WorldBoss ID

[Sylveria]

Hi there, i haven't found a topic about it:

Since there was a restart of the server yesterday and ostarius respawned with it, directly after the restart and i logged back in, the boss was already in combat. I've heared something about a "Worldboss mafia", but i think this behaviour is kind of ridiculous and also kinda contraproductive to a

a warm, welcoming home for people to play at their own pace

Since you have to play at a very different level/pace, if you want to experience that part of the game as well.
Since i don't know if it is the possibile, i wanted to sugges a higher respawn rate for world bosses, but an ID-System, kinda like for raids, so you're only allowed to receive loot from world bosses once a week. That way we may allow other players and smaller guilds to experience that type of content as well.
As of right now, i wouldn't realize any real down side to this, but to open up that part of the content to a wider audience.
(and we would put an end to the worldboss mafia :P)

[Gantulga]

I'm in the "mafia" and I agree with making world bosses more available while also doing something about the nonsense PvP flagging issues that happen during those fights.
The "mafia" was born as a solution to the many issues world bosses are plagued with, such as griefing (tagging, resetting, etc) and PvP bombing which turns the fights into pointless, hours long slugfests.

[Zzerty]

The entire point of world bosses is that they are on a "first come first served" basis. If they wanted that not to be the case they would've put Ostarius inside an instance.

Calling players who organise to complete objectives in a videogame a "mafia" is nothing but smearing. Smearing is neither warm nor welcoming.

[Sylveria]

The entire point of world bosses is that they are on a "first come first served" basis. If they wanted that not to be the case they would've put Ostarius inside an instance.

Calling players who organise to complete objectives in a videogame a "mafia" is nothing but smearing. Smearing is neither warm nor welcoming.

Just to make things clear:
the term of the "Worldboss mafia" wasn't invented by me. i only read about it here on the forum, on discord, hell even in ingame-chats.

[Balake]

The entire point of world bosses is that they are on a "first come first served" basis. If they wanted that not to be the case they would've put Ostarius inside an instance.

Calling players who organise to complete objectives in a videogame a "mafia" is nothing but smearing. Smearing is neither warm nor welcoming.

I disagree. World bosses were not intended to be a race.
The entire point of world bosses back in 2005, was built around realms capped at 3k players as a hard cap, most servers had ONE peak (cause it was only one timezone) of 2k players online. With only few of them being max level raiders.

So not only did vanilla wow have a third of turtle wow's playerbase, being a recently released and still evolving game, a lot of them were just leveling and exploring, not in raiding guilds interested in fighting over world bosses. The game was a lot slower paced back then, they didn't have tools like discord and everybody was from one timezone.

Back then, world bosses fulfilled a specific theme. They were powerful enemies, they stayed up for long times, taunting adventurers to come and take them down. And the players played along with that fantasy because they had to, they didn't have 500 people on reserve ready to log in from every timezone to oneshot the boss, it was slowly coordinating and getting people together to take down the boss when enough people became available in a weekend.

Of course, Turtle wow can never recapture that fantasy of powerful bosses staying up until a faction gathered the strength to fight them, the population is simply too big and too good at the game nowadays.

This is a case of game design that accidentally starts encouraging toxicity the more popular a server gets. We have the hindsight now to recognize that it must be changed. "It should remain as is because this is how it was in vanilla" is wrong not just because this is a custom server that wants to improve the game, but because this isn't how it was in vanilla to begin with.

[Elesion]

I disagree. World bosses were not intended to be a race.
The entire point of world bosses back in 2005, was built around realms capped at 3k players as a hard cap, most servers had ONE peak (cause it was only one timezone) of 2k players online. With only few of them being max level raiders.

So not only did vanilla wow have a third of turtle wow's playerbase, being a recently released and still evolving game, a lot of them were just leveling and exploring, not in raiding guilds interested in fighting over world bosses. The game was a lot slower paced back then, they didn't have tools like discord and everybody was from one timezone.

Back then, world bosses fulfilled a specific theme. They were powerful enemies, they stayed up for long times, taunting adventurers to come and take them down. And the players played along with that fantasy because they had to, they didn't have 500 people on reserve ready to log in from every timezone to oneshot the boss, it was slowly coordinating and getting people together to take down the boss when enough people became available in a weekend.

My experience with world bosses in Vanilla has been fairly similar. I was in one of the top raid groups on my realm and we picked up green dragons when it aligned with our normal raid times. At least half a day prior the message went out "instead of at BWL today's raid starts in Hinterlands". And then 14 hours later we gathered and took down the dragon. Sometimes it was even scheduled the day before. We never killed more than 1 at a time either. There simply was no race to it. Azuregos typically got pug-ed (which takes several hours to organize).

It's kind of sad to see world boss content available to so few people and under such time pressure. Especially because Turtle adds a lot of custom ones that would just be fun to see and check out at least once. As it stands the quest lines leading up to Nerubian Overseer and Ostarius are essentially jokes, taunting players by how prominently and widely available they are. I occasionally see players looking for group for The Terrors of the Webweavers, not realizing that they will never ever be able to do this quest they just picked up at the side of the road in EPL.
It's also sad the see gear go to players for whom it is no longer a real upgrade while part of the idea behind world bosses was to make epics available to a wider audience who is not part of a hardcore raiding group.

I'm not sure there is an easy technical solution for what is essentially a social problem (based on typical gamer traits like merciless optimization and greed). The "mafia" spans a lot of people with a lot of alts. I'm sure they can game their way around an ID system as well (swapping players in and out, tagging with a small raid and killing with another large raid, leaving raid before kill or before loot distribution, etc, etc).

[Kairion]

Worldbosses also have pretty strictly scheduled spawntimes as in a multiple of 24hrs. - meaning once you know when one died, you can be sure it spawns at around the same time on the days where it will spawn. This leaves the bosses outside of the available timezone for individual players for weeks or months on end. As with an international audience most worldbosses will be taken down quite quickly after spawn.

Worldbosses are incredibly cool and especially in the case of ostarious (a completely new custom worldboss that is insanely fun to play) it is a shame that a mjority of players and even a big part of the raiding community never gets to try them.

I personally just wish there were really expensive recepies to make consumable items to summon worldbosses on demand (tagged for whoever summons and unable to summon while the worldboss is already up ofc). So guilds or friendgroups could go and seek out the bosses on their own terms - leaving the option for the people who currently enjoy worldbosses to keep enjoying them in the way they currently are.

[Zzerty]

[snip]

You describe what, according to you, Blizzard had in mind when they implemented world bosses. I have no idea if you are correct or not and I think it would be hard to find clear evidence. I assume that, in every realm, there was at least a couple of guilds who raided weekly, and they probably had enough firepower to down the bosses. I also assume that the respawn timers were clear after a few weeks. Putting those two facts together leads me to think it was always the same people killing the bosses.

Also, toxicity. You can't call any behaviour you don't like "toxic". There is no toxicity in telling people in a Discord server to log in to kill an enemy in a videogame.

Regarding pvp flagging and fights: since these fights are only for level 60 characters, you don't have a need to have war mode on. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason to be flagged. World boss fights turning into a slugfest because people keep getting killed by the opposing faction is a clear case of "git gud".

Either the world boss is put in an instance or the staff comes up with a complicated set of rules that nobody understands fully and gets people banned just for playing the game. Or, you know, things stay as they are.

[Ibux]

on the plus side. most of the gear on these bosses can for most people be ignored. because the game is super easy. it's mostly welfare epics for players struggling to progress the game. but it does leave the game feeling more empty when you can never expect to find a raid for these bosses.

[Geojak]

wolrd bosses on pvp server are meant to be slugfest hour long pvp battles. this was lways runed by faction imbalance determerning who is gonna win anyway. turte wow brought with it crossfaction whic hcould make these world bosses fun raid vs raid encouters instead of faction vs faction.

so how to fix this easily?
1. if you are in a group or raid and you are pvp flagged then change your pvp flag to merceannry black flag, like in stv arena. now you can be attacked by all other palyers you arent grouped with
2. if you attack a player with blac kflag, you also get black flagged, even when solo. black flag should superseed pvp flag
3. introuce /ffa to manually flag black just like /pvp

[Balake]

I assume that, in every realm, there was at least a couple of guilds who raided weekly, and they probably had enough firepower to down the bosses. I also assume that the respawn timers were clear after a few weeks. Putting those two facts together leads me to think it was always the same people killing the bosses.

World bosses had a 5-7 day respawn timer, it all depends on when the boss respawns. My main point is that it wasn't a race to tag it minutes after it spawned, it was a scheduled thing raiders organized when they could.

Also, toxicity. You can't call any behaviour you don't like "toxic". There is no toxicity in telling people in a Discord server to log in to kill an enemy in a videogame.

Regarding pvp flagging and fights: since these fights are only for level 60 characters, you don't have a need to have war mode on. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason to be flagged. World boss fights turning into a slugfest because people keep getting killed by the opposing faction is a clear case of "git gud".

No need to intentionally misrepresent it, the toxicity is not the existence of a group dedicated to downing world bosses. It's that world bosses compel people to grief each other. Almost all world bosses can be griefed even with nobody flagged. For kazzak all one has to do is unequip their gear and run at him to heal him up. Of course this is against the rules but it's not feasible to enforce.

Most people would argue things like Devilsaur leather mafia are toxic too, but you can be deceptive and call it "It's telling people in a discord server to log in to kill an enemy in a videogame" and make it look perfectly normal.

[Kairion]

[...]
Regarding pvp flagging and fights: since these fights are only for level 60 characters, you don't have a need to have war mode on. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason to be flagged. World boss fights turning into a slugfest because people keep getting killed by the opposing faction is a clear case of "git gud".
[...]

This is just not how it is. You can force flag people against their will with conflagrate on ostarius adds or volatile infection on Emeriss. Even on the other bosses, you can easily trick people into accidentally hitting you with some cleave or aoe.

[Zzerty]

No need to intentionally misrepresent it, the toxicity is not the existence of a group dedicated to downing world bosses. It's that world bosses compel people to grief each other. Almost all world bosses can be griefed even with nobody flagged. For kazzak all one has to do is unequip their gear and run at him to heal him up. Of course this is against the rules but it's not feasible to enforce.

This is a technical problem that requires a technical solution.

Most people would argue things like Devilsaur leather mafia are toxic too, but you can be deceptive and call it "It's telling people in a discord server to log in to kill an enemy in a videogame" and make it look perfectly normal.

What exactly does this "devilsaur leather mafia" do? If we are talking about cross-faction collusion, in every other server it is bannable. But, in a way, that is unenforceable here because we have the abhorrent cross-faction collaboration.

This is just not how it is. You can force flag people against their will with conflagrate on ostarius adds or volatile infection on Emeriss. Even on the other bosses, you can easily trick people into accidentally hitting you with some cleave or aoe.

First step, don't invite anybody into your raid who is pvp-flagged. If you can get pvp-flagged because of the actions of users who aren't part of your raid group, as I said above, "This is a technical problem that requires a technical solution".

[Kairion]

This is just not how it is. You can force flag people against their will with conflagrate on ostarius adds or volatile infection on Emeriss. Even on the other bosses, you can easily trick people into accidentally hitting you with some cleave or aoe.

First step, don't invite anybody into your raid who is pvp-flagged. If you can get pvp-flagged because of the actions of users who aren't part of your raid group, as I said above, "This is a technical problem that requires a technical solution".

Again, thats not how it works. If you get hit by conflagrate or volatile infection, you hit other players around you. Someone with pvp active from the opposite faction can stand next to you and you WILL hit him and get forcefully flagged for PvP.

And guess what, since the person in conflagrate is being damaged himself, he usually will get a heal and within seconds, half the raid is flagged for PvP.

So how about you come down from your high horse?

[Zzerty]

Again, thats not how it works. If you get hit by conflagrate or volatile infection, you hit other players around you. Someone with pvp active from the opposite faction can stand next to you and you WILL hit him and get forcefully flagged for PvP.

And guess what, since the person in conflagrate is being damaged himself, he usually will get a heal and within seconds, half the raid is flagged for PvP.

So how about you come down from your high horse?

I know and, as I said, that is a technical problem that requires a technical solution (in this case, don't flag people for splash damage from a world boss).

[Sunflowerdeath1]

The whole idea of world bosses is in competition for killing them first, and to allow factions to fight over them. So it's understandable that if you try to change the mechanics, their main point might be lost. But on the other side, without any changes 99% of players don't even have a chance to participate in killing one of it. Basically all developers efforts of creating new content, adding new bosses, adding new unique gear - all of that can only benefit a few dozen players.

[Tendies]

Every world boss should PvP flag

[Kairion]

Every world boss should PvP flag

Right, because what everyone wants who rolls on a cross faction raid RP-PVE server is being forced into PvP.

Edit: Its even against the rules to fight in PvP while being part of a crossfaction group.

[Tendies]

Every world boss should PvP flag

Right, because what everyone wants who rolls on a cross faction raid RP-PVE server is being forced into PvP.

Edit: Its even against the rules to fight in PvP while being part of a crossfaction group.

Blablabla, get your RP-PvE excuse out of here.
Just can't heal raid members of the opposite faction

EDIT: And make it the FFA PvP flag as Geojak suggested.

[Kairion]

Every world boss should PvP flag

Right, because what everyone wants who rolls on a cross faction raid RP-PVE server is being forced into PvP.

Edit: Its even against the rules to fight in PvP while being part of a crossfaction group.

Blablabla, get your RP-PvE excuse out of here.
Just can't heal raid members of the opposite faction

How about the PvP players just for once actually find likeminded people to play with and against instead of forcing their way of play onto people who want nothing to do with it?
How do you want to enforce not healing the other faction. as a healer you are glued onto HP bars of people - you don't care what damaged them while in a bossfight.

Or are you that naive to think splitting up crossfaction raiding in general on a server like turtle with engrained xfaction communities for years would be a good idea.
How self absorbed do you have to be to propose that kind of bullshit?

[Balake]

The whole idea of world bosses is in competition for killing them first, and to allow factions to fight over them. So it's understandable that if you try to change the mechanics, their main point might be lost. But on the other side, without any changes 99% of players don't even have a chance to participate in killing one of it. Basically all developers efforts of creating new content, adding new bosses, adding new unique gear - all of that can only benefit a few dozen players.

Read the thread, we already argued to disprove this. People played on Nostalrius and Lights hope and other such 12k player megaservers and think they're an accurate representation of vanilla.

Zerg rush grief fest world bosses are not 2005 vanilla design.

It is undeniable fact that the spawn frequency of world bosses was made for an era very very different from what we have today. We don't have to keep the shitty elements of the game.

[Geojak]

what if we just make world boss respawn significantly shorter and more random.
currently i think they are somewhat around 5 days.
we can make it random between 18h - 5 days.
less predictable, so harder to controlle for the mafia. and overall more spawns meaning more chances for everyone.
we can have the exiting moments of /world "OMG KAZZAK UP" back that have compeltely died on twow if you arent inside the select few controllers discord

[Balake]

what if we just make world boss respawn significantly shorter and more random.
currently i think they are somewhat around 5 days.
we can make it random between 18h - 5 days.
less predictable, so harder to controlle for the mafia. and overall more spawns meaning more chances for everyone.
we can have the exiting moments of /world "OMG KAZZAK UP" back that have compeltely died on twow if you arent inside the select few controllers discord

It's not ideal, if you're camping the boss you can continue camping it but get your gear much faster. The most popular suggestion is turning them to summoned bosses similar to silithus wind lords, but of course the mats to summon them would be gated behind raid lockouts so you can't farm relentlessly and summon them over and over.

[Tendies]

Right, because what everyone wants who rolls on a cross faction raid RP-PVE server is being forced into PvP.

Edit: Its even against the rules to fight in PvP while being part of a crossfaction group.

Blablabla, get your RP-PvE excuse out of here.
Just can't heal raid members of the opposite faction

How about the PvP players just for once actually find likeminded people to play with and against instead of forcing their way of play onto people who want nothing to do with it?
How do you want to enforce not healing the other faction. as a healer you are glued onto HP bars of people - you don't care what damaged them while in a bossfight.

Or are you that naive to think splitting up crossfaction raiding in general on a server like turtle with engrained xfaction communities for years would be a good idea.
How self absorbed do you have to be to propose that kind of bullshit?

Again, make it give FFA flag.
Don't want to fight other people over something? Then stay pathetic.

[Kairion]

This is amusing, i could not have come up with a change that made worldbosses a worse experience than forced ffa for everyone if i tried. There is a reason blizzard back in 2005 handed out 3 day suspensions for people griefing worldboss attempts on pve server.

It is wasting everyones time, and if the loot of these bosses wasnt in some cases game changingly good, noone would give a flying fuck.

Having to play deathmatch for half an hour before pulling kazzak just because people keep blowing up the manabombed player only appeals to a certain kind of playerbase. The kind of player turtlewow could genuinely do without.

"No trust me bro, pvp is really cool, and 90% of the playerbade has no clue what is actually fun in wow, corpserunning and having hours of your day wasted because someone wants to pvp is soo fun"

[Sylveria]

Reading here again, i have to wonder, if the topic "PvP" overall is extremly toxic.
Suggestion: Exterminate PvP alltogether since it's not "warm and welcoming". :P
Though we should get back to topic.

[Kairion]

Giving a id lockout is imho the wrong way to do it. Most bosses have a respawntimer that is about equal to the lockout, and i dont see why someone who does the content shouldnt have a chance to get his loot for the efforts. Sure people could "farm" their worldboss loot, but i honestly dont see a problem with it. Even if some sort of mafia keeps taking every spawn, if the respawn rate is more in line with the servers raiding playerbase, the "mafia" would be decked out in the bossloot and no longer be interested in doing them on cd.

So i think a combination of "saturation" or alternative means to summon them would be best

[Geojak]

what if we just make world boss respawn significantly shorter and more random.
currently i think they are somewhat around 5 days.
we can make it random between 18h - 5 days.
less predictable, so harder to controlle for the mafia. and overall more spawns meaning more chances for everyone.
we can have the exiting moments of /world "OMG KAZZAK UP" back that have compeltely died on twow if you arent inside the select few controllers discord

It's not ideal, if you're camping the boss you can continue camping it but get your gear much faster. The most popular suggestion is turning them to summoned bosses similar to silithus wind lords, but of course the mats to summon them would be gated behind raid lockouts so you can't farm relentlessly and summon them over and over.

the hole point of my suggestin was to make camping world bosses harder/impossible and break the mafia while simulatiously give everyone 60 equally more chacnes on the loot.

totallty sucks taht you can lock down a world boss by wrting down when you killed it last and knowing when it will repsawn relatively precisely.m afia will still find ways to be there first, i assume they must have summoning alts parked everywhere anyway

[Tendies]

This is amusing, i could not have come up with a change that made worldbosses a worse experience than forced ffa for everyone if i tried. There is a reason blizzard back in 2005 handed out 3 day suspensions for people griefing worldboss attempts on pve server.

It is wasting everyones time, and if the loot of these bosses wasnt in some cases game changingly good, noone would give a flying fuck.

Having to play deathmatch for half an hour before pulling kazzak just because people keep blowing up the manabombed player only appeals to a certain kind of playerbase. The kind of player turtlewow could genuinely do without.

"No trust me bro, pvp is really cool, and 90% of the playerbade has no clue what is actually fun in wow, corpserunning and having hours of your day wasted because someone wants to pvp is soo fun"

PvE brain. You have no idea about competition

[Kairion]

Yep, thats why i play on a PvE server...

[Gnomoerectus]

The entire point of world bosses is that they are on a "first come first served" basis. If they wanted that not to be the case they would've put Ostarius inside an instance.

Calling players who organise to complete objectives in a videogame a "mafia" is nothing but smearing. Smearing is neither warm nor welcoming.

Don Zzertone is a honest businessman, not a mobster, capiche?
Now get lost, wouldn't want someone to get blacklisted now, would we?

[Gantulga]

World bosses should either FFA PvP flag everybody who's engaged (cross-faction PvP) or make the area surrounding the boss a sanctuary where PvP isn't allowed.
The current implementation is pants-on-head retarded.

[Rat2156]

World bosses should either FFA PvP flag everybody who's engaged

That would allow players to actually do something about the world boss mafia, as it would be possible for groups to form and contest the kill by simply killing the mafia groups.

The fact that PvP isn't enforced by world bosses is 95% of the reason why there's literally nothing you can do to fight these world bosses if you're not part of the mafia.
They'd call it "griefing", but to them griefing is just whatever keeps them from their personal interests, regardless of what anyone else needs or wants.

Fact is, a lot of players would like to see the mafia broken, many more than those who benefit from its existence. If killing them over and over again anytime they attempt to fight a world boss is what's necessary to make it happen, then so be it. I know plenty of PvE exclusive people who'd engage in PvP solely for that reason and nothing else

[Geojak]

with how crossfaction and pvp works atm omn twow. any form of raid vs raid pvp cant be called anything else then griving. its just super scuffed. we need ffa desperately for these sitautions

[Kairion]

FFA PvP does not improve the worldbosses one bit, the reason why the current situation is frustrating is because there are just not enough worldboss spawns for the amount of raiding players on the server. Particularly since some build defining or BIS items come from worldbosses. The "mafia" are just the first ones to show up. thats why they get the kills. Even with PvP enabled you'd have to get to them within ~30 minutes of the boss spawning to do anything to contest it.

FFA PvP would just create a scenario where the most desperate fight for the scraps, rather than creating an environment where people who want to do those bosses actually can.