Is anything being done to avoid another disaster when KoS launches?

If the content tuning and itemization in KOS continues to be designed by someone who clearly doesnt understand this game or raiding then this server is done for pals.

Fyreflight's done an awesome job considering how much of a mess this game's itemization and code is. I'm constantly in awe of how much it has improved over SH, but I admittedly I had extremely low expectations of FG. The beef I had with DoF was addressed this round. It doesn't keep DoF from continuing to be a boring slog and my least favorite expansion, however. Nothing they can realistically do about my personal tastes, so instead of complaining I have taken a lil' break until December. They've clearly learned some lessons from SH, and while it's good to remain vigilant, I'm pretty sure the devs understand the game quite a bit more than forum warriors.

As far as 46 raiding guilds, I don't think FG has ever had that many, period. The top guild generally seems to be on board with having a space for casuals to enjoy raiding as well, and the raiding community overall is very chill. Personally, I'm okay with not pretending 11 year old content on YouTube is going to be conducive for competitive hardcore raiding. I'm not saying faceroll, but DoF has been kind to casual raiders, which comprises most of the server's raiding crowd atm. Overtuning KoS would be a mistake, however I don't see anyone really clamoring for that to happen and I think we'll be okay.

Not disagreeing with you that Fyre has been doing a good job, but every raid guild on this server is basically hemorrhaging players. The content is too easy, most of it was killed sub 60 with less than a full raid group, Djinn master was killed while having a level 90 aoe, instance loot is as good as or better than most raid loot. This entire xpac was cleared in 2 weeks, not everyone is a hardcore raider but there has to be some sense of progression.

with the knowledge of players, the changes to stats... did you really expect a challenge? seriously?

I might be foolish, but yes, I expect some degree of challenge, or else the game is not rewarding to play.

My expectation may or may not be realistic, but it is my expectation.

I mean itemization is pretty bad, all of the raid mage gear has incorrect stats and defensive stats for some reason making random added legendary best in slot, there is no tank jewelry, all the druid gear is just bad.

And this server raiding wise had been pretty rough, between darathar (lol) and things like dmp's aoe and the fact everything dies super fast in all the raid zones its pretty boring. The raids have no progression, I can get gear that is better than dmp gear off of like heroics.

You do have to see the irony in bringing up not having min/maxer stats on gear with faceroll content though, right? I feel like itemization should get smoother with further expansions, but I didn't play SH past DoF so... I dunno. Hopefully the gear is balanced out to the actual difficulty come KoS. With how boring/easy DoF is, you don't need good mage and druid stats. The mobs get dead with legendary gear.

Not everyone's going to be happy with difficulty, and I still don't see there ever being a true progression race on a TLE with janky Live rulesets, but I will say, there are still a lot of casual guilds still raiding DoF right now. I do not envy the dev team trying to balance this stuff, because to some of you it's the easiest stuff ever (and honestly... DoF is so easy) but others are still enjoying having accessible content. I've noticed a lot of folks aren't on the TLE to hardcore raid - they just want to re-live some of the game or see content they were never able to reach before. Overtuning KoS apparently didn't work out so well last time and with how long it did take them to fix Darathar this time... I hate to say it, but I think the server's better off with fairly casual difficulty.

I'm in one of those casual guilds with a raid force (as opposed to a raid guild with casual players) and while our dedicated raiders do try to get some min/max going, we're saving our DKP for KoS, so there's expectation there for better gear. We are finding the DoF content to be challenging, but not impossible. We couldn't clear Darathar at level 50, but now it's cake. So I have my fingers crossed that we will be able to be raid KoS with the 'big boys' even if it takes us longer/we have to wait til we're all 70 and gear-farmed, and that the devs don't tune it so we can't compete at all.

I'm on the fence with that. People say that DoF content is easy, but only six guilds cleared Pedestal and three guilds killed Djinn master so far and theres only 6 weeks left until KoS is supposedly released. I find ALL the content very easy. So do the people I play with and we find that boring.

Yes its true, theres 3 or 4 guilds on the server that have vets that have played the game for a decade. Then theres the next row and then theres the super casual guilds.

I hope in future expansions they keep a few raids super easy, and some, super hard (hard, NOT IMPOSSIBLE), to cater to all kind of players. I have played MMOs for so long that I have this idea that raid content should always be hard, but I've come to understand that MMOs in 2017 is mostly made up of casual players, so they need content too or the server / game would crash and burn.

DoF isnt boring because of the raid content per se, its just a boring expansion overall. Once you done fate of majdul and the single HQ, there really isnt a whole lot to do outside of raiding nights.

First off, when did raiding 6-9 hours a week become hardcore? Because in 6 hours you can clear every raid mob in the expansion at least once. Most of it can be done with ~ 3 groups.

There is a lot of grey area KoS could land in between, what it was to during SH/DT and where DoF is now. Making content balanced around the gear available doesn't make it for the hardcore players, it gives it meaningful progression.

I think the biggest downside to DoF is the lack of contested content. You have Terrorantula and the PoF dragons.. that's it. There needs to be some "big challenge" in every expansion, and DoF is missing that. Vanilla had several contested mobs that you could call "mid range" in difficulty and it had Vox. That was enough to keep the more serious raiders occupied for most of the 12 weeks.

Sorry, you're totally right about 'hardcore' I should have said... skilled? But then I start possibly insulting casual players. Trying to keep myself out of hot water lol. I agree with you, but I also think unless they re-design DoF encounters from the ground up it's never really going to be meaningful. How much prog can you add to "tank n spank with KB" - make it an HP sponge? God, please no. I hope you're right about KoS having a wider spread, and you probably are, like I said, never played it on SH.

I wasn't implying the difficulty should be balanced around the gear forever, but for DoF I think it was just gonna happen because the raids are so basic. I'm hoping that issue can somewhat resolve itself with "newer" expansions.

Too many people use "hardcore" and "casual" as a measure of play-time, or your ability to be on-call for contested... when really it is a measure of how you play your char when you are logged in, and your knowledge/pursuit of the game. There is really not much reason to be playing DoF 40 hours a week... outside of raiding, there are only like 3 group instances worth doing and they can be done in under an hour. Kinda hard for anyone to be "hardcore" by that measure.

DoF has always been one of my least favorite expansions. Everything is green in Living Tombs, and Silent City and Shimmering Citadel are not much for contested dungeons. I agree DoF and even KoS raiding was basic. Back in the day, I don't remember DoF being very "hard" compared to more complicated encounters in later expansions. I didn't do DMP or contested, but most of the content I saw was jousting predictable AoE and dual tanking. We would swap in resist gear for fights, or even stay ranged the whole fight auto attacking with bows and satchels. But we were eventually clearing courts and gates just the same. Also, I think DoF originally was a 6 month expansion, but now it is a 3 month expansion... so players get half the time to consume the expansion.

To further clarify, "hardcore" in my mind simply means someone who's going to attempt to min/max their gear, spells, class knowledge, show up with cure pots, you know, Effort. Maybe the time isn't invested in hours spent raiding per week, but there's an implied investment in ones gaming. Casual players can be skilled at their class but less invested in the details. I put in pretty mediocre effort for Vanilla and DoF myself lol.

It's a super dumb, nebulous term. I did not mean to derail with it.

What about the x2 sabercat in maj'dul that drops adept spells?

Vox was neither hard or worth doing or occupied us, the mob was stupid broken (lol killing people and logs saying you have been hit by x damage without the mob name cause it hasn't rendered, lol at having to "cheese" adds by jumping off platforms or making them path up the ramp so we could get more time on a broken mob that required broken amounts of healing//crazy amounts of luck on dps spells and tank avoids).

Hardcore raiding has been dead since like 2008 because all the nerds willing to raid bananas amount of hours quit.

That's just competency, not hardcore at all.