Preparing for Icecrown Citadel

[Daewen]

I'm starting this thread because I don't want to get people's hopes up. Or contrapositively, I don't want people to get excessively disappointed. I said something similar when we were looking ahead to Ulduar, along the lines of "it'll be Hard!" But we persevered and succeeded. At least once. >.>

This isn't so much about ICC going to be "Hard" (though we should expect that), but that it's going to be different than ToC. There will be trash. There are 12 bosses! It's going to take a lot of time and wipes before we get through it. I know that maybe half of us have "Hardcore" raid experience, and most will remember Naxx and Ulduar, but I wanted to prepare other people for a change. The idea of actually spending 8pm - 12pm raiding, instead of merely being done in an hour or two. Also to think about stockpiling flasks, fish, and gold for repair costs as we spend the first weeks on "progression".

[Akala]

While I consider myself a hardcore raider I'm not sure I'd be able to keep up with a 12pm server time end to the raid. I'm getting old and only getting 4-5 hours of sleep before I have to get up for work is really tough on me. And since I don't want to bail mid raid while in the tanking or healing role I'm going to have to do some thinking on this...

[twistgibber]

I've been farming some gold so I'll be prepared for some crazy repair bills. I have also been farming some Fish Feast mats.

[Texaporte]

The time frame isn't an immediate concern - Icecrown Citadel will open with only 4 bosses (or something like that). But the later schedule is something that you should keep in mind for when we finally have the Lich King available to us.

[Akala]

The time frame isn't an immediate concern - Icecrown Citadel will open with only 4 bosses (or something like that). But the later schedule is something that you should keep in mind for when we finally have the Lich King available to us.

Thats what I'm thinking about, it'll be a rare occurence when I'll be available to the end of a raid that will end at 12pm. and most likely that be when we are taking on the Lich King. I'd hate to miss out on that, thats kind of the point of doing ICC. I'm not asking you guys to change your schedule, but I may have to look at other options.

[Camyu]

In the experience at Ulduar, the first day it hit back in March(?), we couldn't do any instances except for some Flame Leviathan.
We did lots of Naxx25, and then people saw that Ulduar25 was hard, and attendance dropped dramatically, and we did Ulduar10 runs until ToC came a few months ago when we started having a big influx of people. In fact, a lot of people here don't have experience at Ulduar due to either they stopped playing during 3.1 and resumed at 3.2, or they had real life stuff going on during those months, or they joined the guild after 3.2 came out.

In any case, I liked Ulduar cuz it had an epicness to it. I imagine the same goes for IC. But I wouldn't be surprised if attendance goes down again due to 3.3 being harder, having to learn new content, the frustration of wiping, and/or people not having funds to keep repairing.

It is also worth considering instead of doing a IC25, we might be better doing 2 IC10s.
We probably should also make use of our raid calendar again to figure out interest.

[hung]

A big scheduling point i haven't seen people bring up: we're probably not going to be able to clear ICC in 1 night. Even with 4 hours of raiding.
This instance will probably be split into 2 nights of raiding like ulduar was (ulduar was NEVER full cleared in 1 night... in fact, Uld10 was only full cleared once. Uld25, never).

[Terry | Saerra]

I think the way the raid zones are being released will make a large difference. We'll get relatively used to the first wing, when the second gets realeased it should theoretically be smoother. Then the third and fourth etc...

So if we find the first 3-4 bosses are on farm mode, we can try their hard modes before the next wing comes out, that kind of thing.

Ulduar was a bit of a write off, but think of how long Naxx used to feel at first, compared to when we had it on farm mode.

[Werehamster]

You can't do hard modes until you've beaten the Lich King.

That means no hard modes for anyone for a few months.

[Pocky]

I imagine that there will be a fair amount of scrambling until we figure out what works for us, schedule-wise.