In a somewhat controversial move, Blizzard opted to activate the new Ruby Sanctum raid yesterday afternoon for North American realms. Not only was this before EU realms received patch 3.3.5, it was also during a 24-hour maintenance period for 74 North American realms. This act was somewhat contrary to an earlier announcement that seemed to express the desire by Blizzard for more parity when it comes to world and region availability of new end-game encounters. It also allowed guilds on roughly one-third of worldwide servers to have a head start on defeating Halion, both normal and heroic, before the other two-thirds of the servers were even accessible.
Premonition of Sen’jin-US, the guild that happened to be featured at the Live Raid event during 2009’s BlizzCon, managed to get the first kill of heroic Halion in both the 10- and 25-man versions last night. Since then, according to wowprogress.com, there have still only been a few guilds that have downed either version of the heroic mode.
While it’s easy to claim that this kill is not a major deal due to the short instance length and relatively low difficulty when compared to Heroic Lich King, Cataclysm’s trend towards shorter and more accessible raids, along with the combining of 10- and 25-man lockouts, may end up stopping EU realms from garnering as many world-first boss kills as they have in the past. In addition, there are some players who are extremely upset with Blizzard for releasing the new raid during the 24-hour maintenance period, effectively blocking that large handful of realms from even attempting the instance.
I heard from a few players who were on the realms that were down during last night’s Ruby Sanctum Heroic 10-man stream, but I want to hear from more of you. Are you upset about how Blizzard handled Ruby Sanctum? Do you pay attention to world firsts? Do you think it’s all just a bunch of QQ? I really believe all of this will blow over pretty quickly, but I also hope dropping short instances for North American realms to get world firsts doesn’t become a habit for Blizzard.
/rant on
I sincerely hope this doesn’t happen when Cata finally hits.
But to be honest, I’m not surprised that one of the realms that were up was the one with Blizzards ‘pet’ guild Premonition on it. talk about giving your favourites a head start…
It’s hard enough for EU guilds to get anywhere close to getting ‘world’ firsts, and moves like this just serve to alienate the EU further. Blizz need to think about their WHOLE userbase, and not just those in the same country.
/rant off
/happy face
Riiiight, because a company will get a ton more of subscription time if they add favrotism to a single guild.
Sounds like all they did was make another raid mistake due to lack of comunication. Like the ICC heoric buff. Eitehr way, I don’t follow server first kills, and since this was just a planed filler instance until cata, I’m not suprised it got downed first night.
That said, Blizz is treding pretty close to the fires of cata right now. Let’s hope they don’t get burned on day 1.
Still, I raid too raid. Still got Sindy/LK in ICC 25, and will down this guy when the time is right.
It’s not like they didn’t realize the QQ this would cause. In fact, they specifically said at an earlier point that they were aiming to prevent this sort of thing.
But people are getting restless, and subscriptions (at least in my guild) are dropping like flies. Maybe they’re getting desperate to keep subscribers hooked a bit longer until Cata. Just my thoughts, nothing official to back that up :)
Well, now that Cataclysm Beta has started, people will hang on a bit longer to see what’s in store.
In my opinion to all this, I really couldn’t care less. Like you said Juggy, I plan on seeing this blow over pretty quickly with that occasional “ZOMG DID YOU HEAR ABOUT BLIZZ’S CHEAP SHOT?!?”.
World Firsts are bragging rights, and I think only people of the top guilds have any need or right to complain to blizzard. Blizzard just made a mistake.
It could also be, that it was in the files to open up at that time and for those 72 servers, their maintenance just wasn’t finished in time.
I for one, will not be doing this fight anytime soon, because people are idiots on my server and require 5.7k minimum gearscore on the tanks and healers for 10m reg.
That, and with me being on vacation, my time is limited, and the laptop I have can barely handle me running into ICC to get a few blacksmithing recipes.
With small content like this, I don’t think it REALLY matters. I would see it being a big deal for LK or something, but this feels very minor. I do of course say this from a US realm, so some bias ensues.
It’s technically a raid with only one boss. You don’t even get a “Realm First!” achievement if you’re first. I don’t really see what the big deal is.
I still have yet to see the achievement you get from doing something that really doesn’t matter. You don’t get any money, When you decide to quit the game it won’t matter anymore, it has no direct effect on your life, all you get is your 15 mins of fame with people that view it as a sports team winning the big game. To me it just seems like a race for a false since of achievement, but that is just my opinion. I am talking about world firsts/ realm firsts in general.
I am curious to find out what blog platform you have
been utilizing? I’m experiencing some small security issues with my latest blog and I would like to find something more risk-free. Do you have any suggestions?