don't get loot from them.

Probably easier said than programmed, but I think it'd be a good compromise. It'd also allow people to help their friends clear a dungeon with their geared main instead of having to say "sorry I already ran that this week, or else I'd help you guys out". If loot isn't their motivation, there's no harm in allowing them to run an instance again and just be unable to get drops.

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Can we just get rid of raid ID's then? I mean, who cares if we farm end-game top-progression content 10 times a week?

Oh and how about a practice mode, where you get no penalties for dying like lost buffs or gear decay and everyone can 'soulstone' rez once combat has ended so you don't waste mats rebuffing so you can get easy turn-arounds after wiping. And if you win, you've got the experience. No loot from practicing, but that's why it's practice.

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Yeah, I mentioned previously that it's possible things could be solved with an onslaught of rules and such, but that will likely invite a variety of new issues too and right now we are focused on making the dungeon system work right.

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Cross faction raids should be your priority.

Filling a 5m group with the resources available on your current server any time of day is easy enough
Filling a 25 man raid at 8am on any given server is total hell

Just remove raid lockouts and
Give every person the ability to form a new raid Id that is a replicate of the raid they were in before or start a fresh one.

That would ensure everyone could progress through there instance on there own time.
Hell they would inadvertently even be able to fill empty spots late in the raid with people who just want gear from the later bosses or even a specific boss that has not been killed yet.

The only downside is a person could potentially join different raids picking up people on the same boss over and over until said person gets that one piece of loot he wants.

But really who is blizzard to tell a person they can not kill the same boss and only the same boss 20+ times a day as long as the other 24 people in each group do not have a problem with it.

Besides what does it matter the person is paying blizzard the person is enjoying himself and when he gets bored of the raid content he/she can dabble in pvp or work on all those screwy little achievements, farm pets or get exalted with every faction.

Even when they finish all that there is another 9 classes for them to do it on all over again.

Solution to make BG group raiding a possibility? My thoughts.

A different Raiding ID system that keep track of what bosses you have downed, and then partners you with others who have downed those bosses. EG, person A downs Lucifron in Raid 1. Person B downs Lucifron in Raid 2. Later that week, they meet up in Raid 3 when both persons A and B join the MC LFR queue.

To facilitate filling the gaps (because I know that there wouldn't be a lot of people that have downed the same boss subset that you have), people that have not yet downed the bosses that you have may opt to join your raid by: 1. Checking a box in LFR that asks 'Will you join a raid in progress?' and accepting a warning upon invite that says something to the effect of 'by joining this raid, you will not be able to fight the following bosses until the next raid reset' and list whatever has been downed.. This option would likely be used most toward the end of a raid week when raids were about to reset.

For extra programming points, allow each character to save a cookie for each raid they are in, and make a LFR option to join with previous raid cookie holders (to get the band back together). Also, allow raid leader to extend raid windows (via aforementioned cookie), and make sure that the BG forums can handle people re-organizing a get together (maybe even create PVE and PVP BG forum subsets). I don't honestly think this would be utilized that much given the first two points I suggested, but this would really bring the cross-real LFR interface full circle.

Really disappointed with LFR. Now pugging raids will become nonexistant since everyone will rather just queue up a heroic and the LFG channel is for towns only so even less people you can recruit.

I kind of agree in that people can farm battlegrounds or arena's 24 hours a day until they get best in slot Epics. But that's PVP, once you have best-in-slot everything you can still run around smashing people's faces in all day long to your heart's content and have fun doing it, or work on upping your arena score or whatever.

On the other hand, if you could farm Raids all day long, and manage to get best-in-slot everything after just a few weeks, then what? I mean part of the reason nobody does Ulduar anymore is because the loot in ToC is so much better, most guilds just don't bother. Arguably once people geared up themselves and few alts with all best-in-slot gear, they'd just quit out of boredom after awhile, right?

Part of what makes the game fun is seeing that piece of loot finally drop that you've coveted for months, and actually winning the roll on it for a change. So ultimately I think it's in Blizzard's best interest to keep the carrot dangling a bit to keep players coming back. Allowing top-tier content to be run only once-per-week is the way to do that.

All of that said, very few individuals can commit to a rigorous 4-5 hour per night, 4-5 days a week raid schedule. Many lives, marriages and even guilds have been destroyed because of this.

God, if I could raid on my own terms, when I happen to have time, I (and my wife) would be so much happier. Cross-server raid pugs would help individuals with crazy schedules get to raid whenever they have time and that would be freaking amazing. Finally everyone would be able to theoretically enjoy and experience all the amazing content WoW has to offer.

This would also benefit the smaller guilds who have trouble getting 10 or even 25 people together. If they come up short on their own server, they could just hop in "looking for raid" and pick up gear-checked pugs in a snap.

As I see it, saving to the boss and not the entire raid is the way to go. Does anyone see a downside to this? Yeah, there will always be the prick who joins the raid and bails as soon as he gets the once piece of loot he's looking for from that one particular boss--but they can still only do it once per week. And the system would help the raid fill that spot probably almost instantaneously, so it's really a non-issue.

Once again I come to you with the solution.

Cross Server Raids are a very good idea. This is how you solve the problem.

Make it so a question comes up at the start of the raid "Are you willing to get saved to this raid?" YES, or NO.

If you click No, it kicks you out of the raid.

What this will do is ensure only people who have time to stay get in these cross server raids.

It wont completely solve the problem, but honestly people leave Pugs and Guild runs as well.

So say someone has to leave all of a sudden after 3 bosses are dead, well you go get a replacement from the Cross Server Raids.

When they join... "Are you willing to get saved to this raid?" pops up. After brief conversation about what has been cleared goes on, they make a decision.


Exhibit C - Raid is horrible and wipes 20 times on the second boss. Too bad, the same thing can happen on your server and you will be saved to an unfinished raid.

And last but not least,

The raid wipes 20 times on the second boss, falls apart, someone else tries to take the ID with their friends.

A question pops up to Everyone who was involved in the raid "So and So is starting up Naxx 25, would you like to join?"

If you hit yes you get priority, if you suck at your class and everyone wanted you out, thats why the vote kick option works.

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Can we just get rid of raid ID's then? I mean, who cares if we farm end-game top-progression content 10 times a week?

Oh and how about a practice mode, where you get no penalties for dying like lost buffs or gear decay and everyone can 'soulstone' rez once combat has ended so you don't waste mats rebuffing so you can get easy turn-arounds after wiping. And if you win, you've got the experience. No loot from practicing, but that's why it's practice.

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No, that would completetly destroy the game.

Everyone would farm non-stop and do nothing else. You need a carrot on a stick or people get bored and stop playing.

Give them the carrot and they will stop playing.

Once you get the gear, you would never step in it again.

Leaving new players to the fate of never joining any raid.